|
Edited on Sat Apr-12-08 01:23 AM by Missouri Blue
I suppose almost everybody now knows of Obama's latest controversial statement about the bitterness of Pennsylvania and mid-western voters.
"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
I'll make an observation: I don't think it was a "gaffe" in the Dubya sense, that he lapsed or spoke carelessly. I think he's deliberately trying to re-frame the debate about voter frustration-- and furthermore, he's aiming it at McCain, not Hillary. It indicates that he considers Clinton to be a done deal.
First, this accusation of "liberal arrogance" has been a Republican weapon since the Reagan age. He gives Republicans a second, reliable attack angle as well: that Democrats are about bitterness, and that liberals are discontent, and also exploit discontent. (Though I've failed to find evidence of greater happiness from conservatives and/or Republicans, Republicans believe it, and Independents might be susceptible. However, both parties are very bitter with one another!) Obama really waved the cape at the bull, daring it to make those charges.
It doesn't help Clinton that she responded exactly the way McCain responded, but with the useless buzz-phrase, "fight for you" thrown in.
Second, he did state what many people actually think. I mean by that: it's true. It's an irony in our culture that everyone could speak in terms of this kind of frustration among people, where emotional energy from being poor is expressed or acted out with more abstract principles: like guns, like exaggerated religious creeds, like xenophobia.
However, that doesn't necessarily mean this will work. No matter how frustrated people are over a faulty economy, they don't see their support for guns or their religion as related to it, they also don't won't see these issues as a symptom of a pathology. Pennsylvanians and Mid-westerners may acknowledge the psychology as being true-- of other people, and of other issues, not them or theirs.
It shows chutzpah, and if Obama can talk his way out of this, then there will be no doubt: he will be the next President. There will be no way to stop him, short of death.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(84 posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
