Huffington Post's Jennifer Bendery reported ona Biden "gaffe" last night, in the midst of the Romney shitstorm about makers and moochers, about warring definitions of the middle class. I use scare quotes for the word gaffe because this is actually just another example of false equivalency in action. Biden attacked Mitt Romney's definition of middle income being $200K to 250K a year. In fact, Romney also said that $100K was not middle income.
Bendery, in her helpful concern trolling, pointed out that the Obama administration has also used the figure $250K in it's definition for middle class. What Bendery fails to notice is that the Obama administration has been using that as a definite ceiling. What Biden and others have objected to is the using of $200K as a floor. Biden was comparing floors to floors, not floors and ceilings.
And is $250K middle class? Sure it is, in some parts of California and New York where the cost of living is exorbitant. Is $30K middle class? Of course it is, and in some areas, you can live more comfortably on it than in others. Biden was not gaffing when he called to question Mitt Romney's assertion. Quite frankly, I think more attention needs to be paid to that $200K floor. I work two jobs to remain solidly, five-figure middle class. Were I to make Romney's floor, for even just a year, I would not be riddled with student loan (that I got for my jobs) and car (that I got to get to my jobs) debt. Should the floor be $200K? Sure, why not, considering that wages have remained stagnant over the last thirty years whiles costs of living and success have plunged us into greater and greater debt.
So no, HuffPo. This was not a gaffe. This was not an error. This was Biden pointing out how Romney thinks the middle class lives in a Hobbit Hole of income distribution. I guess that means the rest of us, those making less than $200K, less than $100K, less than $50K are those moochers of which Romney spoke.