QUESTION:: WHY DOES THE MIDDLE CLASS VOTE AGAINST ITS INTERESTS?

It's pretty simple: Their aspirations are for upward mobility.

Fear is not exclusive to the GOP. I think when people, such as yourself, fall on some really simple, insulting reason for why a mass votes, you are REALLY insulting a lot of people and yourself.

To the extent that he has a core value beyond satisfaction of his megolmania, it truly is to transform America, and his vision of a transformed America is quite different than that of the majoriuty of Americans.

I well appreciate that the foregoing smacks of the rants of a lunatic fringe, and maybe I'm a member of that fringe without acknowledgement, but this smells a lot like the Nixon years. The meglomaniacal Nixon was thwarted by a very public punch to his gut that sent him reeling, and, perhaps, a private recognition that his his hunger for power was placing his love of country in jeopardy.

In truth he will do whatever it takes to retain power, but should he win re-election, all democratic bets are off.

It has nothing to do with race but it will be quite ironic that the promise of the first black president turns out to be the reality of the first president to fundamentally defy democracy.

Is there anything more precious in this forum than the affected use of "sigh?"

In any case you have disqualified yourself from any pretense of objectivity with your accusation directed towards Romney and your recitation of the Koch conspiracy tale.

Let's make a point of touching base on this in four years if Obama is re-elected.

That assumes I'll have free access to the internet.

In general, the more unequal a society, the lower generational mobility: in other words, the more likely the members of the next generation will occupy the same position in the earnings distribution as their parents. (This particular graph refers to fathers and sons.)

But the other thing to notice is that the United States is among the most unequal and the least mobile of the rich countries, with about 50% of a father’s earnings advantage (or for that matter disadvantage) being passed on to the son.

In Canada this is about 20%, less than half the US figure. The Canada – US comparison is probably the most apt, and I discuss the details in a research paper published by the Economic Mobility Project of the PEW Charitable Trusts. The reason for the difference: in the United States children of the very rich are more likely to grow up to be rich, and children of the poor are more likely to stay poor.

These facts are finally starting to percolate into the American consciousness. Joseph Schumpeter, the Harvard University economist who taught during the 1930s, is often cited as saying that recessions are like cold showers: they clear the economy of inefficiencies, make the existing structures more apparent, and set the conditions for change.

But recessions have social as well as economic consequences. The current recession has shaken some people awake, and Occupiers signal the decline of the American Dream in our consciousness, a manifestation of underlying realities, and the demand for a change in the way of doing business.

In the New York Times earlier this year, Paul Krugman wrote of an economic effect called "The Great Gatsby curve," a graph that measures fiscal inequality against social mobility and shows that America's marked economic inequality means it has correlatively low social mobility.

QUESTION:: WHY DOES THE MIDDLE CLASS VOTE AGAINST ITS INTERESTS?

The teabaggers for eample, seem to be obsessed with rules that will probably NEVER affect them. Do they all believe that they shall , one day, be part of the 1% ers.

CI has this nailed. You cant cure stupid.