April 14, 2008

4/14: A Bitter Taste In Their Mouths

This past weekend, the big topic in the political blogosphere was -- you guessed it -- Barack Obama's description of working-class Americans as "bitter." Conservative bloggers jumped all over Obama's comments, attacking the IL senator with a collective ferocity not seen since the early days of the Jeremiah Wright controversy. The anti-Obama narrative that is emerging on the right is clear. Conservative bloggers view Obama's recent comments -- along with his radical preacher, his unusual childhood, his opposition to wearing a flag pin, his liberal voting record, his wife's comments about feeling "proud" of this country only recently, etc. -- as evidence that Obama "doesn't understand" middle America.

Most liberal bloggers fiercely defended Obama's remarks, arguing that working-class people are bitter about their economic circumstances. Other bloggers complained that Hillary Clinton and John McCain are in no position to accuse their less wealthy Senate colleague of "elitism." Pro-Clinton bloggers, however, joined their conservative counterparts in criticizing Obama -- a phenomenon that we've noticed before.

Obama's online supporters are furious that Clinton is (in their view) reinforcing the traditional right-wing narrative about "elitist" liberals. Furthermore, since most liberal bloggers doubt this controversy will cause 80% of the remaining uncommitted superdelegates to endorse Clinton, they're convinced that Clinton is hurting the future Dem nominee with these attacks. Steve Benen summarizes the concerns of many liberal bloggers:

"This flap reinforces why a prolonged Democratic primary process is bad for the party. We now have two dominant forces -- the Republican machine and the Clinton machine -- simultaneously arguing, vehemently and loudly, that the likely Democratic nominee is an elitist, out-of-touch liberal who doesn't like working families and embraces un-American values. It's absurd, but that's exactly the message dominating the political landscape right now."

OBAMA: Enough With The Faux Outrage!

Liberal bloggers are fiercely defending Obama's comments, arguing that working-class people are bitter about their economic circumstances:

• Ezra Klein: "I'm not really sure what the big deal over Obama's comments in SF is supposed to be (save that the media and Clinton and McCain are saying they will be a big deal, and thus making them a big deal). [...] As far as I can tell, few actually find the argument underlying Obama's statement controversial. It's a pretty standard thesis, and has been delivered, in various forms, by everyone from John McCain to Bill Clinton. It's that the way Obama phrased it is politically damaging."
• The Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel: "Obama is right. People are angry. [...] Americans are fed up with government's failure to do anything much for them. [...] After all, Bill Clinton, long considered the master politician of his age, was basically in the business of lowering expectations of government even faster than they were disappointed. Obama is trying to amp up expectations which the Right and Clintonism have tamped down. The right wing is clearly desperate, ready to seize on anything to change the subject and hide how out of touch they are with an America in financial pain. But how cynical of the Clinton campaign to claim Obama was condescending to the people of Pennsylvania."
• Firedoglake's Scarecrow: "I suspect Republicans [are] concerned about what Obama could do if he pursued the notion that the Republicans have conned Americans into voting against their interests, and then trashed the country. Anyone with Obama's political skills to educate voters on how this happened could also convince them they don't have to accept being the victims another four years. Labeling Obama 'elitist' and 'condescending' is thus essential, and if Republicans can get Clinton to do that for them, all the better."
• The Huffington Post's Jane Smiley: "Barack Obama tells the truth about conditions as we know them -- that the countryside and the small towns are dying in many places in our country, and that the corporatocracy doesn't care enough to do a thing about it. He points out that immigrant-baiting, gay-baiting, gun-baiting, and religious pandering have helped to destroy those towns and that countryside, that those being destroyed have been cynically enlisted by their very own destroyers to provide the votes that help accomplish the destruction. And this is what Senator Hillary Clinton says about it: 'Senator Obama's remarks were elitist and out of touch. They are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans.' [...] I cannot believe how angry this makes me."
• Daily Kos' DHinMI: "[Clinton] can't win, as is obvious to anyone who can figure out the delegate math, unless Obama drops out. So this is just another pathetic attempt at what the journalist Elizabeth Drew, writing about Clinton's tactics in this campaign, calls 'molehill politics'. [...] Molehill politics it is, trying to create a controversy where there is none, trying to distort Obama's statements, and trying to deny the truth in what he said in favor of pushing sunny nostrums about how people getting screwed by our economic system of the last 40 years are upbeat, optimistic and resilient."

Meanwhile, The Atlantic's Matthew Yglesias is impressed by Obama's response to the controversy: "One thing I like about Barack Obama is that when he hands himself lemons, he tries to make lemonade as you see in his response to those who criticized his characterization of the public mood in Pennsylvania. [...] I have no idea whether this particular response to this particular controversy will 'work' but it's still the correct approach and one that shows, I think, a more sophisticated grasp of media dynamics than we've seen from most Democrats over the past few years."

OBAMA II: Don't Throw Stones If You Live In A Glass House

Liberal bloggers are also complaining that Clinton and McCain are in no position to accuse their less wealthy Senate colleague of elitism:

• Firedoglake's Attaturk: "It's bizarre that the two candidates whose net worth far and away screams 'elite' are calling the guy worth about 2% of the value of their estates the 'elitist'. Not to mention, since when has a Yale alum been able to call a Harvard grad an elitist and get away with it?"
• The Nation's Ari Berman: "John McCain ditched his disabled first wife after Vietnam and married a rich beer heiress twenty years his junior. Bill and Hillary Clinton made $109 million over the last eight years and sold the Lincoln Bedroom to the highest bidder when in the White House. And now both McCain and Clinton are deriding Barack Obama as 'elitist.' Give me a break. When Clinton was on the board of Wal-Mart and McCain was getting reprimanded for his role in the Keating 5 scandal, Barack Obama was a civil rights lawyer in Chicago. You tell me which experience better prepares one to understand the struggles of working people."
• The Huffington Post's Robert Creamer: "It takes real chutzpah for a guy who owns eight houses (McCain) to call Barack Obama an 'elitist.' [...] This is the same Barack Obama who spent years of his life organizing out-of-work steelworkers on the south side of Chicago -- people just like those who live in Allentown or Erie or Pittsburgh or the Monongehela Valley in western Pennsylvania. He stood shoulder to shoulder with them, sat at their kitchen tables, spent hours in their church basements. He didn't do those things as a famous candidate, but as a community organizer being paid $8,000 a year by a coalition of churches."
• Daily Kos' Scout Finch: "[Clinton is returning] to the Republican theme of painting a Democratic opponent as an 'elitist' and 'out of touch.' She harkens back to bring us tales of her grandfather working in a factory and how she lived amongst the people in Arkansas. Never mind that it has been nearly 20 years since she lived without a full security detail, let alone anywhere near 'the people' or Arkansas."

Meanwhile, Al Giordano thinks Clinton's attacks on Obama will backfire: "Enough already. The poor little $109 millionaire has the victim game so soaked into the brain that now she wants company. It's condescending to rural voters to tell them they should feel 'offended' by Obama's reported remarks. [...] Plenty of rural folks will agree with [Obama's] statement, and my guess is that very few will conclude that Obama was talking about or insulting them. Telling rural Pennsylvanians they should feel victimized by those words is telling them they should become as insufferable and over-sensitive as the urban and suburban PC 'offense junkies' that see themselves in, and are rallied by, Clinton's professional victimhood."

OBAMA III: Not Ready For Prime Time

While most liberal bloggers defended Obama's remarks, pro-Clinton bloggers did not:

• Taylor Marsh's wbboei: "In recent years, the Democratic Party has nominated a succession of elite intellectuals for the Presidency. Those elections were lost because Reagan Democrats voted against them. Barack Obama is merely the latest example of this mistake. [...] Sure as the earth turns, if he is the nominee they will vote against him. By contrast, Reagan Democrats see Hillary as one of their own -- despite her extraordinary intellect and fine education. [...] They share her goals and relate to her struggle on a very personal level. [...Dem party officials] must find a face saving way to move away from Obama to Hillary if they hope to preserve their own credibility and prevail in November 2008."
• TalkLeft's Big Tent Democrat: "Personally, I can find ways to interpret Obama's statements so that they work for me. I find it hard to explain an interpretation that will be palatable to these actual voters. As I have said, a pol's job is to get elected. That means capture votes from as many folks as possible. As a voter, I do not want pandering to xenophobes, racists, sexists, homophobes, etc. but I do not require useless antagonizing of voters. I love political courage -- but political courage with a purpose. Obama committed a gaffe. All the spin in the world won't change that."
• MyDD's Todd Beeton: "For me, this is just the sort of thing that raises doubts about the discipline of Obama's campaign and his readiness to run a general. Recently he's allayed many of my concerns and my confidence in him as our potential nominee has been growing; this episode has shaken that confidence. First he goes bowling when he doesn't actually know how to bowl and now he sounds as though he's talking down to those that vote on 'guns, god and gays.' The overall impression one is left with brings memories of John Kerry on a windsurfer crashing back. And this guy's running on judgment?"
• Beeton continues: "Look, I'm not saying Obama is actually an elitist or is out of touch with every day voters at all. Unfortunately, reality is often beside the point and perception rules and I suspect Obama is losing the perception war here. The fact is, he probably has a more credible claim to the feel your pain mantle than Hillary Clinton does, having spent years as a community organizer in Chicago, but then how has he managed to cede this ground to Clinton? How has he managed to fuel this perception of him that will be used by the right whether Hillary Clinton jumps on it or not? How has he managed to lose control of what for much of 2008 had been quite disciplined messaging?"

TalkLeft's Jeralyn Merritt wonders if John Edwards will now decide to endorse Clinton: "I can't help wondering what John Edwards thinks about Barack Obama's slam of rural Americans. [...] No one understands swift-boating better than Edwards, given the effect it had on his and John Kerry's 2004 presidential bid. The last thing he wants is a John McCain win in November. [...] If Edwards thinks Obama will get swift-boated by Republicans over his remarks about these small town, blue collar voters he cares most about (on top of the Rev. Wright flap) -- will he decide Hillary is more electable in November and decide to endorse her?"

OBAMA IV: The Arrogance!

Conservative bloggers are slamming Obama for his comments:

• Michelle Malkin: "Now, we don't need to guess anymore what [Obama]'s thinking when he's on the campaign trail in rural and small-town Pennsylvania. Instead of hard-working, patriotic, faithful Americans, he sees 'bitter,' 'frustrated,' resentful scary people whom he'll readily diss while sipping Chardonnay in Baghdad by the Bay. A real man of the people, that Barack '37' Obama, ain't he?"
• RedState's Erick Erickson: "[Obama] is an arrogant jerk. He and his wife just can't help themselves. Are Americans really going to elect a guy who thinks hard times causes people to snuggle up to guns and God and makes it sound like guns and God are bad things? Likewise, this is a man whose wife thinks we are a mean spirited nation that she only recently decided she was proud of, he's friend's with a guy who tried to blow up the Pentagon and the Capitol in the name of communist revolution, and his spiritual mentor claims the white man created AIDS to kill the black man -- not to mention the whole Zionist conspiracy thing."
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "[Obama] assumes that gun ownership, religious faith, and a desire to enforce border security grows out of a mental defect or simple petulance. He cannot understand any of it as deeply held values or beliefs because they are all so foreign to him. His cure is a huge, whopping dose of government intervention to replace all of it. That's the hubris, the condescension, and the elitism rolled up into a precise point."
• Power Line's John Hinderaker: "Is Obama's campaign over? It may be. I don't see how anyone known to have uttered these words can be elected President. [...] Barack Obama's arrogance has been evident for some time, and it's no shock, perhaps, to learn that that he shares this bigoted opinion, common among urban liberals, of people who live in 'small towns.' But to actually express it, in public, at a campaign event, is stunningly stupid. Nevertheless, Obama did it."
• AmSpec Blog's Philip Klein: "On the one hand, this quote represents an elitist attitude by Obama in that people's desire to own a gun or to practice religion is given a negative connotation, being diminished as 'a way to explain their frustrations' and put in the same category as 'anti-immigration sentiment.' But moving beyond that, it is utterly incoherent. What on earth does the decline of manufacturing jobs and the shift to a service economy have to do with gun ownership? Who loses their job at a steel mill, and decides, 'Man, I'm really pissed off that I lost my job. I better go purchase a rifle'?"

OBAMA V: You're Out Of Touch, I'm Out Of Time

Many conservative bloggers are arguing that Obama's comments reflect his lack of understanding of middle America:

• Townhall's Carol Platt Liebau: "Are the Democrats getting ready to nominate a man who understands the people of small town Indonesia (and Kenya) better than he does those of small town America -- and likes and respects them more, too?"
• NRO's Lisa Schiffren: "What does Barack Obama, of the international upbringing and elite education actually know about ordinary Americans?"
• Townhall's Hugh Hewitt: "Incredible. I knew his politics were radical from his memoir. But I had no idea that his contempt for middle America was so complete. Do the Democrats dare nominate someone so completely clueless about the heartland?"
• NRO's Mark Steyn: "Yes, I'm a foreigner. But it takes one to know one, and this guy seems weirdly disconnected from everything except neo-segregationist Afrocentric grievance politics and upscale white liberal condescension. Not much of a coalition."

OBAMA VI: This Is What All Liberals Think!

Many conservative bloggers believe that Obama's statements reflect the views of most liberals:

• Commentary's John Podhoretz: "Barack Obama has done what Democratic candidates for president invariably do -- he has revealed the profound sense of unearned superiority that is the sad and persistent hallmark of contemporary liberalism. [...] This sort of liberal caricature was so prevalent in the 1960s and 1970s that it helped convince tens of millions of die-hard Democrats that their own party no longer had their best interests at heart -- that it, in fact, viewed them as some kind of enemy, as a reactionary force for evil -- and led them to pull the lever first for Richard Nixon in 1972 and then for Ronald Reagan in 1980."
• Right Wing News' John Hawkins: "[Obama's statement is] snobbish, elitist, and condescending -- and it's also very representative of what Obama and most other liberals think of average Americans. They think most Americans are fearful, bitter, dumb, and need to be led around by their betters AKA liberals. Why, if the average American were just as smart as a liberal is, he'd realize that religion is the opiate of the masses, guns cause crime, and illegal immigrants have as much right to enjoy the fruits of America as Americans do. I hate to tell you this, but Barack Obama just said what the average liberal thinks."
• RedState's absentee: "Senator Obama is deeply mired in leftist philosophies: moral relativism, multi-culturalism, open borders, and on and on. One of the most sacred of cows on that side of the fence is the basic philosophical understanding of the unwashed masses as being essentially incorrectable evolutionary throwbacks, cavemen...barbarians."
• Hot Air's Allahpundit: "[Obama's argument] is a variation on the left's refrain about the 'politics of fear,' in which any issue that might conceivably benefit a conservative opponent -- immigration, 'values,' and above all terrorism -- is waved away as a stumbling block to progress contrived by The Man to keep the People down."

CLINTON: Is Hillary On McCain's Payroll?!

Liberal bloggers are furious that Clinton is (in their view) reinforcing the traditional GOP narrative about "elitist" Dems. They see this episode as additional evidence that Clinton is damaging the Dems' chances in November:

• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "Never underestimate the power of Hillary Clinton to say anything -- anything -- even if it abets the Republican party. Today, she launched an attack on Obama that could have come right from the RNC."
• BooMan: "Clinton is providing ammo for the Republicans and doing all she can to hurt Obama's ability to attract voters that we need in the fall. The reason this is intolerable is that she has no chance of being the nominee. I know that she may believe otherwise, but her delusions are not a legitimate excuse. If she has a 2012 strategy, where she hopes that McCain wins the election so she can run against him in four years, that is even less acceptable. These attacks are a distortion of what Obama said, and certainly of what he meant. And the Clintons know this and don't care. It's a scorched earth strategy and party elders need to step in and put a stop to it."
• Balloon Juice's John Cole: "If the party elders (are there any?) can not figure out what this power-mad lunatic is doing to not only Obama, but the goals of the party, and if they can not realize how she is simply, in her quest for the Presidency, reinforcing the bullshit Republican narrative, then the Democrats don't deserve to win. If people can not stand up to Clinton and call her on this crap, we deserve four years of McCain."
• Oliver Willis: "Hillary Clinton and her surrogates sure feel a strong need to echo right-wing attacks versus Sen. Obama. And that's fine with me. At the end of the day this will teach us that no matter what the Clintons cannot be trusted anywhere near the leadership of the Democratic party in the future. At the same time it also shows us the problems we would have encountered should she have won the nomination. Reacting like a scared ninny to the prospect of Republicans saying bad things about you has been a recipe for Democratic failure for almost half of my life. The Clinton response turns out to be just to echo the right wing without doing anything constructive about it and hope the media gets bored, while the [Howard] Dean/Obama posture is to return fire until their ships are in Davy Jones' Locker."
• Benen: "In the hopes of making Obama unelectable, Clinton and Republicans insist that he must hate working families and small towns. We've reached the very odd point at which the Clinton campaign is distributing talking points from Grover Norquist and Ed Rollins."

CLINTON II: Who Wants To Play Duck Hunt?

Although conservative bloggers are calling Obama "out of touch" with middle America, most of them don't believe Clinton is any more "authentic" than the IL senator:

• Hinderaker: "Obama's sneering attitude toward religion, gun ownership and concern about illegal immigration showed that, for many Pennsylvanians, he is not 'one of them.' The problem that faces Hillary Clinton as she tries to take advantage of Obama's moment of candor is that, in terms of authenticity, she has little or nothing on her opponent. Like Obama, she was a strong advocate of gun control earlier in her career. And the flash of resentment she showed when asked when she last attended church shows how unable, or unwilling, she is to be 'one of them' when it comes to religious life."
• Hewitt: "[This controversy] may not be enough to resurrect Hillary's campaign given that her distance from ordinary Americans is pretty profound as well, but John McCain's claim on the respect if not the affection of Americans of all backgrounds will contrast sharply and to his favor with Obama's condescending attribution of bitterness all around."

Other conservative bloggers are mocking Clinton's attempts to exploit Obama's comments by touting her experience with guns:

• AmSpec Blog's Conor Friedersdorf: "Hillary Clinton, gun culture sympathizer and afficianado. What a patronizing phony."
• Allahpundit: "Coming soon: Hillary heads down to the range to squeeze off a few shots from her new .45. Will she don a cowboy hat for the occasion? Only she and her pollster know for sure!"
• NRO's Kathryn Jean Lopez: "Hush up Hill. Obama made a huge blunder. But Hillary marched in the million mom march. [She's] not going to be able to move in as Second Amendment First Lady."

Commentary's Jennifer Rubin feels differently: "Who would have thought that the Wellesley grad, Yale Law School-trained Hillary Clinton would be a whiskey-chugging, pizza-chomping, duck-hunting, gun-lovin' gal? [...] Now conservatives might guffaw over her new-found appreciation for the Second Amendment, but there is something inarguably more down-to-earth (and if not 'normal' than at least 'ordinary') about Hillary Clinton than Obama."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The Cost

The New Republic's Noam Scheiber expresses a view shared by many liberal bloggers:

"I'm not arguing that Obama doesn't have big general election liabilities. He clearly does. I'm just arguing that he's almost certainly going to be the nominee, that that's not going to change even if Hillary spends the next several weeks unloading on him, that the only thing this course is going to affect are his chances in the general election, and that, even if Hillary did some how pummel him hard enough to wrest away the nomination, it would be close to worthless since she'd have generated so much ill-will toward her among Democrats."

LEST WE FORGET: An Oldie But Goodie

The Onion: "Visiting Gore Calls Pennsylvania 'A Hellhole'" (August 9, 2000; h/t Instapundit):

ALTOONA, PA -- During a campaign stop at an Altoona paper mill Monday, presidential contender Al Gore launched into an unexpected 40-minute tirade against the 'not-so-great state of Pennsylvania,' calling it 'the nation's armpit' and 'a total hellhole.'

'Over the past few days, I have traveled all over your state and met many of you. And what has impressed me most is that no matter where I have gone, my reaction has been the same: "Oh, God, get me the f*ck out of this dump,"' said Gore, who alternately referred to the Keystone State's 12 million residents as 'animals' and 'ghouls.' 'From Pittsburgh to Philadelphia, from Erie to Easton, the places and faces of Pennsylvania stand in direct opposition to everything that makes America great.' [...]

Gore concluded his day on the steps of the State Capitol in Harrisburg, where he lowered the Pennsylvania flag, shredded it with a large hunting knife, and urinated on the shreds."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at April 14, 2008 01:21 PM