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Thank you for your compassionate article. My own father had a 10th grade education and was willing to put his young life on the line in WWII. He railed against VietNam and died last year railing against Iraq. The "politics" this year (and in every election it seems) are terrible, but with three choices for the upcoming election, my vote is for Obama. We do have to take back Washington. His campaign has raised a lot of money from small doners like myself ready to "gamble" that real people with real problems may get a better hearing. Is he the "perfect" candidate. No. I'm too old (60) to believe in that anymore. As a woman, I think a woman can and should be president, but the thought of Hillary as that woman distresses me greatly. I need, like the blue collar workers you speak of, something positive in my life (my husband is disabled), an invitation to become an active part of the change process (more than as a voter). I'm willing to do the work, if like the unemployed workers you speak of, the political action work is there to do. I can't see Hillary unifying "us" enough to get anything done. The Clintons carry so much personal and political baggage with them that they distract from the issues. To "balance the books" they keep pitching junk at their rivals....maybe some of it sticks, maybe some of it's true. But I deplore the muckraking, divide and conquer, take no prisoners "style." You know, I actually did have concerns about NAFTA when it was first proposed. Perot's focus on the need to reduce the deficit that holds us hostage to other world powers (and keeps us from investing in our own social programs, I believe) and his opposition to trade agreements that he thought would create problems for "the workers" on both sides of the agreement led me to support him when he ran against Clinton the first time. If Bill Clinton made the economy a priority, in part it was because the 19% of the electorate who voted for Perot reenforced that he needed to. People point to the budget surplus during the Clinton years without taking into consideration that the president can't use the line item veto to trim appropriations anymore. He introduced it and after his first term it was struck down by the Supreme Court. And NAFTA was new enough American workers weren't bleeding from it. Hillary claims that she was not a fan of the NAFTA though she did do her part to rally the troops behind it. Then came CAFTA and the Columbian Trade Agreement is temporarily shelved, no doubt to be resurrected for the next president to deal with. I don't believe her when she says she will honor her pledge to fix it "take care" of blue collar workers. Blue collar workers, like anyone else, for the Clintons seem to be a means to an end. Once that end is achieved, like their friends, business associates, and campaign contributers, they are expendable, can be cast into legal fires while after a temporary setback they excape relatively unscathed to rise another day.