As someone who's disinclined toward management and marketing, unendowed with family riches, and uncomfortable speculating and borrowing, and who is therefore stuck working for a living, I'll admit that I'm sort of bitter about it.  My upper middle class income has me living worse than my parents, and I have no idea how the median wage earners manage to get by.  But no one likes to be told that they're bitter, and if they act bitter in response to the label, then well, they're used to politicians sucking up to semi-mythical small-town America (instead of acting in their interests) for generations now.  I like Obama a little better for avoiding that pander (not more than one time, I'm sure), but then again, even though I work for a living, I'm sort of an elitist.

I think if you want to examine the role of government in why wage labor is such a crappy proposition, ask why profits haven't been much returned to wages for the last growth period. There's a lot that that government does to incentivize ownership over wages--reducing taxes on dividends is one thing, capping FICA contributions, taxing cap gains as less than income, preserving inherited wealth--and maybe Obama's rollback of the dreaded 1% would address that a little.  I am not sure any of that will affect whether there's meaningful work though.  (Dollar policy might, over the long term anyway.  I don't know Obama's position on that one.)

Complicated way of saying that I pretty much agree with you here.