Not these guys.
Today George Will accuses Barack Obama of elitism, which is a bit like being called bloodthirsty by Hannibal Lecter.
Obama does fulfill liberalism’s transformation since Franklin Roosevelt. What had been under FDR a celebration of America and the values of its working people has become a doctrine of condescension toward those people and the supposedly coarse and vulgar country that pleases them.
Will, of course, is a Man of the People because he writes about baseball. And he knows the simple natives are not frustrated and bitter. What could they possibly be frustrated and bitter about? Life is fine for George Will, after all.
See the artfully titled “Cracker-quiddick Fallout Continues To Haunt SnObama” (so clever, those Righties) at Lulu’s blog. A blogger named see -dubya breathlessly quotes such plebeians as Will, John Fund, James Lileks, and of course Little Lulu herself on the awfulness of Barack Obama’s elitism. And the blogger does this in wide-eyed innocence of the inherent irony he is wallowing in. It’s almost cute.
It has been sickening over the years to watch Republicans, who always rally to the aid of the country’s wealthiest citizens, successfully cast themselves as pork-rind-eating, NASCAR-watching, gun-toting populists. To have the current White House occupant (Yale, Harvard Business School, son of a president) run as a good old boy should have been the final straw.
But here are the two remaining Democratic candidates, Obama by speaking carelessly and Clinton by piling on shamelessly, doing all they can to make it easy for Republicans to pretend one more time that they are the salt of the earth.
Now we’re into the debate about the fallout. On the one hand, you can find commentary that says Obama’s political career is all but over and his poll numbers in Pennsylvania are tanking. And you can find other commentary that says there is remarkable little change in the poll numbers and that those small-town Pennsylvanians don’t seem to give a bleep about what Obama said. I suspect the truth is somewhere in between, but we’ll see.
I think the real test for both candidates will be the debate in Philadelphia tomorrow night. Bittergate will give Obama an opening to address blue-collar issues, which he needs to do. And I will be surprised if his wording will be as clumsy as it was in San Francisco. He’s not a man who makes the same mistake twice. Senator Clinton, on the other hand, never seems to know when to leave well enough alone. She may still be in Annie Oakley mode. Anything can happen.
While I don’t agree with every word, Richard Cohen’s column is, for once, worth reading. See The Politico on Obama’s counter-punching style. See also Bob Herbert.
Update: Eugene Robinson also is particularly good today.
I grew up in a small town and I suppose some of my peers would call me elitist because I left, got a heck of a lot of education and now work in a fair sized city as a professional, but just when did we decide that our leaders should not be smart ,well educated and at least moderately curious? I suppose Andrew Jackson was the first non elite elected president, but in my lifetime I think Reagan was the first. Dumbya of course is the ultimate elite, but he made up for that by being dumb as a rock and only slightly more curious. Carter, of course, proved that being smart and well educated does not make you a good president, but frankly I can not think of any non elite who was a good president at least in modern times. All Obama did was point out that the good folks of rural Pennsylvania were particularly susceptible to right wing wedge issues and I think it speaks volumes that Hillary is trying to exploit them just as the GOP has done since Reagan.
I am as sick of this bitter stuff as I am of this freaking campaign. I think I won’t read anything for a week and see if any other news pops up.
Maha,
I had to attend a mind-numbingly boring staff meeting today. While some guy was carrying on about some process that had absolutely no substance to it, he used two Buddhist words stating that he was a “Buddha scholar.” I could not make out the words on the screen; but he said one meant “relentless reflection” and the other meant “continuous improvement.” Can you tell me what those words are? And, does it mean anything when someone calls himself a “Buddha scholar.” I’m sure you can run circles around him on the topic of Buddha.
With all the righties fury that’s directed at Obama maybe we should take it as a confirmation who’s destine to get the Democratic nomination. Why waste your ammo on an adversary that posses no threat?
George Will’s little piece was an interesting read..It took me several readings to understand what he was trying to say, but I finally was able to get through it enough to know that he was just blowing smoke up my butt with a high degree of refinement. Will is not nearly as slick as his hair-doo.
Bonnie — the famous phrases aren’t ringing any bells. Do you know what language he was speaking (Sanskrit, Pali, Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, or Other)?
“I am as sick of this bitter stuff as I am of this freaking campaign”
Bonnie,
That is exactly what all the agents of “bitterness” are counting on. I agree and sometimes I want to disengage as well. But I feel that is what all the “bobbleheads” are working for: to make all of us so sick of the process that we will just turn away and let the status quo continue. I look at this whole flap this way: BHO is a big boy, he knew he was going to get slimed during this campaign. I feel he can take it. This “bitterness” is not the worst of it. Once this campaign moves into BHO vs McSame it’s going to get much worse. The “change” that BHO represents is intolerable to many in this country, it aint gonna be pretty.
On a more positive note. I was talking with a co-worker of mine from rual N.Dakota, he’s as right wing as anyone I know but he seemed to agree with what BHO was talking about, and thought much like me that Obama’s words were more inconvienent than untrue.
What ever happened to the media giving BHO a free ride?
He did not mention any language. He just said they were Buddhist words. That may show how much of a scholar he is.
There is now a much, more important scandal! McCain’s wife put recipes on his webpage and claimed they were long-time family recipes! It turned out they were originally Rachel Ray’s recipes! Surely, our M$M will write and write and write about this scandal. I mean, it is without a doubt more important then the health care crisis or the war in Iraq–isn’t it????!!!
BHO: People are hurting and defensive, and for good reason.
MSM: How dare you utter an obvious truth?
Methinks the MSM and even the pollsters are doing a sort of ‘push poll’ effort to ‘implant’ negative associations with Barack Obama. That he is gifted and agile enough to turn all that effort into an opportunity to inform more and more citizens about the use of ‘wedge issues’ and about ‘slime politicking’ is a wonderful phenomenon to behold.
Bonnie, years ago, my then mother-in-law gave me her family’s carefully guarded secret recipe for a certain dessert which she claimed had been created by her mother. She even asked me to promise to never divulge the ingredients to non-family…….so precious was the family heirloom recipe! Egad, a few years later I found and bought an old 1954 Betty Furness Westinghouse Cookbook at a yard sale. Yep, that exact recipe was in that cookbook. [I never told my mother-in-law what I had found]
After Hillary’s big defeat in Iowa the MSM pundits assured us that, never mind, the mighty Clinton machine would shortly make dead meat of Obama. A ‘safe’ prediction which has, unfortunately for the all-wise pundits (and the Clinton mighty machine) has proven to be wrong.
The demise of the Clinton machine, the demise of the Clinton’s clever ‘triangulation’ policies, the demise of people who speak the language of Democrats but govern like Republicans has to be a good thing.
The Clintons worked their first term to assure their election to a second. They worked their second to end up very rich. Now they want back in office. They may be remembered in American history books as the couple who threatened the end of the American two-party system. (Hopefully the threat never materializes.)
I’ve been following Glenn Greenwald’s promotion of his new book, Great American Hypocrites, which is exactly about the elitist BS the right always uses to destroy any Democrat. It doesn’t matter how hypocritcal they are – in other words how totally elitist their own candidates are – because to date, we’ve cowed under their attacks and refuse to call them on their hypocrisy.
I haven’t read any of Glenn’s other works, but this one really strikes a nerve with me – it seems like he only is getting warmed up and getting better. Our team needs to get up to speed on this extremely common play – it happens ever election cycle – and learn to use it to destroy the right. It is such easy, low hanging fruit, once you see the pattern. We have the power right in our hands, they right has literally given it to us.
Bonnie – I remember “continuous process improvement” from half a lifetime ago when I was at GE. Nobody knew anything about Buddhism there, nor did they pretend to. I got out just before “six sigma” came in.
Sorry but I cannot even think of George Will without the mental picture of his ex throwing his stuff out on the lawn