As Americans head to the polls, they carry their deep fears about the economy coupled with the weight of dire warnings about the potential economic fallout of an Obama or McCain presidency.
Democrat Barack Obama is accused of having a "socialist agenda," and Republican John McCain allegedly wants to further enrich "millionaires and billionaires." To listen to the campaigns, the risks for ordinary Americans are extraordinary.
The heated rhetoric is tapping into more than politics as usual. The election is occurring at a time of serious long- and short-term problems in the U.S. economy.
Ever since the late 1960s, incomes have been growing more unequal, leaving middle-class wage earners with a smaller share of the American pie while vast fortunes have been accumulated by a tiny few at the top.
The nation has just ended a long era of economic growth that left the median incomes of Americans lower in 2007 than in 1999, according to Census Bureau data. The impact was particularly hard at the lower end of the income scale.
These trends -- and how to fix them -- are at the heart of the campaign. Yet, despite the complex problems facing the nation, the detailed economic proposals both candidates have put on the table are hardly radical by historic standards.
McCain appears no more conservative on economic policy than Ronald Reagan and Obama no more liberal than Franklin D. Roosevelt -- the two ideological pillars of the last century. The overarching philosophy of the two candidates has a familiarity.
McCain does not believe the growing inequality in the American economy and the stagnant incomes of the middle class can be fixed by reducing their tax burdens, as Obama wants to do, because he believes such changes will stifle opportunity that drives growth and will create distortions that hurt business.
"The policy Obama has proposed is unlikely to result in any economic growth," said Alex Brill, a research fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. "We already have a tax code that redistributes wealth. You can't blame the tax code for the inequality."
Conversely, Obama does not believe that maintaining lower taxes for the wealthy and further reducing corporate income taxes, as McCain wants to do, will spur so much economic growth that it will lift the income of average Americans.
