Both Republicans and Democrats have discovered that the middle class in this country is hurting and has been in slow decline for decades since the post-World War II boom era.

President Obama, after being urged by liberal Democrats throughout his term to focus on those at the bottom of the economic pile, now is channeling Teddy Roosevelt and the progressive movements of the early 20th century. Those efforts resulted in worker rights like a 40-hour week, expansion of voting rights, safer consumer products and drugs, and bold steps toward preventing business monopolies. The era also produced the concept of a social safety net.

The president and others now are talking about the prospects of the middle class; they know that is where of the most votes are. But depending upon your definition of middle class, that approach apparently leaves out our once clearly defined working class — primarily lower-skilled factory or construction workers and service workers. In other words, those hovering at the bottom or just starting out and hoping to scramble up.

For the most part, these workers are the ones who’ve seen millions of jobs disappear in recent decades — many moving to foreign shores or being eliminated through new technology that reduces the work force. This has only accelerated since the beginning of the Great Recession, leading to staggering unemployment levels among this segment of society, especially among minority working class citizens.

So we have to ask: What’s the plan here? What is being done to put the floor back under these people, allowing them to think about improving their prospects through experience or education and moving up that ladder?

Instead, state legislatures and Congress continue to deal out a pittance in jobless benefits, the nation still lacks a single-payer health insurance system that would most benefit low-wage earners, and public education systems are being whittled away through budget cutting wherever there is a predominance of low-income residents.

If the president and other politicians are worried about the higher-skilled, highereducated middle class — which is also hurting and certainly has reduced prospects in 2011 — they should be downright frightened about the working class, which all too often has become the not-working class or the part-time working class or the work-for-less, and less class.

What the president said in a recent speech about our nation’s future being tied to the success or failure of the middle class is also true of the working class and those below the official and unofficial poverty levels. We have to find ways — and fund programs — that support those hardest hit in the global economy and this chronic recession or we are dooming the great majority to hopelessness and the side-effects of crime, drug use, alcoholism and broken and dysfunctional families.

The Bennington (Vt.) Banner