The Misery Class

The Misery Class



By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, August 28, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Politics: Think your life is going OK? If so, the Democratic convention was not for you. The party of "Happy Days Are Here Again" now sees hard luck and helplessness at every kitchen table.

Every day, the Gallup Organization conducts interviews with 1,000 Americans about how they felt the day before. The call covers a range of topics, including state of health, economic comfort, job satisfaction, social life, optimism and worry.

It's been doing this since the beginning of the year, and the happiness index follows a definite pattern each week. Americans are happiest and most stress-free on Sunday, and their mood bottoms out on Wednesday (could that have something to do with work?).

At this writing, we have readings through Tuesday, and up to a point they're following the normal pattern. On Sunday, 57% of the respondents said they experienced a lot of happiness with little stress or worry, while only 8% were on the other end of the scale, experiencing a lot of stress and worry without much enjoyment. By Tuesday, the happy camp had shrunk to 42% and the stressed-out contingent had soared to 15%.

What was a bit different about this trend was how fast that unhappy group grew. Its Tuesday reading was well above the worst-day average for the index (based on January though May) of 11.8%.

Do these numbers have anything to do with the fact that Monday and Tuesday were the first two nights of the Democratic National Convention? We can only speculate. But we do know that, if the Democrats did not succeed in dampening the nation's spirits, it wasn't for want of trying.

The convention's list of speakers on just one day (Tuesday) included a laid-off North Carolina textile worker, an Iowa flood victim, an autoworker about to be laid off and an unemployed nurse.

Then there was Joe Biden, who on Wednesday told how he looks into the windows of homes he passes on his way home from work and sees the middle class — or should it be called the misery class? — in pain. They're wondering, he says, how to keep from freezing this winter, how to manage without a raise and how to cope as their health care, home equity and retirement dreams fade away.

Some people really are living this American nightmare. But if they're the Democrats' electoral target this year, they may turn out to be a disappointingly small group. Look at those happiness numbers again. Even on a bad day, the decidedly happy outnumber the decidedly unhappy by nearly 3 to 1. When the weekend rolls around, the contented class beats the misery class by about 7 to 1.

If the Democrats talk long enough, they might push a few more Americans into despair. But to do really well, they'll have to get worse news than the economy has been offering up lately, and they will have to overcome most Americans' natural tendency to look on the bright side. To judge from the party's rhetoric this week, optimism may be its worst enemy right now.



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