America, the literate!

I cannot disagree with the thesis of this essay more strongly than the preceding double negative implies.

The author - although he indirectly tosses in an attack on our most literate President of the past 100-years, Barack Obama - overlooks the explicit use by Obama of words to define himself as a candidate. True, for this he was derided by his opponents as "just offering words" or "just making speeches", but Obama showed that by being literate he could still communicate effectively with those who have the deepest and strongest ties to language - the literate class as defined by the author - as well as those who are less well read, even all the way across the spectrum to those defined as illiterate.

We know this is true by simple analysis of the almost 70 million votes received by Obama: he won over 95% of the voting eligible population (VEP) of African Americans; this is the same group that has an almost 50% drop-out rate from high school, a defining factor for illiteracy. Similarly, he won over two-thirds of the Latino VEP; again - another highly illiterate population. And Obama carried the white vote under the age of 45 - regardless of education levels; this includes a significant percentage of the white illiterate vote as well. I defy the author of this post to assess the reading level of Obama's A More Perfect Union speech, given this past March on perhaps the most dangerous of topics in America: race. Had the author chosen to step up to the plate and analyze this data point - as opposed to the sneer he included of "yes we can" reference - he might have realized just how transformative a candidate Obama is to our nation.

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