Despite positioning themselves as men of "the people," Bush and Gore are ignoring the poor in favor of the shoppers at the suburban strip malls where they work and the commuters at the rail station where they make change. Gore has at least been to some of these places, on his marathon Labor Day tour, but no one since President Clinton took his poverty tour last year has focused on them. Since then, Evelyn Nieves recently wrote in the New York Times, "the poor have coped alone."

At one level, you can hardly blame the major party candidates. The shoppers, the commuters, the high-tech employees and, yes, the soccer moms--they are registered voters, likely to vote but unsure for whom. They may be fickle, but they have influence too; not quite like the AARP and its waving fields of gray, but a powerful constituency nonetheless. It's why Medicare, prescription drug importation and income tax credits fill the candidates' speeches, even when they are held in school auditoriums and on city streets.

At another level, however, you can hardly excuse the candidates. Understanding who "the people" are may be a Rorschach test of American social thought, but it is unfeeling and immoral not to include the needs of the nation's poorest in your plans. Policies that could help those at the margin include a rise in the minimum wage to a livable standard; guarantees of safety for their children and of a quality education; a reform of the penal system and its rehabilitation programs; and support for families, whether in helping them retain a family farm or reunite with relatives wishing to immigrate here.

Sure, the people to whom the candidates talk, who opine on private investment of Social Security funds and consider taking public funds to pay the local private school tuition, will vote in November, and will likely decide the contest's outcome. But wouldn't we be prouder as a nation if the people who languish at the base of our society would be the focus of such attention?

Adam I. Arenson '00-'01 is a history and literature concentrator in Lowell House. His column appears on alternate Fridays.