It's no surprise that the American electorate is concerned foremost with dollars and cents. Never before on record has poverty been higher and median income lower for working-age people in the US, at the end of a multi-year growth.

It's a scam of gargantuan proportions: work hard, enhance productivity and grow the country but don't share in the bounty. This, after some reaped unimaginable profits from 2004 to 2006.

Barack Obama has the task of simultaneously leading a country with negligible growth, taming an elite that's accustomed to double-digit profits and more, and steering away from the government set-up called free trade -- not to mention mopping up the displacement that's brought. Public schools are in serious demise, 47% of Americans lack health insurance, and the number that lack effective healthcare -- is higher than that.

Enter Obama. His economic plans head in the right direction - he'd raise taxes on upper-income brackets as well as on capital gains; there's talk of a windfall profits tax on oil companies, much needed aid to state and local governments, some job creation through spending on roads, ports, levees and other infrastructure. Obama also promises to promote health insurance for all (and Tuesday night Hillary Clinton pushed him on that and got one of the biggest cheers of her night.)

Historian Alan Brinkley compares the Obama plan to Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. There will be a lot of referring to the LBJ years this week. Except Brinkley says Obams's plan is the Great Society with a small "g" and a small "s".

And the problem is when it comes to that promised CHANGE WE NEED: nothing small will do it.

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