That was a question put to a TV reporter by Rev. William J. Barber II after the Democratic National Convention last month. Barber, founder of the Moral Monday movement and now a notable political activist, is President of Repairers of the Breach and co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. His is a voice and a vision to be reckoned with as he calls for concern grounded in morality for the poor and working poor.

Why, Rev. Barber asks, are poor and low-income people never targeted in Democratic ads? Why are their issues never talked about, despite the fact that they are clearly a political force by virtue of the fact they represent an estimated 25 percent of people in this country?

These were questions I also asked after the Democrat’s virtual convention. Why, I wondered, did we need to hear yet again from Bill Clinton, John Kerry and John Kasich? Where was a real-life person of situational or generational poverty who could speak to the reality of their lives and their families’ struggles?

Rev. Barber’s answer was that poor people are ignored because they don’t donate money to political campaigns, and they don’t vote. Why should they, Barber explains, when they feel invisible and not cared about? That’s a pretty damning statement about a party that claims to care about everyone, but can’t move beyond talking about the “middle class,” and (mainly) white working folks.

It’s time for Dems to get it: When a quarter of Americans are poor or low-income workers who can’t make ends meet, can’t access healthcare or a decent education, and can’t make it through a pandemic it’s unacceptable to ignore or exclude them. We need to remember that poverty is not a dirty word. There is no reason to be afraid or ashamed of impoverished people as a constituency, no matter their race or ethnicity, but there is every reason to acknowledge that they exist as an underclass in one of the the world’s richest countries. As human beings they deserve the dignity and attention so readily proffered to other Americans.

That calls for an increased awareness among political leaders, and the public, of the lives poor and low-income people live.

Being poor and being in poverty are two different things, as Latonya Walker, a social worker in Detroit points out on her blog. While being poor is an economic state that involves dependency on a system of care, often for generations, poverty is a psychological mindset that derives from the situation one finds themselves in due to a life changing event. Divorce, illness, loss of work, or a death in the family can lead to homelessness, the need for government assistance, or generalized instability. If prolonged beyond one generation, it can be difficult to escape.

The effects of generational poverty are chronic, resulting in continued low education levels, inadequate childcare, low workplace skills, health issues, high incarceration rates and high infant mortality rates. Homelessness and substance abuse also become chronic. It’s heartbreaking that a quarter of American children are living in low-income families that have at least one working parent who because of low hourly wages and few if any job benefits, like health insurance, paid sick or vacation leave, are unlikely to escape the effects of generational poverty.

That’s why it’s important for political leaders to take a focused, holistic, and humane approach to well-funded public policies that address in practical and meaningful ways the need for improved, accessible education programs for both children and adults, universal healthcare, living wages, ending mass incarceration, and protecting voting rights. They could be helped in that effort by inviting the voices and the aspirations of poor people and people living in poverty to be heard and understood. In other words, they need to put a human face on the pressing issues of poverty so that they, and all Americans, can see those faces, learn from their experiences, appreciate the challenges of their lives, and act to relieve the constraints that keep them impoverished, afraid, and without hope for a better life.

The fact is, the poor and nearly poor are a formidable force and they are organizing to vote in this crucial election. They have the power to flip election results in more than a dozen states. It makes absolutely no sense to ignore them if the Democratic party is serious about economic security. If Democrats truly stand for morality and justice with the force and conviction that Rev. Barber does, they need to listen, and learn, from those who may inherit the earth in biblical terms, but who have precious little to be content with in these troubling times.

As Rev. Barber says so eloquently, “Our deepest moral traditions point to equal protection under the law, the desire for peace within and among nations, the dignity of all people, and the responsibility to care for our common home.”

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Elayne Clift writes from Saxtons River, Vt. www.elayne-clift.com

When six Republicans met in South Carolina recently to discuss combating poverty their focus was predictable. Marco Rubio talked about broken families, dangerous neighborhoods, substandard housing, failing schools, and drug dealers, all while rejecting the idea of raising the federal minimum wage. He argued that welfare should be turned over to states, especially those that have recipient work requirements.

Jeb Bush, who agrees with Rubio on states taking over welfare, blathered about giving Americans the “right to rise.” Ben Carson said that “some people hate rats, some hate roaches, I hated poverty.” And Chris Christie warned against drug addiction as the gateway to incarceration.

Rubio invoked his parents, a bartender and a maid, to extol rising above poverty. But they had jobs which presumably they could get to without too much hassle, steady incomes, and, it would seem, someone to watch the kids. Bush’s comments smacked of not wanting the problem in his neighborhood, and Carson seemed to equate poor people with vermin.

It reminded me of Paul Ryan and the accolades he received when he said he “could not, and would not, give up [his] family time” to serve as House Majority Leader. But does he hold to that ideal for people who spend hours waiting for several buses to get to two or three minimum wage jobs, worried that there is no “angel in the house” to take care of the kids, and no decent day care? Does he realize, as Judith Shulevitz pointed out in a recent New York Times op ed., that there are more than four times as many American families run by single moms as by single dads, and that a third more households are headed by women on welfare than those run by men?

The fact is the competing Republicans don’t get the reality of poverty. They’ve never lived it and they don’t like it. The only emotion it seems to raise in them is pity. God knows it’s never empathy. Nor do they get the interconnections between major federal issues in need of urgent attention and poverty alleviation. Shove punitive, top-down, us/them welfare problems back to the states is their mantra. They don’t want to see it and they don’t want to deal with it, because dealing with it means addressing really big issues, and then funding them.

Transportation infrastructure is one example. None of the naysayers has ever had to get to work without a car (and often a driver). How willing would they be to rise in the wee hours of the morning to catch several buses in any kind of weather? How many of them have ridden sophisticated transportation systems in other countries, where wait times are almost nil and connections are well planned so that people who really work for a living can be moved about by the millions with relatively little hassle?

How many of the Horatio Alger guys have had to worry about quality, affordable, accessible daycare? Hey People on the Hill: Poor folk don’t have nannies! They don’t have stay at home spouses. They don’t even have enough food to feed their kids half the time and some of you want to cut food stamps?

Speaking of nutrition, it’s a big part of staying healthy so you can work. So is affordable, accessible, quality healthcare. It might be worth factoring that into the equation for ending poverty while you’re trying to gut Obamacare or avoid universal health care.

I wish Republicans who talk in clichés would understand important connections like these.

Judith Shulevitz raised an interesting approach in her Times piece. She pointed out that a number of countries are contemplating a “universal basic income” or U.B.I. A proposal in Finland, for example, would experiment with giving every adult 800 Euros (about $870) a month. Switzerland and Canada are among other countries calling for similar experimentation.

The rationale is that it’s a way to reimburse people who lead productive lives, like mothers and other caregivers who don’t receive money for what they contribute to society. (About thirty years ago a social scientist figured out that if women were remunerated for all they do their worth would be something like $40,000 annually. Imagine what that is in today’s economy!) The U.B.I. also reflects “a necessary condition for a just society,” as Shulevitz puts it. It’s seen as a general entitlement in this framework. It’s also been called “a floor below which nobody need fall.”

Basic income proposals like this one from both right and left are not new but they are complex. It’s something to think about while good folks genuinely strategize around ending poverty in our rich country. Of course, the Republicans who flap their cake holes about poverty would never consider such an idea.

The thing is, maybe it can help move them toward more rationale, responsible thinking about poverty alleviation. At least they might not dump it all on the states as nothing more than a local problem loaded with society’s detritus.