TPM: "Obama's Biggest Weakness" - upscale supporters mock Edwards, Hillary

[bidenista]

This is from someone who voted for Obama. Note that. And read on:

Obama's Biggest Weakness
By Jim Sleeper - February 6, 2008, 2:48AM

...Obama is in trouble if - and I'm not yet sure about this -- too many of his famously small $20 and $30 contributions come not from the people of the lower-middle and working classes whom Ken mentioned but mainly from people like the up-and-coming young white writers and journalists with whom I watched one of the recent Democratic debates from the tony (but not too tony) New York neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights.

Every time John Edwards mentioned broken workers in mills he'd known, the young crowd watching the debate hooted derisively, "The mill!, The mill!" Every time Hillary Clinton mentioned her 35 years of experience, they hooted, too. Sure, the candidates' mantras had become tiresome. But the hooting got so annoying, too, that finally I quipped, "Don't you have to be at least 35 years old before you can make fun of 35 years of experience?" I bit my tongue rather than ask if anyone present had ever been to a mill....

I fear that too many young whites with bright prospects have no really serious intention of redressing the growing inequities which the neoliberal world that employs them is spawning, not just between themselves and poor blacks on the Southside but, these days, between blacks and blacks, and women and women, let alone between cool young whites like themselves and the declasse, lumpy white and Latino workers all around them.

Not that my young friends defend wholeheartedly the system in which they're prospering. To their credit, it makes them uncomfortable. But they grasp at mostly symbolic gestures of a politics of moral posturing that relieves racial and class guilt and steadies their moral self-regard with smallish contributions to Obama, an Ivy alum whom they trust to help those people on the Southside without dragging them too deeply into it; without reconfiguring how we charter our corporations and re-construe the private and public investments that employ upscale young whites and well-behaved non-whites; and certainly without redistributing their own bright prospects and future prerogatives and second homes.

More: http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/06/obamas_biggest_weakness

[tyne]

1. Here he

goes again.

[jefferson_dem]

2. More sludge from bidenista.

:boring:

[bidenista]

3. sweet dreams. nt

[Straight Shooter]

6. Sludge? With a link to Talking Points Memo? You're joking, right?

How about posting a rebuttal to the contents of the post instead of slamming bidenista? Because all you're doing, really, is confirming precisely what the contents of the post is about; that is, mocking that with which you do not agree. The IP is a Biden supporter, as you should be able to decipher from his/her user name.

Here is another similar viewpoint on Barack's campaign, touching on the false image and the "guilt" aspect, from the other side of the aisle, the one which Barack foolishly hypes that he will win over:

http://www.tomroeser.com/blogs/default.asp?categoryID=54

"Actor, composer and mordant wit Oscar Levant once said that he knew Doris Day before she was a virgin. Not that this daughter of German Catholic immigrants was a spiritual phenomenon. It was that Levant couldn’t get over her real bio from the hype. Here was a girl who started as a Hollywood kid dancer at age 12 with little observable parental guidance, then bit parts to adolescence when she became a big band singer with Les Brown and Bob Hope at 18-through having had three husbands by age 30 to becoming the naïve, almost nun-like object of Rock Hudson’s affection in “Pillow Talk”… which earned her PhotoPlay’s designation as the most believable actress in America in her mid-30s! Get this: most believable! Then, at age 40 still everybody’s grown-up, freckled-faced kid sister singing, with misty, milky eyes the philosophical Que Sera, Sera . Drumming at his piano with a martini standing by, Levant would say: “I can’t believe it.”

(snip)

That’s why with slender record and a vague mist of personality, managed all the while by hard lefties Axelrod and Emanuel, Barack Obama may well end up in 2008 with the nomination. They have to move quick. Already their creation has started to melt like a snow-cone in July and must be put in the deep freeze before he turns to mush. Obama is the last politician who should be tainted with any semblance of an ethics violation: that’s why Harry Reid named him the point man for the Democrats on ethics questions in the Senate. But as it must to all frail political humans, Barack Obama has good contacts and likes to use them. The Chicago “Tribune” reported not long ago that Obama has been a longtime friend of Tony Rezko the indicted fund-raiser for Rod Blagojevich. So good a friend that Obama bought a mansion in the Kenwood area of Chicago for $300,000 less than the asking price. On the same day, Rezko’s wife bought the adjoining lot, shelling out the full $625,000 asking price. The question is whether Rezko’s wife subsidized Obama’s purchase of the mansion and also paid for an abutting private preserve that adds to the estate’s aura. Prepped by Axelrod and Emanuel, Obama became the misty-eyed visionary once again, blaming himself and saying he could kick himself for this dumb idea. Dumb, huh?

The once-again return to the Doris Day demeanor can work for the long-run. But the so-called innocent association of Destiny’s Tot with a notorious fixer is starting to cause some people to understand the real Barack Obama. Like Doris Day he is no wide-eyed innocent either in business terms or in political ideology. In ideology he is a hard neo-Fabian socialist with a romantic demeanor who can turn wistful and dream for reconciliation with the world. He wants to buy the world a Coke and have us pay for it. But let Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton issue the thunderous threats. That’s not Obama’s thing. He looks like an earnest young man, speaking from the heart. But I’ve known him just about the whole distance. He’s deceptive like Doris Day. All that’s missing is for him to croon “Que sera, sera!” whatever will be, will be. And watch the guilt-ridden white liberals stand up and applaud."

[Leopolds Ghost]

32. Axelrod and Emanuel are "hard lefties"? You're joking right?

Is that what the "WORKING CLASS" believes?

[Bongo Prophet]

38. Jim Sleeper, author of "Liberal Racism"

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51MW3183MHL._BO2,204,203,200_PIlitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_OU01_AA240_SH20_.jpg


Just when we are changing eras, and have the possibility of addressing some class and poverty and racial issues.
Here comes all of these ways in which we are being split apart.

Just keep that in mind.
Who wants to fracture us?
Who benefits by taking every little thing and using it as a wedge?
Who is in danger of losing everything due to demographic changes - the young, hispanics, black, gay, etc?

Pleae give a pause and think about it.

[rodeodance]

36. "This is from someone who voted for Obama"

[AX10]

4. Obamanation can't admit that this was stated by an Obama supporter..

on TPM of all places.

[butterfly77]

15. I think the writer may have,,,

taken a second look and thought about his choice

[ProSense]

5. Wow, now you're trying to spin support for Obama as anti-Obama! LOL! n/t

[Straight Shooter]

9. The article implies that support for Obama includes mockery of Edwards and Hillary.

Seems to me that support for Obama regularly includes mockery of everything non-Obama.

[ProSense]

11. What does that have to do with Obama? People are free to criticize the other candidates! n/t

[Straight Shooter]

14. The article "implies," I wrote. Obama appeals to the youth. No?

And please read my post downthread for elucidation on this issue of mocking the poor and how it ties in with Obama's outlook.

[leftynyc]

13. While claiming to unite......interesting. (eom)

[russian33]

7. looks like you're about to hit 1000 posts, congrats

and thanks for a fascinating read

k&R

[incapsulated]

8. Honestly, this is the first time I've seen an Obama supporter admit this

Or any weakness, really.

God knows I've eviscerated Hillary and have no illusions about her.

[Skwmom]

10. Maybe they hooted at Edwards and Clinton b/c the young

voters view them as just two more phony politicians.

[Straight Shooter]

12. Maybe Edwards will take their false perception into account when endorsing someone.

From what I've read and heard, Obama mocks Edwards' compassion for the poor on a fairly regular basis, because Edwards wasn't slick enough to couch his response about his weakness into a one-size-fits-all package.

A joke made at someone else's expense is the cheapest form of humor.

[Inspired]

24. No they hooted because this is a GAME to them. n/t

[OzarkDem]

16. "Don't you have to be at least 35 years old before you can make fun of 35 years of experience?"

Good quote. These are the same kind of macho, ill informed sheep who voted GOP in the last couple of elections. Later, they have to get a real job, try to hang onto it during downsizing and start raising a family. Reality bites, as they used to say.

[stillrockin]

17. That's pure bullshit.

[Proud2BAmurkin]

18. You see alot of the mocking traditional Democrats.

[Leopolds Ghost]

33. I don't see either "Working class Clintonites" or upper middle class Obamaniacs

rooting for the interests of the poor.

Public housing residents, for example, or people on welfare.

They are both too busy promoting the ideology of personal advancement, that it is incumbent on you to do better than your neighbors financially.

That old (and un-Christian, to boot) Horatio Alger lie.

[TwilightGardener]

19. This article is pure bullshit. Total sheep dip.

[Straight Shooter]

23. Josh Marshall doesn't think so. He has a very large audience of well-informed readers.

I've been reading TPM for a long time. If he posts it, it has merit, whether you agree with it or not.
His blog has substantial influence.

Try not to be so defensive that people are coming after one of Barack's demographics. It was inevitable.

[KoKo]

28. Can you ever read and say anything that's more than

trashing something you don't agree with? I never hear a thought out of your head except negativity. Why don't you just hit "Ignore Button" rather than do a "one liner" if you don't have any original thoughts. :shrug:

[Orangepeel]

20. Anyone who has been on DU during a debate knows this happens

but it happens to Obama, too.

Who cares? It's normal for a primary. It's better than the nastiness.

[TheDonkey]

21. Yes, I saw Obama supporters driving around town in beemers hooting at poor and ignorant people!

FOR SHAAME!!! All while hoisting martini glasses in the air and cackling into the night.

[TwilightGardener]

22. LOL!

[KoKo]

29. I did see an Obama sticker on a Lexus in parking lot outside of Panero's...

and she had grey hair and a Coach Bag.

[Tatiana]

25. Cause this topic can never be discussed enough... n/t

[KoKo]

26. That's interesting read.....!

[mondo joe]

27. Given the attitude toward gays on DU who had a problem with Obama, I can easily believe

that.

[ProgressIn2008]

30. Interesting read, sums it up - it comes off as buying a super-hip consumer item.

[Leopolds Ghost]

31. How the HELL did Hilary become the candidate of the WORKING class?

I keep hearing this MSM propaganda that Hillary represents the (presumably economically conservative verging on right wing Reaganite) interests of the working class. I grew up in a middle class household so, working class DUers: since when did Hillary, whose family invented the Wal-Mart economy and indeed invented Wal-Mart specifically as we know it today, become the candidate of the working class? Are you, as a working class voter, derisive of liberalism? Or do you just hate the contempt of upper middle class students which fuels the (lack of) differential between Obama and Clinton? If so, why don't you recognize the class basis for your argument -- which Nixon and Reagan attempted to obscure? Do you feel the upper middle class is the natural home for the left? Do you buy into Reaganism and Clinton free trade / anti welfare / pro deregulation policy?

[mondo joe]

35. By the working class tending to vote for her, and the upper class tending to vote for him.

:-)

[jannyk]

37. Because 'hope' is a luxury. If you live paycheck to paycheck -

you need to be offered something more tangible and practical. You can afford 'Hope' when you and your kids have food in their bellies and a spare dollar or two in your pocket. Until then it is just a pretty word!

[ElsewheresDaughter]

34. this is so true and I have seen numerous threads here on DU by Obama folks saying pretty....

much the same thing...."Hillary's lunch bag voters" and "Hillary's voters are the poor and weak that CAN"T donate money...that's why she's in trouble"....

it is disgusting and shameful and they must make Obama proud

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=4471490&mesg_id=4471490

[CyberPieHole]

39. Great post. Kick and recommend n/t