Nothing more needs to be said.

Before the end of the foulness.

We know you will not disappoint us, Ruben.

...is that this might work.

Check out George Packer's article in a recent New Yorker, where he talks to working-class voters in Ohio. The first woman quoted in his article says she doesn't trust Obama because his tax hikes on the rich wouldn't be enough and he'd eventually raise her taxes. Or something. Packer isn't shrill about it (he's too good a reporter for that), but as you make your way through the long article, it becomes increasingly clear that the reason a lot of working-class whites don't "trust" Obama is because he's black.

She thinks the idea someone actually makes $250,000 a year is so insane, so outside her life experience, so fantasy land, so unreal, so unlikely, it must mean Obama will have to raise taxes on everyone to eventually get the funding he claims his upper bracket tax increases will provide.

I personally think the story says more about the enormous class disconnect in this country than race, even tough the article does talk about it.

But forget that, this shit is hilarious!

look just like Nate the Neoconservative in overalls to anyone else?

I don't think we're doing well to discourage our nation's ever-growing substance abuse problems and plummeting education standards by appealing to plumbers and problem-drinkers as fixtures of American patriotism. I guess I just never considered people with low ambitions a voting demographic before...

This comic upsets me somewhat. This is coming from an ardent Barack Obama supporter who volunteers for his campaign. If we are going to pull more of the small-town voters over to the Obama camp, we need to stop making them out to be idiots. Most of them are smart individuals that are voting the way they are mostly because of party identification and the fact that WE KEEP CALLING THEM STUPID.

When I'm talking to people who are undecided but are leaning Republican, I typically try to emphasize that many of the points by the McCain campaign are blown out of proportion, and that Obama is a pragmatist that will do what is best for America. While I deeply disagree with most of the policies of the republican party, I think this partisanship hurts us.

As Gen. Wes Clark said yesterday at an Obama rally in Harrisonburg: (paraphrased) I think most of these people (republican voters) want to change, but they don't want to be made out to be stupid. We need to work to connect to the small-town voters, and show that we empathize with them. We have to show that we understand that things like faith, firearms, and small government are things that are important to these people. I could go on, but this type of politics hurts all of us, Republicans, Democrats, and independents.

I agree with you, except - and I might be way off on this - I see Tom's comic as a satire of what the GOP believes about blue-collar voters.

I used to wonder why my Republican friends have always been so passionate about supporting low (or no) taxes for the wealthiest people of this country, since they themselves are not among the wealthiest people of this country. I figured it out about twenty years ago: they aspire to be rich, and they believe that someday they will be rich enough to be affected by taxes that only affect the rich. It's not about "trickle down". They disregard their own economic interests because they do not want to be associated with their own economic group. They believe that a better life for them is always just around the corner. In their own minds, they are convinced that anything good for extremely wealthy people is also good for them, because they are "practically" in the same class as those extremely wealthy people already. This is America, after all.

Simply let the country devolve to a state of Darwinian anarchy. No government no laws no social contract no nothing.

Now we just need to find out what Joe The Taxcollector (that's him in the 5th panel), Joe Banker, Joe Porsche Driver, and Joe Celebrity think. Not to mention Joe Living Under the 18th St Bridge.

And what about Jane Single Mother, Jane The Engineer, Jane the Executive VP, and Jane Catlady? We never hear the female point of view here.

Just as long as we never really find out what Joe Politician thinks. That doesn't seem to really matter at all.

They disregard their own economic interests because they do not want to be associated with their own economic group. They believe that a better life for them is always just around the corner.

Ding, ding, ding! The greatest trick the elite have ever pulled is convincing people that the American Dream of Rags to Riche$ is actually possible for anyone under the current system if they just "work hard enough," and not just a carrot that drives the masses' labor and compliance onward, even to the point of giving up the little wealth they do create via hard work (see: evaporating 401Ks).

As evidence of the falsity of the Horatio Alger myth, awhile back I went through the Forbes 100 Wealthiest People list person by person, and looked into their story. Although many of them are labeled "self-made" by Forbes, even a cursory closer examination reveals that's not exactly true.

The vast, vast majority of these "self-made" men and women were born on third base--and drew from at least one or all of these advantages--born into upper middle-class or upper class families, top-notch education at Ivy League schools, were "loaned" money from family or friends that allowed them to start the businesses that made them wealthy.

I counted only about 2 genuinely self-made Horatio Algers on that list--actual rags to riches stories. And those stories were stories of extreme luck. One of them started his fortune by being a very, very good poker player.

All of sudden, it's easy to understand the appeal of state lotteries.

Joe at work ( not his real name, ) sounds just these Joes. Talking to him is an exercise in frustration, so completely has right-wing rhetoric cleansed his brain.

It's not about intelligence as much as emotions. All these Joes pack a big lunch bucket of resentment.