I (Actually) Grew Up Middle-Class
“Well, I’ll start with this. I grew up a middle-class kid.”
That’s the now famous line from Vice President Harris, saying she “grew up in a neighborhood of folks who were very proud of their lawn.” She even references “hard-working people, you know, construction workers and nurses and teachers.”
Yeah, I actually grew up like that. Our house was a very blue-collar, very middle-class, very hard-working house with both parents working. Same neighborhood in the Chicago suburbs from a month after I was born until I left for college, and even then, my parents stayed in that same house until I was 40 years old. It was a neighborhood of people like us. Yes, some of our neighbors were very proud of their lawn.
There is a difference between how I grew up middle-class and how Vice President Harris claims she grew up.
My dad wasn’t an economist and author. He was a sheet metal worker. My mom wasn’t a breast cancer scientist. She was a seamstress and a bookkeeper. And it was one neighborhood for us, not a series of college towns across the Midwest until I was 7, then California until I was 12, and then an affluent neighborhood in Canada until I went to college. That is how Vice President Harris grew up. It’s documented and you can fact-check it.
So, exactly WHEN was she living in this “middle-class” neighborhood that was SO important to her personal development and dedication to the middle-class? Was it the five years of San Francisco living in an apartment? Hard to say you “grew up” in a middle-class neighborhood if it was only five years between ages seven and twelve and you were spending weekends with dad in Palo Alto. It certainly wasn’t when she lived in Canada from eighth grade through high school. Not saying Canada doesn’t have a middle class, but the neighborhood of Westmount where she lived has been labeled as “affluent” and "wealthy”, so that wasn’t it.
Maybe it was the Midwest years when her father, the college professor, was teaching at University of Illinois, or Northwestern, or University of Wisconsin? Yeah, one or two years at each spot. Not really “growing up in a neighborhood”. More like living very transient in a series of neighborhoods or even temporary housing locations. And half of that she was a toddler or younger.
I am sure some of you will say I am nitpicking or overanalyzing. When you have a Presidential candidate that is basing a HUGE portion of a very sketchy economic policy on “growing up middle-class”, I don’t think you can overanalyze her claims. Sorry, not sorry. Especially when she has repeated the SAME story multiple times in her normal non-answer style of answering questions.
I am sure some of you will say President Trump grew up rich, as a way to deflect away from Vice President Harris. Donald Trump has never denied who he is, how he grew up, or where he came from. He has always been open about having access to things many did not and has set the record straight about how he made his money. He did actually make that money, and it wasn’t just an inheritance. My point is, he didn’t lie about how he grew up.
Which is exactly what Vice President Harris is doing. It’s a lie. It’s the same as the President Biden lies; his stories of growing up in black neighborhoods, Puerto Rican neighborhoods, as well as Jewish, Greek, and Irish. And stories of driving a truck and riding a train and kicking Corn-Pop’s ass. He was a bad dude. I’m serious. They were all lies.
It is the same crap. This is the party of the wealthy elite trying to convince the rest of America they are “one of us”. They aren’t. Did you know Vice President Harris is worth over $8 million? Combined with her husband they are worth almost $14 million. She is certainly NOT middle-class and, if you really look at how she grew up, she was NEVER middle-class, just like President Biden and the rest of the Washington elites.
And you’ll go back to President Trump… “He is richer than they are!” Yeah, he is, but he never lied about it. He even told everyone he famously uses the tax code to legally not pay taxes, just like everyone else who is wealthy.
Vice President Harris wants you to believe she is middle-class, because if she is “one of us” she would never do anything to hurt one of her own, right? She would ONLY do what’s best for her “people” because that’s where she “came from”. The reality is, she won’t do anything to hurt her “people”. That isn’t a lie. The problem is, she is lying about who her “people” are. They aren’t the middle-class, that’s for sure.
Her “people” are the wealthy elite. They are the donors. They are the ones who keep her in office. Do you really think Bloomberg would donate almost $20 million so she can help the middle-class? Or venture capitalists Greylock Partners would donate $10 million so they can pay MORE corporate taxes on their $3.5 billion in capital, so a blue-collar family lives better? NOT A CHANCE. The problem is those donors can’t vote her into office. She needs YOU to do that and the only way to get YOU to do that is to make YOU think she is just like YOU. But she isn’t.
I can say all this because the evidence is there. It isn’t hard to find and then put the puzzle pieces together. But, when she said it at the debate, “I grew up middle-class” I could feel it was a lie. I knew she wasn’t one of us. I knew I wasn’t looking in the proverbial mirror. My gut told me it wasn’t true. You know why?
I (actually) grew up middle-class.