And some with a fountain pen.

— Woody Guthrie, "Pretty Boy Floyd"

Howard Dean, the former Democratic presidential candidate, used to talk about helping people take their country back from the politicians and corporations. One of the reasons Dean's campaign died is that nobody believed his goal was attainable.

It's not a new message, but in these times it seems "the people" again have become a faction — real human beings struggling against a stacked deck to get by in life.

Sen. John Edwards, also a former candidate, began his victory speech after winning the South Carolina primary last month by talking about the children who had gone to bed hungry that very night. The man in the White House doesn't care about them, he said.

Of course, vibrant over Edwards' only primary victory, many in the audience weren't in the mood to hear about starving children. They wanted to celebrate.

Throughout his campaign that ended Wednesday, Edwards was quick to point out that he grew up in a real family with a blue-collar father and the typical middle-class struggles to make ends meet. Because of that, he says, he understands the problems of real people better than the candidates who were raised in privilege.

Sen. John Kerry, who's coasting to the Democratic presidential nomination, says he fought alongside real people in Vietnam and afterward in the anti-war movement. And as a Northeast liberal, he says he's been fighting for the people during his decades in Congress.

His issues, too, are the issues of the people: jobs, health care and a better standard of living.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who has been averaging less than 5 percent of the vote in the Democratic primaries, says one of the big choices is November is continued "investment in war and enriching the rich or supporting the struggles of working families."

President Bush's priorities have been tax cuts for the rich and waging war against Iraq. While the people may appreciate every dollar Washington doesn't take out of their paychecks, Iraq is not an issue for real people and does not readily affect their lives, unless of course they or a family member have been forced to go to Iraq to fight or occupy it.

What is important for the people, however, is the cost of the war and the tax cuts, because latest estimates show a national deficit in the trillions of dollars. With huge deficits, the people lose. Already there is talk by Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan about cutting Social Security benefits for baby boomers.

If the government is not going to return to the people the money they put into Social Security, it is little better than the corporations that steal the pension funds of its workers.

Back in 1935, when Congress and President Franklin Roosevelt approved the Social Security Act, they weren't just trying to be nice to future generations of older people so they wouldn't suffer so much during the next depression. They primarily were trying to save the government from having to dole out so much money to keep people from starving during the next hard times.

In those days, there also was a lot of talk about "the people" and how they were hung out to dry by the banks and big business without the government being able to protect them.

Woody Guthrie, a singer/songwriter who understood the struggles of the people in the 1930s and wrote songs about them, is most known for writing "This Land is Your Land." But it wasn't the patriotic anthem that many have seen it as.

Written in response to "God Bless America," a popular song of the time, Guthrie was talking about what should be, about what used to be perhaps, and also about what he was not seeing around him. In a verse not heard too often when the song has been performed in recent decades, Guthrie wrote:

One bright sunny morning in the shadow

of the steeple

By the Relief Office I saw my people —

As they stood hungry, I stood there wondering if

This land was made for you and me.

Perhaps one reason "the people" again have become alienated as a faction is that the richest 1 percent of the population raked in 17 percent of the country's income, the highest level of income inequality since the 1920s.

As the rich get richer, aided by Bush's tax cuts, tens of millions of people lack health insurance, personal bankruptcies and mortgage foreclosures have been climbing steadily this decade, and too many working people can barely scrape by.

One reason Ralph Nader has an appeal to many people is that he understands the people need to be protected from corporations and that the government must do better at it.

All the major issues in this election year come down to problems of the people. It's up to the people to pick the candidate who can recognize them and solve them, not make them worse.

Cary Brunswick is managing editor of The Daily Star. He can be reached at (607) 433-3055 or cary@thedailystar.com.