diane swonk, old friend, chief of messere, aux financial. we re talking about the middle class. who represents the middle class in this country. the democrats are trying to make the point with speeches by president obama in the last couple of weeks. democrats are the party of the middle class. republicans are the party of the rich. republicans obviously are struggling with that themselves. david, what s your sense of how republicans are thinksing themselves and who in this country represents the vast majority of people, the middle class. i don t think anybody is doing a very good job of it of the president gave a speech in kansas a week ago in which he tried to stake out this ground. he gave a very good assessment of problems facing middle class americans. his descriptions were really weak. the president s main idea seems to be to have higher taxes on those who earn a lot and to use that money to expand public employment and hope more public employment will create a broad