Why Eradicating Poverty is on the Short List

Democrats recognize poverty as the paramount moral issue of a progressive government, because whatever troubles may afflict a society - from prejudice to injustice, from a bad economy to a bad disease - the impact is hardest on those who are living in poverty. (Sadly it takes disasters like a hurricane to make this fact vividly clear.)

And while the impoverished always face the brunt of hardships, so long as some portion of a society faces poverty, everyone will face associated costs and risks - which the society can ignore only at its own peril.

Democrats have a long tradition of fighting to create and to protect successful anti-poverty programs like Social Security. Of course there is nowadays often too little attention paid to the successes of 20th century anti-poverty programs. There is a coarse strain in America of indifference toward the poor, sometimes even a bizarre jealousy of the poor, which was stoked by the "welfare queen" rhetoric of the 1980's. In this climate, it is understandable why some politicians may be reluctant to focus on poverty.

But the Democratic Party does have to focus on poverty, because it is a moral duty - and this party's moral destiny - to take on this challenge. While great strides have been made in reducing poverty in America and throughout the world over the last several decades, the number of people in our own country who live in poverty or in severe poverty (people with household incomes less than half of the poverty line) remains terribly high - both are eight-figure numbers and include over five million children living in severe poverty, a number which itself rose by nearly one million between 2001 and 2004 (link, link, link, link). And there of course remains egregious poverty in other nations, where children in some countries face more than a 1 in 4 chance of dying before reaching their fifth birthday (link, link, link).

The challenge of tackling poverty - and of changing people's attitudes so that the great necessity of tackling poverty is broadly understood and accepted in America - has long been recognized by Democratic leaders as a moral imperative, which they have responded to with strong leadership.

Of course, such leadership does and will face opposition. None of history's great leaders in the fight against poverty have been unopposed. But ultimately, when the party speaks with one voice on this issue, when the leadership comes not only from one side of the party but from the full spectrum of the party, then this leadership will prevail, because of the manifest righteousness of this cause, because Americans respect bold leadership, and because Americans are by and large a very compassionate people. When most Americans hear about people who are in desperate straits, they want to help.

Democratic leaders can raise public awareness of poverty and how it can be overcome both by lending their own voices to this cause and by giving people who are living in poverty and people who are serving on the front lines fighting poverty more opportunities if they wish to come before the public to tell their own stories. If the facts and true stories of poverty are told often and loudly enough, they will awaken Americans to the depth of this moral crisis and to the proven and potential solutions for overcoming it.