There are rarefied exceptions among the comfortable middle (the ones that show up at food banks to work for example) and a nearly extinct few among the upper classes, soon to be an extinct specie I think.
But for the most part, if you are poor, have been poor or have grown up poor and escaped it temporarily (often only to become poor again once your body gives out as in my case), you quickly learn that the only people willing to help you are other poor people.
We take care of each other as best we can, but the rest consider us a burden on society to be ignored, ridiculed or abused. We are growing in number exponentially and are invisible, except when we are targets.
Few in politics appear to realize that there are far more poor people than those that are not at this point, most of whom do work and always much harder and longer hours than their comfortable white collar betters that the politicians cater to.
The only politicians that ever cared about the poor were the Socialists and for a time the FDR type Democrats (another nearly extinct specie) - From a pragmatic standpoint the party lost the poor vote when the party began attacking us with welfare reform and cuts to social programs and began to ignore us in earnest. As a result of this voter turnout is quite low for such a large population and politicians believe it best to ignore the poor because they do not vote.
I understand the cold pragmatism of the centrist Democrats that ignore us because we don't vote, but don't understand how as human beings they do not care how many of us and our children are living in cars or in boxes and most do not have enough to eat let alone the comforts of life enjoyed by the "middle class".
I am the rare poor person that does vote, largely to keep the knife at our throats (so close to our jugular) slicing at a slower pace in the hopes that someday things will change in politics before we bleed out. The knife was taken from our throats once by FDR and his ilk and I do realize it was largely to protect Capitalism from an inevitable rise of Communism with so many desperate people having become so poor and running out of options at the time. But it did happen and out of this grew the middle class that was once strong and could even be reached by the poor because upward mobility was still possible.
If the poor vote were ever had, the one that had it would win because we are legion now even if the country pretends we do not exist, perhaps Bernie can get that vote, perhaps he can redo what FDR did, it will take a revolution and he is the only one in a very long time willing to lead that revolution as FDR did so long ago.
One thing is known to me beyond guesswork, if that does not happen soon via Bernie's movement or some other peaceful revolution there has only ever been one other outcome in all of history, a different sort of revolution with blood and a very poor chance that after such a revolution things would improve, because often after those sorts of revolutions the new boss is as bad or worse than the last. So the comfortable middle that can still be seen should take that in consideration rather than simply worrying that their own threatened comfort is now at risk and start caring about the poor that you now ignore and their interests as well.
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