You paint his stepfather as some wealthy oil magnate when he was a… Geologist who worked in Indonesia… Whose most notable description of their wealth I can find is, “replacing their motorcycle with a car” as they rented a home in Indonesia. Clearly basking in wealth, am I right…? By age 10, Barack was being raised solely by his grandparents, (whose grandfather operated a furniture store) while his stepfather in Indonesia and his mother going to school and then returning to Indonesia without Barack. Obama’s stepfather divorced his mother when Barack was 19. His background was middle-class. Otherwise please, show tax returns of his parents, or him living in a lavish mansion, or any indication whatsoever that he was well above middle-class.
So look how far the bar has dropped from your initial claim of wealth and privilege. The best you’ve got is a “connection” to a nice grade school that he earned a scholarship for…? If you’re referring to connections down the road, after he studied in school and became a professor, and then after that becoming a community organizer, then a state senator, then a US senator… Well, that’s generally how you make connections and rise through the ranks. The point being: a person from at-best middle-class origins managed to do that, as a black person in an otherwise racist America.
Resolving the influence of money from others in elections is pretty straight-forward, but what I’m asking is how you resolve “networking & connections” as you vaguely allude to what Obama had?
I stand by my claim they were at best middle-class.
There’s a lot of very smart, well educated, people who will never be president simply because they don’t know anyone who can write checks to cover the time off work and advertising necessary.
Then I contest they may not be as smart as you think, or they just lack any political ambition whatsoever and would rather throw peanuts from the peanut gallery without actually doing the ground-work of grassroots organization or running for office as Obama did loooooooooooooong before he had to get checks written. Besides, unfortunately in order to change the game you tend to have to first play by the existing rules of the game first.