Much of the media and blogospheric discussion of “Bittergate” has focused on whether people really are bitter, or just pissed off. Obama and his sycophantic supporters have argued that what he said was essentially true, just inartfully phrased.
They don’t get it.
Underlying their arguments is the condescending attitude that there is something wrong with the people in the small towns of America. The OFB
can’t understand why those stupid people don’t like Obama the way they do, or why rural Americans “vote against their economic interests” by voting for the GOP. They assume it must be a combination of ignorance and racism.
As loathe as I am to admit it, conservative columnist Debra Saunders nails it in her San Francisco Chronicle column:
“If any blue-collar workers vote Republican, it cannot be because they had good reason. No, they must have been tricked into doing so, so they can’t be very smart.
(Snip)
If only the rest of America were better educated, then folks would turn in their hunting rifles and head for the sushi bar, sneer at devout evangelical Christians and happily hire immigrant gardeners - just like we do.
(Snip)
It cannot be an accident that Obama spoke as he did in an area where many two-college-degree Democrats think that, because everyone they know thinks as they do, that all the smart people must be liberals. It does not occur to them that they are cocooned in their own like-minded world, just as guys who go duck-hunting and women who cook for the church bake sale might do. They dutifully nod when Obama talks about small-town voters who express “antipathy to people who aren’t like them” - and they don’t even realize they are doing just that.
Then they congratulate themselves for being so broad-minded.”
Although I was raised in California, my ancestry is half Jayhawk and half Okie. I grew up in a small Central Valley town and went to a fundamentalist church. I got my first gun at the age of 14. Barack Obama was talking about me and my people. I also have a B.A. in History and a J.D., so I am also one of those “educated liberal elites.” You might say I am bi-cultural.
My experience is that many (but not all) of the educated people in this country that come from backgrounds like mine are ashamed of their roots. I’m not. Many others grew-up in urban/suburban middle-class homes. I’ve noticed that there is a snootiness among the middle and upper classes towards the “working class” in this country. Poor and lower-class whites are looked down on as “rednecks” or similar pejorative terms. Ironically, the liberal elites feel comfortable using derogatory stereotypes within their race that they would condemn if applied to other races.
Michael Lind has a non-racist explanation for the divide within the Democratic Party. In a Salon article titled The Rubes and the Elites he describes the rift in cultural terms:
“… Obama finds his greatest white support in what the historian David Hackett Fischer calls “Greater New England” — the vast region from New England and the Great Lakes to the upper Plains and Pacific Northwest settled by New England Yankees in the 19th century along with culturally similar Germans and Scandinavians. Another historian, Daniel J. Elazar, identifies this Northern band as the home of the “moralistic” political culture, distinct from the “individualist” political culture of the mid-Atlantic and the “traditionalist” political culture of the South.
(snip)
On one side of this intra-party divide are the extroverted, populist party regulars like Truman, supported by working-class voters who belong to Elazar’s individualist and traditionalist cultures and see politics as a fight against enemies for the spoils of victory. On the other side of the culture gap are the Stevensonian reformers, urbane, ironic, detached, introverted, intellectual and disdainful of petty politics. They appeal to upper-middle-class professionals, as well as to academics and college students, and elite journalists, for whom politics is about inspirational ideals, not material interests.
The only three Democratic presidents to be elected since Kennedy — Johnson, Carter and Clinton — were Southerners who won because they were able to win a substantial part of the white working-class populist vote. Hillary Clinton has done well with this constituency because she addresses the issues that are most important to them. In the Ohio exit polls, Clinton voters cared more than Obama voters about the traditional, Truman-esque lunch-pail issues of the economy and healthcare.”
According to Lind, Obama and his supporters are “Greater New England” types. But he thinks this is not a good thing:
“The question, then, is not why Greater New England progressives would vote for Obama. He presses all their age-old buttons: opposition to war, nonpartisan reform. The question is why anyone would assume that such a candidate would appeal to other Democratic constituencies, other than blacks (voting in this case for the favorite-son candidate).
Indeed, the Greater New England moralist culture has been rejected by practically every other substantial subculture in the United States: Irish-Americans in Northeastern cities, Appalachian white Baptists and now, evidently, Mexican-Americans. And this has always been the case.”
What Lind is describing is what we have seen in electoral politics for generations. When the Democratic party nominates a GNE liberal, we lose. We lose because they fail to connect to blue-collar, rural and small town voters. They fail to connect because they just don’t get it.
Front page
For an alternative view
See also, The Spite Vote.
But I still believe
And I will rise up with fists!!
The question is: is this a
The question is: is this a real clash of values or is this a clash of styles? If the former, then there cannot be a Democratic party as such.
Bob Somerby at Daily Howler
gets it:
Elitism isn’t a question of the how much money you have. It’s a question of how you behave toward others who may have less money.
Truly, it has been embarrassing to watch some liberals attempt to come to terms with this matter. Just as an obvious matter of fact, condescension toward average people has plagued progressive movements at least since the late 1960s, when Dr. King stopped being the public face of progressive change and various Middle America-trashers took his place in the public imagination.
(Snip)
From that day to this, progressive politics has been damaged by a sometimes-accurate perception—the perception that progressives and liberals are a bunch of snooty snobs
In fact, progressives sometimes are snooty snobs. We love to display our cultural and moral superiority to those whose values or instincts may differ. We love to call them xenophobes, vigilantes and racists.
GMTA
————————————————————————
“If I was Vice-President, you know what I’d do?
Pretty much anything I wanted to!
Vote for me!” - Joe Walsh (channeling Dick Cheney)
This Will Be the Media Spin
As long as Clinton is in the race, there will be a tendency to focus on the economics part of his statement - that working class Americans are angry. Left unexplored, of course, is why an angry person would be pacified with a Unity
Pony
, but that’s never going to get looked at because the press always claim to want a Unity Pony, see Broder, David.
But the spin will stop working the minute Clinton is out of this race (if she loses) and the GOP start running those ads with the donors laughing at Americans. Then, it won’t be about economics, it’ll be about what an effeminate elitist Barack Obama is. All you have to do is read Dowd or listen to the inane chatter by Matthews about Obama preferring Orange Juice to coffee.
Which is why, I say again, Obama has made a huge mistake in trying to spin this instead of simply admitting he made a mistake - not in choosing in his words, but in saying his words - and apologize. The fact that he’s having difficulty winning a spin war with one of the media’s most reviled characters, Hillary Clinton, is a pretty good sign he’s going to lose it on this issue to John McCain.
Most of all, he should apologize because what he said was insulting and it was wrong. Not only does it brand an entire culture as racist xenophobes, it also implies that upperclass, better educated folks don’t have any problems with racism and xenophobia. Which I’m sure makes those upper class folks feel better, but it doesn’t make it true. Racism and xenophobia - just like tolerance - come in all colors, all economic classes, and at all education levels. Obama’s comments - and the support he’s received from liberal media and bloggers - hide this basic truth.
All of this
has disaster written all over it.
*sigh*
I fear that if Obama wins the nomination, yet fails to win the general…
the democratic party will be set back at least a generation.
Yes, I’m predicting DOOM AND GLOOM!!!
’Bitter’ won’t begin to describe my feelings on Nov. 9th if McCain comes out on top.
And the ’Angry Black Male’ that I am won’t be able to properly express my rage.
What a pickle.
It all comes down to this IMO
“…she addresses the issues that are most important to them.”
If Dems don’t talk about jobs, the economy, education and even the environment in terms that makes sense to blue-collar/rural voters (and they rarely do), then those voters will listen to the GOP pander to other things they do value - guns, flag lapel pins, religion, the Pledge of Allegiance, etc.
These people aren’t “voting against their economic interests” - they don’t see anybody representing their interests to vote for.
That’s what Tom Frank said in What’s the Matter with Kansas” (and if it isn’t, he should’ve). He wasn’t ridiculing the unwashed masses as Obama was - he was explaining the political dynamic as I recall, but just as with Obama’s slur, progressives prefer to focus on the parts that appeal to their prejudices and not the parts they could do something about to forge a progressive majority.
McCain won’t make the same mistake.
That Somerby Piece Is Right on the Mark
And I, too, am one of those over-educated, upper-middle-class, liberal elites and, like you myiq2xu, I have much humbler roots in the fields of Tennessee and the factories of Indiana. When this whole thing first started, I thought Obama had made a terrible gaffe, that he’d take a hit for a day or two, but eventually he’d repair the damage with a nice, contrite apology.
Instead, I’ve been repeatedly lectured about how he was right, not just by the OFB
, but by Obama himself. Normally, the elitist crap is media created based on bullshit like ordering orange juice instead of coffee or windsurfing. But in this instance not only do we have Obama making elitist remarks (and his rich donors laughing at them), we have spent days being told by so-called progressives that Obama was right. And as a result, I’ve gone from mildly irritated to fucking furious.
Not to sound like some uneducated, ill-mannered bumpkin, but fuck them.
"Rubes" are voting in favor of their economic interest
They’re voting for Clinton! Her domestic policies are strong and progressive while Obama’s are weak and centrist (e.g., health care/insurance).
The so-called “creative class” obviously doesn’t seem to care since they’re not the ones who’ll suffer firsthand if Clinton’s domestic policies—the economy, Social Security, health care—aren’t fought for.
I wonder how many of the Boiz read Men's Vogue...
WaPo:
Oh, really?
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
I just can't seem to get past the laughter
It’s like his “You’re likable enough, Hillary” remark. I was an Edwards supporter at the time but, that line floored me. I could hear it echo in the background for weeks.
And now the Laughter.
I was born in San Francisco and raised in Marin County (in the 50s & 60s) but I guess 40 years in Kansas has left a mark on me.
I understand awkward phrasing. But, that audio clip with the deliberate phrasing….
And that Laughter really hurt.
Yeah, I've had the feeling for some time now
We’re gonna lose this one.
We will nominate Sen Obama and he will lose to McCain. Sen Obama is being maneuvered straight for the “out of touch new englander” slip right now.
And they’ll blame Sen Clinton for it, of course.
Obama let the GOP define him, and has even helped them--
that’s what’s gonna kill him against McCain.
He’s affirmed their branding of him at every step, and they haven’t even really had to get nasty or racist yet—you don’t need Swiftboating when the opponent himself proves the bs right.