And yet the sky has not fallen, or even sagged.

I can think of three reasons for this sea change. First, as Bill Clinton predicted when he signed the 1996 welfare reform bill, taking welfare off the table has made the remediation of poverty a less controversial concern. (As policy, welfare reform may have actually hurt the poor, but as politics, it has made them less of a pariah.) Second, the huge wave of immigrants into low-wage jobs has changed the face of poverty in the United States; Americans understand that most of the poor are working poor, and hard-working poor at that.

Third, and hardest to measure, is the fear of falling to a life on the brink of poverty, a fear that is widespread among manufacturing and some service-sector workers[P6: emphasis added]. The clearest proof that "outsourcing" has changed the political climate is that a candidate such as Edwards can talk about helping the poor to an audience of white workers who understand he could be talking about them. Or that Kerry can gain credibility with such a crowd by railing at an administration that helps investors but leaves workers behind. Such talk has not come naturally either to Kerry or Edwards.