The Banker or the Professor: Who will blue collar Americans hate less?

[denem]

Last edited Fri Jan 20, 2012, 05:10 PM - Edit history (8)

That was the icon I saw in Wapo. Why the Banker of course!. Newt isn't much of a Professor, except in his own mind.

Except Harold Meyerson in Wapo isn't talking about Newt, and his Blue Collar America is WHITE Blue Collar America. You see, Barack Obama is the professor, a representative of the very elite that 'Reagan Democrats' love to hate - an 'ivory Tower' detached, academic know-it-all who has "no understanding of or sympathy for the white working class". Add in race and "Barack Obama seems sent by central casting to embody the target of neo-classic, racist right populism."

Um No. Meyerson is off target. As more or less every DU'er knows, and some would say, knows only too well, President Obama and Candidate Obama are two very different job lots. Candidate Obama is more Populist than Professor. It took Obama ten months, from announcing his run in Springfield Illinois, to the 'Yes We Can' speech in New Hampshire, to become Candidate Obama, to transcend the passionate optimism of 2004. Six months later, accepting the Nomination , the steel, the indignation, was there for all to see. He denounced the 'Ownership Society' - they own it and you are on your own.

Romney IS the man from central casting, the embodiment of the Ownership Society. He IS the guy only too willing to leave workers, small investors and anyone else in the lurch. He IS the millionaire who nays less than his secretary. If the President is all smiles, Joe Biden. his attack dog. must be breaking arms, straining to get at this guy. The VP from Stratton does blue collar popularism very very well. He is more than passionate, it's part of his DNA, literally.

Harold admits as much. "Romney is the model of everything in modern American capitalism that makes people pine for the kinder, gentler capitalism that his father personified." I''d put less diplomatically, Romney is the unacceptable face of capitalism that disgusts the American People: From the 'let them eat grass' Hooverites, to the Mr Potters of it's a Wonderful Life, to Michael Milken's corporate raiders, to the Too Big To Fail boys of today. In his hubris, Mitt Romney will induct Bain Capital into that all time hall of shame. I couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

For what it's worh here is the first for paragraphs Meyerson piece

Obama vs. Romney: Who will (white) blue-collar Americans hate less?

If Mitt Romney becomes the Republican nominee and ­faces off against Barack Obama in November, we may finally be able to answer a question that has vexed students of American politics since the heyday of George Wallace: Which elite do white, blue-collar Americans hate more?

Despite Newt Gingrich’s apparent surge in South Carolina, Romney remains the odds-on favorite for the Republican nod. And a Romney-Obama contest would pit the very personification of the two elites that generations of Americans have been brought up to loathe: the paper-shuffling, unfeeling banker, utterly out of touch with most Americans’ concerns, and who comes from inherited wealth to boot; and the cool, academic social engineer who is culturally estranged from the white working class and isn’t opposed to governments helping racial minorities.

Romney is the model of everything in modern American capitalism that makes people pine for the kinder, gentler capitalism that his father personified. As the head of American Motors, George Romney, Mitt’s pop, made cars. Mitt makes deals. As Michael Tomasky noted this week, George Romney refused a bonus of $100,000 after American Motors had a good year in 1960, saying that no top executive needed to make more than his $225,000 annual salary ($1.4 million today). Romney the lesser has a fortune estimated in the hundreds of millions for his work in private equity, extracting vast amounts of money from the firms — successful and not — that Bain Capital took over. The younger gets all manner of tax breaks that his father never could, apparently availing himself of the special rate for private equity and hedge fund managers that, he admits, has brought his rate down to around 15 percent.

Worse yet, Romney comes off as a walking, talking compendium of upper-class cluelessness. His offer of a $10,000 bet to Texas Gov. Rick Perry, his dismissal of his yearly speaker fees (around $370,000) as pocket money, his equation of corporations and people — these and other off-the-gold-cufflink comments depict a guy whose points of intersection with the lives of most Americans are few and far between. A rich kid who became a bean counter: Could anything be worse?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/romney-and-obama-two-elites-going-head-to head/2012/01/19/gIQAX9o5BQ_story.html

[JoePhilly]

1. Newt ... because he, like so many of the white blue collar Republicans, is ...

a very angry, deceitful, vindictive, white "Christian" man, who thinks bluster and a loud voice is equivalent to being "right".

An audience who thinks that women should be allowed to state their opinions, but then shut up while the men make the decisions.

An audience who thinks that they would be doing better financially, if not for those $#$%@ minorities, who get all the breaks.

Newt speaks to them. Poor black kids should aspire to be janitors, or maybe coal miners ... after all, kids are small ... they should be good in tight places like a coal mine.

Mitt can't speak to them ... he has people who do that.

[Proud Public Servant]

2. Meyerson's right

Obama's biggest problem as a candidate is the trouble he has connecting with the white working class. It was a problem in 2008, when white working-class voters became the backbone of Hillary's campaign. It's a problem he's exacerbated repeatedly during his administration, from focusing on bank bailouts instead of jobs to staying silent on the uprising in Wisconsin to failing to push for single-payer. And it's a problem that will bedevil him in Ohio and Pennsylvania, 2 of the 3 most important states in the upcoming election.

But, yeah, Romney's got an even bigger problem.

[denem]

3. As a candidate, Obama was convincing and passionate.

Wouldn't any AA man have the same problem with the older white working class, particularly in the South, or the quasi south like central PA?

[Drunken Irishman]

4. No he isn't right...

Obama still doesn't have a problem with white, working-class voters. In fact, Obama is doing better in the rust-belt states than white Democrats like Al Gore and John Kerry did in 2000 and 2008 - consistently leading in the polls in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota.

Yes, he might have a problem with whites from the south - but that's less to do with his stances on the issue and everything to do with the color of the skin.

The fact is, Obama won more of the white vote in '08, 43%, than Kerry in '04 (41%), Gore in '00 (42%) and Clinton in '92 (39%). Clinton, a white from the south, only managed to tie Obama in '96. So, going back to 1980, Obama and Clinton are tied for the best Democratic performance among white voters.

There isn't a problem. It's a media myth.

[libinnyandia]

5. I googled:Is Something really wrong with Kansas?

The article has an interesting take on class voting patterns in the South.

[denem]

6. Yes I remember a book with a similar name.

Hopefully the 1& Vulture Capitalist narrative begin may begin to take root in those fields.. Not that I'm too hopeful; Monsanto will spray it with RoundUp.