The group is concerned almost entirely with classic liberal bread-and-butter issues.

In an election year, raising the minimum wage is a bread-and-butter issue.

Labor strategists have been hoping to focus on unemployment and other bread-and-butter issues.

For starters, the election showed that bread-and-butter issues could triumph over religious frenzy.

"We need someone who will look at our bread-and-butter issues of village government like sewers, drinking water and traffic."

In the meantime, however, there remained some bread-and-butter issues, such as a matter of milk, to be dealt with at home.

"The reform can't endure unless it focuses on the bread-and-butter issues that make child safety work possible."

He also asserted that "not one Democratic candidate can be trusted on the bread-and-butter issues of jobs and prosperity for our future."

A bread-and-butter issue focuses exclusively on economics: "Can we afford this or not?"

This means working with judicial systems on less controversial, bread-and-butter issues like criminal law and property disputes.

"People are concerned about bread-and-butter issues, the economy, crime," said one Zyuganov adviser who insisted on anonymity.

The opposition party here, the Movement for Democratic Change, has tapped into those bread-and-butter issues.

At the state level, where elections were fought on bread-and-butter issues, voters sent a message that they wanted a stronger, not weaker, social safety net.

His white support has tended to come from well-educated liberals more concerned with philosophical purity than bread-and-butter issues.

But to this one-square-mile village, quaintness is more than quality of life; it's also a bread-and-butter issue.

Those are the life-and-death, bread-and-butter issues of American cities."

Mary Kiffmeyer, running for her second term as Minnesota's secretary of state, is concentrating on bread-and-butter issues.

Taxes are the bread-and-butter issue of Republicans."

When given a choice, they resoundingly are concerned with typical bread-and-butter issues such as employment, household income, inflation, credit, interest rates, and growth.

But they do complain there are more immediate issues that need to be taken care of, more bread-and-butter issues."

"That's almost certainly going to be one more than you've gotten already, and that letter will be on bread-and-butter issues that concern you.

"Both parties have their bread-and-butter issues," said Keith Appell, a Republican political consultant.

But bread-and-butter issues are alos important.

Thematically, the party has refocused itself on bread-and-butter issues, talking about pensions, jobs and even how to promote soccer, which is a national obsession.

From a mass social movement that included intellectuals and street cleaners, Solidarity is struggling to re-position itself as a trade union devoted to bread-and-butter issues.