Mort Zuckerman, editor of U.S. News & World Report, recently bemoaned "an opportunity lost" by the Democratic Party. "Who would have thought," he wrote, "that Kerry would fail to develop the obvious signature grand theme that might have been an election winner: the economic squeeze on the middle class?" But it's not as though Sens. Kerry and Edwards haven't tried. Perhaps it's not such a grand theme after all.
For one thing, the Kerry team tends to count everyone among "The Middle Class." One Kerry ad says, "An estimated 1.6 million families will file for bankruptcy in 2004, 90 percent from the middle class. Health care costs will contribute to half of all of these bankruptcies."
Two sources were cited, Consumers Union and a Bill Moyers TV show. But Consumers Union just said 90 percent of bankruptcies involved divorce, job loss and/or big medical bills. Rich people are not immune to such misfortune. The fact that health care costs are on this list is not something new in the Bush years -- the figures came from the 1998 bankruptcy commission. In fact, all costs "contribute to" every bankruptcy, with mortgage payments normally being the largest.
The Bill Moyers show was an interview with bankruptcy law professor Elizabeth Whalen about her book "The Two-Income Trap," which broadened the definition of middle class in amazing ways: "When membership in the middle class is defined by enduring criteria ... such as going to college, owning a home or having held a good job -- more than 90 percent of those in bankruptcy would qualify as middle class."
By the same criteria, however, those with extremely high incomes and wealth would also qualify as middle class. Zuckerman and Teresa Kerry, for example, are on Forbes' list of the wealthiest 400 people in America. Yet even Zuckerman and the Kerrys would qualify as "middle class" under the Whalen-Kerry definition, as they own their own homes (the Kerrys have five). Besides, personal bankruptcies rose most sharply from 1994 to 1998, and actually fell last year, contrary to this Kerry ad. What "estimated" bankruptcies means is a mystery, but estimates aren't facts.