Posted on 06/02/2008 9:30:49 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Rubes. Rednecks. Low-information voters. Beer-track voters. NASCAR man. Bubba. Retro America. These terms have all been used by well-known progressive writers and thinkers to describe white working-class Americans. This familiar litany of contempt provides the context for the firestorm that erupted Friday, when Sen. Barack Obama's remarks to a closed-door group of rich donors in San Francisco were made public by a blogger for the Huffington Post.
Referring to "these small towns in Pennsylvania," Obama told his wealthy audience that the views of these voters on a variety of subjects should be understood as responses to decades of economic distress. "It's not surprising," he said, "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." When both Hillary Clinton and John McCain accused him of condescension toward nonelite voters, Obama, rather than retracting his assertion, simply restated it in somewhat milder terms the following day at a town hall meeting in Muncie, Ind., saying that there had been a "political flare-up because I said something that everybody knows is true."
The events of the past few days are additional evidence of a profound rift in the Democratic Party, one revealed in the differing constituencies of the two remaining candidates. One story, told by Obama backers and the mainstream media, holds that there is a white racist problem: The Democratic Party is deeply divided between anti-racists (that is, supporters of Barack Obama) and racists (Democratic primary voters who preferred Hillary Clinton or any candidate other than Barack Obama, particularly the working-class white men who are often described, in zoological terms, as "white males")
(Excerpt) Read more at salon.com ...
And it's not the color of his skin. It's the content of his character, or lack therof.
In fact, I think his problem is the content of the character of the entire “Democrat Party”.
Up to forty years ago the so-called retro or rube was the heart and soul of the Democrat Party. But though it was always a segment of the Dem Party, the ultra-liberal elitists took over in the seventies and haven't relinquished control. Until these pointy-headed libs understand that most Americans do indeed vote their character and not their pocketbook (again the idea that Dems are better on economic issues is also a joke) they will be lost. They fail to grasp why average Americans reject the idea of the nanny state. Which is of course why they don't have an idea why conservatives continue to win.
To judge from Obama's several statements on the subject, he sincerely believes that working-class whites, lacking the self-awareness to recognize the actual economic origins of their distress, seek relief from their pain by praying in church, slaughtering deer, and making illegal immigrants and imports from foreign countries scapegoats for ills that have nothing to do with immigration or trade.
In Adorno's terms, (and Marx's) these poor deluded people are acting against class interests due to a deficiency in class consciousness, the cure for which is the enlightened cadre (guess who?) raising that consciousness largely by inducing envy, bitterness...why, those are the very emotions Obama was citing, weren't they?
As a political model this is fantastically condescending and impossibly superficial. Were it the case one would scarcely think that the class interests of a poor white rural woman would best be addressed by a rich black urban man. And yet clearly this one is hoping for her vote. There is a bit of cognitive dissonance in his even trying for it: he is behaving as if the mental model around which he has built his politics is in practice untrue.
That is, I submit, the difficulty with progressives in general. Their political opponents must be stupid and deluded or their entire mental model falls apart. Most of them aren't actually smart enough to realize that but they can feel it and it makes them either profoundly arrogant or profoundly uncomfortable. Or both. A Matthews, an Olbermann - you can sense both in their overbearing manner and their barely concealed fear that someone smarter than they are is going to call them on it.
And you can sense it in Obama as well. He will never learn better as long as his enablers assure him that there is no better to learn.
If this guy is right, and I believe that he is, its not just Obama that’s got a big problem, the entire Democratic party does. I honestly cannot see how these two groups can continue to co-exist within the party now that all of this stuff is finally starting to boil over. Its been hidden under the surface for a long time, but appears to be a powderkeg waiting to explode.
This could certainly explain just why there’s SO much venom and animosity between the supporters of the two candidates. Its not so much related to the candidates themselves, but to longstanding, mounting frustrations between two ideological subdivisions within the party itself.
If this guy is correct, the Democratic party may be screwed even worse than we think that they are. You simply can’t have one subgroup in a party that views another major subgroup with so much disrespect and disdain and expect anything but problems.
I am rooting against Hillary because she was anointed. She thought it was hers. I have waited sixteen years to see Bill and Hill lose. It may be to Satan. But it will at least still be sweet.
If this guy is correct, the Democratic party may be screwed even worse than we think that they are.
And thats such a great good thing!
No need to try to educate them...let ‘em live in their own little bubble.
“To judge from Obama’s several statements on the subject, he sincerely believes that working-class whites, lacking the self-awareness...”
To judge from Marx’s several statements on the subject, he sincerely believes that working-class peasants, lacking the self-awareness...”
I kid you not. Marx said this very thing about the working-class peasant in Russia.
bttt
What always gives me a giggle is when "progressives" go on about how these benighted rubes aren't voting their economic interests when they vote for Republicans. I've heard that particular phrase from a number of leftist sources. I suppose what they mean is that if they voted for ultra-libs, the rubes could be benefiting from the usurious taxes that would imposed on the wealthy i.e. anyone making more than fifty thousand dollars a year.
That shibboleth is one idea I'd like to see debated by the all pointy-heads. The truth is I've never seen a conservative debunking of the "vote their economic interests" canard. It's about time someone did.
But that's precisely what the modern Dem party is...a collection of unhappy subgroups who really don't have much in common with each other except for their dislike of Republicans. I'm always amused when some of my blue-collar, Republican-hating Dem friends go off on rants about rich Republicans and then in the next sentence make a racist, sexist, or homophobic statement. And they're not exactly great environmentalists either.
Agreed. Its amazing that the entire thing holds together with so many competing interests and so much hypocrisy within and animosity between those interests. This one may be the one that finally puts the nail in the coffin, however.
Of course, we’ve said that before. The Democratic party is like a bunch of cockroaches. Once you think you’ve stomped them out, 10 more take their place.
Just to add a little to that, the amazingly stupid part of it all is that a few of those ‘subgroups’ actually have MORE in common with the Republican party in terms of issues than the Dems, yet who do they vote for?
Blue collar Dems here in the South are a prime example. For the life of me, I cannot understand why they don’t leave the party. The party left them long ago.
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