From barnstorming across the country to pitch his economic agenda, President Barack Obama knows that middle-class voters have little appetite for bailing out Detroit, the largest U.S. city to file for bankruptcy.
The Motor City is the poster child for virtually every urban ill that sent middle-class Americans scuttling to the suburbs in the middle of the 20th century: racial animosity, economic collapse, dysfunctional schools, an incompetent and corrupt local government, and the truculent hopelessness of the abandoned poor. The scale of Detroitâ??s debacle is unique, but you can find alarming similarities in urban areas from Rhode Island to California.
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