Felix Salmon of the Reuters has an interesting blog post the real issue in this election: poverty and economic opportunity. After responding at length to Nina Easton’s cover story in Fortune, “Stop bashing the rich,” Salmon concludes:

It seems to me that the current election campaign comes down in large part to a simple question: “who do you care about”? Do you care about the 1%, on the grounds that they are “job creators”? Or do you care about the bottom 40% — the people who have been left behind by US economic policy and who desperately need help and support? The Republicans clearly are the party of the 1%, and the Democrats are trying to paint themselves as the party of the middle class — of the 59%, you might say. But no one is standing up for the bottom 40%, the invisible poor, partly because they have a distressing tendency not to vote.

I think he’s right. The single largest difference between the two parties is that republicans have positioned themselves as the part of wealth creators and the democrats are attempting to position themselves as the party of the employee–middle class and otherwise.

I suppose how you answer this question will largely effect how you vote.