The voting poor, vs. the poor

Tam wrote about Mitt Romney's crude words, "I don't care about the poor."

I don't feign concern for the poor, either. Well, unless you count myself; I'm pretty concerned about me, after all.

One comment to her post, Anonymous 3:56 wondered:

I have to wonder how many of these candidates would be worried about the poor if the poor couldn't vote?

I think the poor would still be on the agenda, if the poor couldn't vote.

Let any segment of the population get too irate, and bad things happen. Women, unions, minorities, they all were capable of disrupting "business", all capable of destroying property and injuring or at least inconveniencing "voters".

The alternative to letting poor people vote is to define a class system, to restrict privileges and legal penalties by class. To use laws and government attention to control "undesirables". Wait, we already do that.

But at least the good poor people can vote, as long as they don't get convicted of a felony. And keep a residence and voter registration current. Even if that makes it look like we call "poor" those middle class people that can barely afford to live like middle class people.

And that those actually poor, that have given up trying to live like middle class America or never could, can't vote. Maybe what politicians refer to as poor voters is really just a scare tactic to sway middle class voters that fear losing more income, facing higher prices, and losing more ability to afford a middle class or wealthy life style.