We in Massachusetts were not surprised by Mr. Romney's performance. He is excellent at projecting an image. Where he lacks is in substance.

For example, when running for Governor, the then liberal Mitt Romney played at being an ordinary worker for a day. Of course, the The day at work program provides great photo opportunities. But Mitt Romney
would have learned a lot more about the problems facing low paid workers from reading Nickel and Dimed (Barbara Ehrenreich) or When Work Disappears (W. J. Wilson). In these books the complete set of
difficulties of a low paid person’s life are laid out in detail:
* The lack of jobs in the inner city;
* the difficulty of getting transportation to a distant job in time
for the start of a shift;
* the theft of one’s time through unpaid overtime;
* the difficulty of finding affordable accommodation (and that insurmountable barrier of accumulating two month’s rent in advance).
It is this context of life’s difficulties that is so debilitating before one even does a hard day’s work. A context that Mr. Romney could even believe to understand. This is the context faced by the 47% and for many of the 99%.

If he developed an understanding of that context he would not be endorsing Mr. Ryan's budget with its drastic cuts to the social safety net.

Sent to New York Times