I’m a little bit perplexed by the wording used by the Washington Post and The Pew Research Center in a recent poll that asked “Who (the Obama Administration or the Republicans in Congress) is helping the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots?’.”

In such dire economic and political times, as unemployment continues to stall and governing-by-crisis becomes a routine legislative practice in Congress, it’s surprising that a research poll would use such imprecise and subjective wording to ascertain whether the American public believes that one political party is contributing to “class warfare” more than the other. Wouldn’t it be more valuable to use familiar expressions such as the “rich” and the “poor”, or the “middle class” and “upper class”?

Haves and have-nots is terminology that is so cloudy and distant to our society that it lacks the depth of meanings that those other terms instantly connote. I understand that they want to evoke Marxist terminology when talking about “class warfare”, but I think that the average American is going to define class struggle a little bit different then the “Bourgeoisie haves” and “Proletariat have-nots” of 19th century Europe.

That’s not to say that this poll does not accurately test the perception among Americans that “class warfare” is being waged, it’s just that the “haves” and “have-nots” wording, although simple, is jargon used more commonly by economists and social scientists than the average American who would say it when speaking about the wealth divide.