Krugman on Obama

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/25/opinion/25krugman.html?hp

A few months ago the Obama campaign was talking about transcendence. Now it’s talking about math...Mr. Obama was supposed to be a transformational figure, with an almost magical ability to transcend partisan differences and unify the nation....Well, now he has an overwhelming money advantage and the support of much of the Democratic establishment — yet he still can’t seem to win over large blocs of Democratic voters, especially among the white working class...Let me offer an alternative suggestion: maybe his transformational campaign isn’t winning over working-class voters because transformation isn’t what they’re looking for.

Transcendence and transformation, whatever they are, are luxuries for the elite. Whatever else Obama is offering, this inspirational, idealistic rhetoric grates on the nerves of people who have real problems: "stuff your transcendence--we want jobs and financial security, health insurance, good schools and safe neighborhoods."

Obama, his groomers and handlers, and his elite groupies don't even get it: they don't understand that this rhetoric plays as "let them eat cake." Of course I don't doubt that if Obama is elected he will actually deliver cake, and bread as well. It is just that this "idealism" as such, and the rhetoric of transcendence and transformation, arouse suspicion and distrust in people who have been fobbed off with symbolic gestures for too long, and offered cheap, worthless intangibles while the material conditions of their lives have steadily degraded.

Unlike Krugman, I do think that Obama will win resoundingly in November--if the Democrats make the case that the misery of these last 8 years hasn't been a result of Bush's personal incompetence but is in fact the inevitable consequence of a failed ideology, and that government is the solution not the problem. That ideology is now so ingrained that it's virtually unfalsifiable. If things go badly we blame that on incompetence or assume that we haven't been consistent in applying the ideology or that we haven't gone far enough or allowed enough time to get the results.

How do you convince the American public, the working class in particular, that for almost 3 decades the US has been involved in a radical experiment which has failed? That for a generation, we have been spending down our capital and going into debt, and that now the chickens have come home to roost?

Obama the Elitist

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/12/us/politics/12campaign.html?ex=1365739200&en=7092dcb8d6a829b5&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

At the fund-raiser in San Francisco last Sunday, Mr. Obama outlined challenges facing his presidential candidacy in the coming primaries in Pennsylvania and Indiana, particularly persuading white working-class voters who, he said, fell through the cracks during the Bush and Clinton administrations.

“So it’s not surprising then that 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,” Mr. Obama said, according to a transcript on the Huffington Post Web site, which on Friday published the comments.

The remarks touched off a torrent of criticism from Mrs. Clinton, Mr. McCain and Republican activists and party officials, all accusing Mr. Obama of elitism and belittling the working class.

This has legs--because it's true. And because it's one of the true things that no one dares to say.

So much for the bowling. Yes, we do know in our hearts that Obama doesn't bowl any more than Bush mucks out the cowsheds back at the Crawford ranch. Yes, we know it's an act directed at us. But it seemed well-intentioned: rather like President Karzei wearing a conglomerate Afghan costume concocted out of bits and pieces of the garb of various tribes. When politicians affect the folkways of hoi poloi or make local references to establish a connection to our states and towns they're just trying to make a connection with us, to show they're aware of us and our lives--that they're on our side.

But then a remark like this slips out and we're reminded of what they really think of us and, more fundamentally, that they see us as other--as "you people" who are venting your frustrations by "clinging" to guns or religion, you working class bigots who are stupidly prejudiced against immigrants and minorities because you don't understand the importance of proletarian solidarity. Now we see what a patronizing act the whole thing was all along: we're hurt, and ashamed of having been taken in. We've had a peek behind the scenes and it's ruined the show.

What a pity this had to happen now, because Obama will be nominated and this will dog him. And it's much worse than the Wright episode because it taps into the real problem Obama has with the white working class which is not, as the pundits have repeatedly spun it, race but class. Obama is just too posh: he is an elitist of the worst sort--like the pundits who spin his problem with the white working class as a race problem.

I suspect that the problem most working class people have isn't with race but with latte-drinking liberals who assume that they have a problem with race, write off their legitimate concerns as an irrational response to frustration and imagine that they can be handled--by cute tricks and faux folksiness.

They have real problems and legitimate concerns. They're the ones who compete with immigrants for jobs, and whose wages and benefits are being driven down by cheap immigrant labor. They're the ones who have to worry about a criminal underclass: they don't have the bucks to live in gated communities or safe class-segregated neighborhoods. They're the ones who have to send their kids to public schools where an influx of underclass kids and immigrants with poor English drags their kids down. But instead of taking these concerns seriously, these patronizing elitists assume that they're just ignorant bigots and can be managed.