My Comments: Most of you have by now figured out that I’m likely to vote for Obama in the upcoming election. Not that I’m opposed to rich people, it’s just that there are some rich people who are completely tone deaf when it comes to opportunities for those who are not rich.

I’m one of the not rich. That’s not to say I’m poor but I’m in the middle class and I see my fellow Americans having a hard time getting by. We seem to be paying a higher and higher price to stay in the middle and the guys at the top are pushing an agenda to benefit themselves before they even think about us in the middle, much less those below the middle.

It smacks of social Darwinism which essentially says if you can’t get it done by yourself, that’s too bad. Go ahead and suffer. Or die. Or move back to wherever you came from so we don’t have to think about you. That’s not the future I want to contemplate for my children and grandchildren. This is, for me, a fascinating glimpse into the lives and decision making rationale of those whose net worth is in the many millions. It’s not how the rest of us live.

By James Fallows Jul 23 2012, 11:29 AM ET

A week ago, the political news was about tax returns, negative ads, visions of capitalism, and so on. Naturally it has been elsewhere for the past few days, and soon the Olympics will begin. (That U.S. presidential elections effectively take a summer time-out, while TV audiences are preoccupied with swimming and so on, is probably a blessing. But when you think about it, it’s strange.) When the Games are over and the conventions begin, we’ll be back to those themes.

I do think that the nature of today’s capitalism, in all its aspects, will and should be the central issue in this campaign, though probably not stated just that way. As a down payment on that discussion, here is a message from a person who has observed the system at the top. He is now part of a family whose assets are greater than the Romneys’. It’s relevant to his story that he was a successful big-time college athlete. To set the tone for his account, one of J.C. Leyendecker’s wonderful illustrations from a previous financial-boom era — this one an Arrow ad, and further down a Collier’s cover. These are the kind of people the reader is describing.