Video of the fundraiser, which was closed to the press, surfaced as Obama was campaigning in Indiana, trying to highlight issues of concern to working-class voters, such as job losses and rising mortgage foreclosures.
“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,” Obama, an Illinois senator, said.
“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,” he said.
Well, that was a blunder – from such a smart man, too.
So what’s the surprise. Obama and his wife are the epitome of Ivy League liberal elitists with anti-white racisim layered on top. I think this episode shows how difficult it can be to escape your circumstances and background, no matter how privileged (or not) they may be. It also casts some doubt about whether Obama’s purported faith is as deep as he professes, or whether it originated as part of his political climb in Illinois party politics.
Alot of commentary has already gone on the net about “why” he said those comments. I’m not particularly concerned about that “why” explanation as it tends to either excuse or condemn Obama’s purported motives, which we can only guess about. What interests me about this quote as a sign of the times is that it shows the boundary of identity-politics’ effectiveness.
Here we have a politician, who happens to be Barack Obama, but lots others do this as well, essentially showing how he seeks to exploit US political polarization for his own purposes. Pretty nakedly ambitious to be this open about it, but the implication here is not to create greater communities but rather to exploit divisions. Moreover, there is an implicit ad hominem flavor to this approach, in the way such politicians imply that “my priorities are more important than yours”. Which is merely a campaign promise for their post victory constituent service strategy, where government employees arrive at benighted valleys of despair announcing “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them
Hmmm. Does this translate into the traditional redneck trifecta of Guns, God and Gays, that animates political issues among the less enlightened?
It’s still a long, long way to the Convention.
Maybe we can take our minds off this sordid and silly political affair by focussing on the upcoming spiritual retreat in London…….DOH!
What is wrong with this comment? It seems that religion, guns and gays have been effective wedge issues manipulated by party activists for the last 30 years.
What is wrong with this comment is that it says that economics or some other ‘more honorable’ issue should be what people vote about, rather than issues central to their core of being, such as religion. It shows a striking disconnect regarding people who feel their faith is so integral to their charism that they cannot help but vote in a manner formed by their religious identity. I have become a conservative voter solely because there is a willingness there understand my faith as informing my voting. Ironically, ‘liberal’ achievements could not have succeeded without people with such convictions – i.e. the Civil Rights Movement in the 60’s.
#5- by itself, nothing. I’m sure the Californians paying for the dinner understood it perfectly, and agreed with it completely.
added to #7…but only after their limo drivers had departed, the brie was passed and the Rombauer Reserve Chardonnay was flowing!
It was a tone-deaf remark. Since a politician can safely assume that their every remark will be recorded and passed on, they have to speak not as if they’re talking ABOUT people but as if they’re talking TO them. Who wants to be told that their religious faith (or even their views on guns or on people “different then themselves” for that matter) is a product of being “bitter” as a result of economic reversals. Now — after a little thought he came out with a difference “version” of this that says much the same thing without being inherently condescending or snotty. This was a really stupid remark at a critical time.
But is there bitterness and frustration? Or are people happy with the economy? it’s pretty straightforward.
It might have been tone deaf, but it was perfectly accurate. People voted against their economic self interest, while few of their moral issues won (it’s still a pro-choice country; guns rights people are going to have to deal with anti-terrorism statutes; and gay people seem to be entering the mainstream). They voted Republican, and what did they get? Not less government. Not a balanced budget. they didn’t get much. And where do their taxes go? How much goes to defense or interest on the deficit?
Catholic Mom, however, gets it right: Obama was talking about people, and not to them. Which is, of course what was happening. He wasn’t talking TO people in Pennsylvania. He was talking TO San Franciscans. Who asked, “how can people in Penn vote Democrat.”
And what the hell is wrong with Brie? Although I do prefer Whites from Burgundy, myself.
This will pass. Obama went on the offense and again, spoke the truth. His response was killer. And when people hear the entire quote, they’ll move on to something else.
“This will pass.”
Not if people, not necessarily Democrats voting in primaries, but out of that 40% of the electorate who actually decide the general voting in November, believe that Obama is a wine+brie liberal elitist with whom they do not sympathize.
“This will pass.”
Becomes invariant only if Hillary stomps all over Obama in the last three primaries and the super delegates broker the convention. Superdelegates like wine + brie too.
11 cont.
Or as was anonymously attributed to a Iowan during their caucas being asked of Obama:
[blockquote] What’s a dazzling urbanite like you doing in a rustic setting like this? [/blockquote]
“The American people are tired of liars and people who pretend to be something they’re not.†–Hillary Clinton
John, maybe you suffer from the same obtuseness as Obama.
He was talking to some Californians, whose money he wants, about Pennsylvanians whose votes he needs, and in doing so he describes them as botter (do you like to be categorized that way?) and talks about their religion as “clinging” and as being a symptom of bitterness AND linked in the same breath with “antipathy to people [because they’re different]”. Their faith is being equated to bigotry.
You make think those are accurate assessments, but how is that supposed to make people want to vote for you?
bitter, not botter 😉
Still, I don’t know what the problem is with wine and brie (I suppose that at Washington Republican gatherings they drink Bud and eat Velveeta).
I note that nobody still addresses the content: people in rural America are frustrated and/or bitter. Seems like they might just be so. Is it elitist to point out that people who don’t seem to be reaping the benefits of our country are frustrated? Actually the San Franciscans should be upset: Obama might be against their economic self-interest….
Further, it does seem to me that we’ve had 8 years of a blue blood in the White house, who has been pretending that he’s something that he’s not.
According to the NC papers, the Clinton campaign is using this in Eastern NC, too, where there are hunters and people who take religion seriously.
The best comment I’ve seen about this faux pas is from Ed Morrissey, now writing at Hot Air instead of Captain’s Quarters, who calls this a “rookie mistake.” Obama needed more seasoning on the national scene before undertaking this campaign. A more experienced speaker would perhaps know how arrogant this sounds.
[i] Comment edited by elf. Off topic. [/i]
17- indeed, we might be forced to give Obama credit for finally healing the sectional violence and hatred which started in Kansas and erupted into full scale war during 1861-5. “We’re not Yanks and Rebels anymore, we’re just rubes.” ;->
Obama said that rural folks “cling to” religion or firearms because they are frustrated about their job situations. He has not considered the possibility that rural Pennsylvanians “cling to” religion because they believe, and have guns because hunting is part of their culture, and they don’t have them to shoot people they don’t like. As for his calling them xenophobes, regardless of the purported cause, how can that not be offensive?
There are causes besides economic ones which animate voters, and often the economic ones are less powerful than the others.
[i] Slightly edited by elf. [/i]
John, to say someone is frustrated is not at all the same as saying they are bitter. Being bitter is not a complement. It is an accusation of responding to difficulties in a psychologically and spiritually negative.
Are you bitter, John? Would you like to be described as bitter? Is Gene Robinson bitter? Shall we call the oppressed who complain of their oppression bitter? “Blessed are the poor, for they shall be embittered”?
Aren’t the plutocrats that Obama was addressing voting against their economic interests, too? Or is it some sort of Bernsteinian radical chic that drives these billionaires to prop up the campaign of a grasping collectivist?
I also don’t see why Obama disparages the hoi-polloi’s supposed enthusiasm for protectionism. After all, isn’t that what Obama is peddling himself with his opposition to the free trade agreement with Colombia and his hostility to NAFTA? He and his garrulous missus are pulling in beaucoup bucks…what’s his excuse? The same goes for his church – what drove him to sit in rapt silence as his fulminating preacher damned America and peddled insane conspiracy theories for two decades. It doesn’t appear to be poverty, no?
The idea that these benighted folk in Pennsylvania would be happily supporting open borders, gun control and sleeping through church on Sunday morning if the steel mills were still humming along is condescending in the extreme. Obama is utterly out of touch.
John,
Two things. First the basic economics.
In spite of all that history has shown us about what works economically (free market capitalism) versus what doesn’t work economically (command economy socialism) do you still maintain that the part which is [b]supposed[/b] to be against more government intrusion has hurt the working class people more than the government which is in favor of nationalizing over 1/7th of the economy? If you want to talk about the economy today (is it worse yet than the Great Depression. I haven’t read the NY Times yet, so I don’t know), would it surprise you to know that they unemployment rate is less than it was in 1996? Consumer confidence is led by the drumbeat of the media rather than what is actually happening.
Second, what Obama implied is that people are religious or against trade (I thought he was against NAFTA or the deal with Columbia) or for Guns (regardless of that pesky 2nd amendment) or prejudiced because of bad economic times. It is almost as if Obama believed that if everyone had a good job at a “fair” (determined by whom?) wage, that the world wouldn’t need God or weapons and that immigration would not be an issue.
I find the condesding attitude and the economic ignorance to be very troublesome.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
My cousins in Pennsylvania have been church going, hunters for over 30 years, as were their parents before them. In fact, cousin George’s vennison sausage is absolutely out of this world!
As far as I know, they have always had nice houses (middle class), good jobs and loving family environments (well, for them, I guess. I’d call them a bit dysfunctional, but only because they are different from me) .
They did not start going to church or hunting because of bitterness and frustrations over the job situations. 25 years? Nah. Not in Eastern Pa.
By the way, all should be aware that John Wilkins is not addressing what Obama said to the assembled billionaires and multi-millionaires, he’s using Obama’s attempted deflection. He doesn’t want us talking about what was really said.
Obama should be under fire. He asks for mercy when he and the liberals would offer none to a conservative in similar circumstances.
John, it would be a bit like if one of the bishops vying for TEC Presiding Bishop had said, “You go into some of these dwindling dioceses in California and and like a lot of dwindling dioceses on the coasts, the parishoners have been leaving now for 25 years and no one’s replaced them. And it’s not surprising that the remaining parishoners get bitter, they cling to their liberal views or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-traditional sentiment or anti-communion sentiment as a way to explain their frustration.”
Don’t you think such a statement would offend reappraising Episcopalians?
Christopher, why is this about me? Look, describing me as bitter would be hard to hear. Especially if it were true. If it weren’t true, it wouldn’t matter to me. I’ve been bitter, but I deal. I do think that politics often revolves around harnessing bitterness. Resentment and fear often drive people to vote for a candidate, often irrationally. Amazingly, Obama hasn’t been relying on polls to drive his campaign.
Perhaps you’ve never been bitter before, Christopher. Good for you.
Phil, I’m not sure why you think I’m a command style socialist. Nor am I sure what this has to do with Obama. Obama’s economic team is libertarian, with incentives for people to make rational choices (because, actually, people often make very stupid choices. And people are greedy and use the law to exploit others. Because they are sinners).
Depending on the day, I’m a Georgist, or a Distributivist, or a Keynesian. You seem to know about economics, so I don’t feel the need to explain it. Obama is sometimes called a “libertarian paternalist” which means he would create laws that would create easy incentives for people to make mindful choices that help themselves (e.g. encouraging people to save through an opt out of retirement savings rather than opting-in, or opting OUT of organ donation rather than opting in).
if you’re scared of command style socialism, don’t vote for the Socialist Worker Party.
I think, in fact, what we have these days is military socialism, or socialism for the wealthy, who get bailed out by the government, while the rest of us are busy fighting it out. I do challenge your notions about government intrusion into the market, for governments usually hire private companies to do work, stimulating the economy. Government industrialized the economy during the 19th century (say, canals, and railroads), as well as built our schools, roads and airports. State universities and the GI bill were quite instrumental in building our economy quickly. This wasn’t command economics. Money transfered to lots of small businesses who bought products from other small businesses.
Ben Friedman (a Harvard Economist) makes the point that if an economy is growing for all people, then there is more tolerance and less bitterness. Compare it to a highway. There is one fast lane. If the other lanes are moving, even if slower, everyone still feels fine. But if only one lane is moving, and the others are staying still, people get angry. Nobody wants all three lanes to move at one speed (or to be at a halt), but it is fully justifiable for the government to do what it can to ensure that everyone feels as if they are moving as well.
#25 – Brother michael, is that true? Obama has a reputation for being quite forgiving, as he has continually praised McCain for his service to the country. He has never questioned McCAin’s character. He’s pointed out some problems with his politices, but he’s never gone ad hominem. It’s a pretty important distinction.
#26 – it would offend me only if it were true. As it is, the statement is patently ridiculous.
Obama’s statement certainly reeks of the “liberal” world-view, a materialistic world-view with not much room for spiritual explanations, and as such a very flawed world-view that results in speaking about classes of people not as they are really found but as they are [i] expected [/i] to be found. Because this world-view is entirely materialistic so are the solutions offered: social security, welfare, wealth redistribution.
The existence of people who are well-off who do not share the liberal world-view, is of course, an anomaly, near in strangeness to the lower-class workers who do not welcome these reforms. For the first they point out that the well-off who do not share this perspective are, in fact, threatened by these sweeping changes to the economic status quo, the loss of money and the right to manage it being their only source of power. The second group causes them to scratch their heads in puzzlement and ask (as I heard so often after the second of G W Bush’s wins), “Why can’t they just take the medicine we prescribed in our all-knowing generosity?” (I have, of course, paraphrased, though not all that much).
This, of course, has always been my problem with the so-called “liberal” view. Far from being “liberal” they seek to tie us with chains to a materialism they supposedly eschewed during the ’60s. Anything the government runs will be government controlled. The people calling the shots will decide based on what keeps them in power, not neccessarily what is best for the people (for an excellent example of this check out the history of the Daley regime in Obama’s native Chicago. The mayor runs roughshod over the poorer neighborhoods, funnels money meant for programs into downtown development, then gives the poorest people in said poor neighborhoods some welfare relief while building condos for the rich right over that one neighborhood business that was doing well that just got demolished. Add in a few back-room deals with some mafia connections and you have a dictator-for-life that doesn’t even have to make the trains run on time).
That said, I still think Obama is the best thing going in this current race. I might not agree with his perspective, but he is honest about it, which automatically puts him ahead of his competition. The thought of Hillary Clinton being honest about anything is laughable.
I swear, if she wins the presidency I am shaking the dust from my heels over this nation and immigrating to Israel.