Posted on 08/14/2007 7:10:04 AM PDT by flowerplough
- On a sunlit Friday afternoon in July, Barack Obama stopped by Beverly Van Fossen's farm in Adel, Iowa, to speak about "rural issues." It was standard Hawkeye State stumping—until the senator took a stab at sympathizing with farmers whose crop prices have stagnated. "Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?" he asked.
Unfortunately, Adel isn't exactly arugula country. "Someone near me whispered, 'What's arugula?' " says Van Fossen, 74. " 'You can't find that in Iowa'." Same goes for Whole Foods. The closest locations, reported The New York Times that evening, are in Omaha, Neb.; Kansas City, Kans., and Minneapolis. Whoops. Right-wing bloggers pounced. The dishy Wonkette called Obama a "super rich Ivy League elitist." Peter Feld, a former Michael Dukakis staffer, wrote on Powers-Point.com that a similar slip by his ex-boss—the suggestion that Iowans grow "Belgian endive"—surfaced repeatedly in 1988 attack ads. C'est la vie politique.
Obama's "arugula moment" was silly, but the underlying concern about his candidacy is not. For the past 40 years, Democratic nominating contests have pitted "wine track" candidates (backed by young, well-off, college-educated elites) against "beer track" opponents (who cultivate a less-educated coalition of minorities and blue-collar workers). The 2008 contest is no exception. According to the latest Cook Political Report survey, Hillary Clinton polls 12 points higher among voters who haven't graduated from college than those who have; Obama's numbers are reversed. His problem: only 34 percent of likely Democratic primary voters have college degrees.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Aren’t the great unwashed, uneducated two-thirds of likely Democrat primary voters just gonna vote exactly as ordered by their union/mob shop stewards and by Daily Markos and Daily Show Jon?
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Yes, just get out the kool-aid bucket.....
It’s Barry’s problem in the primaries against Hillary. She’s going to get all the “take care of me” undereducated underclass.
You really can't get any further right than Wonkette and a Dukakis staffer./sarc
LOL! Those people would have probably known the plant as “Rocket” but they still would have thought the remark was stupid since people who like Rocket just grow it themselves.
"It's a veg-a-ta-ble."
By the way - the idea that crop prices have “stagnated” is completely divorced from reality. Crop prices are extraordinarily strong (in large part due to the ethanol industry); the farm economy is doing great. But the dems, as always, try to make things look as bad as possible, while betraying their own ignorance of the way the “little people” live in flyover country.
Arugula is the leafy veggie of choice for use while sipping yer lightly-chilled white wine!
So Hussein had his “arugula moment” just a week or two after his “let’s invade Pakistan” moment!
The boy’s going the way of Howie Dean!
I used to call on Iowa farmers and would suggest they switch to growing raspberries. They were so wedded to the farm welfare of price supports that they rejected the idea. Ethanol, by raising the price of corn may make capitalists of them again, if we have the courage to reduce farm payments. Limiting them to famiies to earn under $50,000 is a good start.
Corn is up to a record $4/bushel now, and Iowa's corn farmers are in high clover.
"Kin ah git me a farmin' license here?"
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