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It has been said: “Nothing succeeds like success.”

And:  “Nobody loves you when you’re down and out.”

That about sums up the unforgiving political climate in this raw election year.

One statehouse candidate in my corner of America says she wants to make our state “Millionaire-friendly.” Wait a minute. Today’s big news is the fast foreclosure scandal, and this candidate is worried that millionaires don’t have enough friends?

I don’t know whether to laugh . . . or cry.

Meanwhile, several candidates here are keen to make seasonal workers ineligible for unemployment compensation, in the midst of the worst depression since . . . The Depression.

Around here, we have plentiful work in summer, nothing in winter. Unemployment compensation for seasonal workers has been part of the business and economic equation — the social contract, if you will — for decades. Not anymore.

In this new, winner-take-all system, some local leaders ridicule the unemployed. The poor are “gaming the system,” they say.

Supermarket clerks laugh at folks who have to pay with food stamps. Folks lucky enough to be working scapegoat the unemployed. Don’t touch their food stamps; they might be contagious.

Cozy up to the rich.  Give the poor a kick in the teeth.

Politicians know how to choose their friends. But do voters know how to choose their politicians? Is this a great country, or what?

— John Hayden