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. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. 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.And here, reported by the Washington Post, is Obama's latest attempt to say, "What I meant to say, was . . .":
"Lately, there has been a little, typical sort of political flare-up because I said something that everybody knows is true, which is that there are a whole bunch of folks in small towns in Pennsylvania, in towns right here in Indiana, in my home town in Illinois who are bitter," Obama said in Muncie. "They are angry. They feel like they have been left behind. They feel like nobody is paying attention to what they're going through." "So I said, 'Well, you know, when you're bitter you turn to what you can count on,' " he continued. "So people they vote about guns, or they take comfort from their faith and their family and their community. And they get mad about illegal immigrants who are coming over to this country or they get frustrated about, you know, how things are changing. That's a natural response."So family, community and religious faith are apparently what angry, bitter people embrace. Well, I'm not bitter about anything (except, perhaps, the exceptionally poor candidates all around for the presidency this year), and I turn to all those things.
So, does Obama mean that happy, contented people have little truck with family, community or faith? I can't believe he thinks that even if he did imply it. (Others have commented that Obama's speaking strength is from prepared texts and he stumbles frequently off the cuff. I dunno). But if he does think that, it's just stunning in its error and stupidity. But again, I don't think he meant to imply it, though he did, and I don't think he believes it.
But that doesn't let him off the hook because if he thinks that happy, contented people embrace family-community-religion as quickly as angry, bitter people, exactly what has he said here? Nothing. Really, think about. Nothing. Except that bitter people like to own guns - I truly think that Obama can't fathom why a happy, contented person would want to do that.
Yet there remains in his CYA attempt the clear implication that rational decision-making has no part in the rubes who own guns or embrace religious faith or think that the US should have different immigration policy. Those positions all spring, apparently, from anger and bitterness, not from the considered choice of a moral free agent. I wrote more about that here.
As I said in the adjacent thread, I don't think Obama's heading for the bottom. I think he's showing an ability to make (or, OK, maybe just fake) an empathic connection with the Rust Belt while his opponents sign trade agreements and pass a loathsome bankruptcy bill.
A punch to the face is an empathic connection too.
And if it works well, the communicator gets your wallet.
As one of those 'typical white people' I hear Obama's message loud and clear.
I hear his condescension for my faith.
I hear his condescension for my chosen sport and hobby. After all I cannot be trusted to have those dangerous guns.
As one who is the 3rd generation off of the boat, I fear those just like me. You know. Immigrants. BTW, I am a naturalized citizen because of some rather odd circumstances.
I hear his condescension towards my family.
The erosion of the city I live in which is in a border state is not really showing the effects of increased crimes of the worst sort - rape, murder, pederasty, drugs - committed by the illegals from south of the border. That is just my inherently racist attitudes to blame for it.
The erosion of the poorer neighborhoods into places resembling the worst of Juarez and Tijuana is not really happening. The residents who used to be mostly peaceable have not really been driven out by the dealers and members of MS-13. It is again my racism because I am white speaking.
I have only come up from being poor to fairly successful and educated by my own efforts at a state school because of my 'white privilege'.
That is resent the elites taxing me more heavily because 'someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more'. Yeah, I am with THAT! {NOT}
This election is going to be decided by angry white guys like me, I hear. And if I have anything to say about it, it will be anyone BUT one of these elitist shitheads.
The can FOAD.
Yes, the Rust Belt should cling to Obama, because he's the real deal, unlike everything he interprets pejoratively in his little litany, which is just false consciousness. What an interesting president Barack would make. I wonder if he's "Man on Horseback" stuff?
"Don't pay attention to what I say! Pay attention to what I mean!!"
"Don't listen to my words! Listen to what I represent!!"
"Don't look at my record! Look at my intentions!!"
"I am the reflection, the embodiment and the reification of your deepest political desires; and (more importantly) the avowed enemy of all that (and all those) you most despise!!"
"Your vote for me is a vote for the future, a vote for hope, a vote for America!!"
"Come, let us clear out the Temple together. Let us purify it, let us cleanse it of the unclean, of the grossly hypocritical!!"
"Let us return our country to the right path. And let us become once again beloved by all."
(Gosh, how could one not be hooked?....)
As a non-religious person, I find it bizarre that a candidate who spend 20 years in a nutjob church looks down his nose at people who "cling to faith." Who on earth is he to say such a thing? Does he have any idea how dumb that sounds to someone like me?
I'd bet 1,000 dollars he's secretly an atheist. (Some) atheists talk like that. No one else does.
He's not an atheist, he's spiritually impaired. He goes to church but he can't hear anything.
But Obama's not finished yet. Not until he finishes off Hillary and get the nomination. Then he's finished.
I wrote,
So we're tracking, I think!
Whats revealing is the Obama is the angry one, underneath his cool collected exterior. Start considering what exactly he is angry about and what he intends to do about it. Also sheds a little more light on his Wright connected- this is a man that has a public face that is all about hope and togetherness, but underneath he is angry and full of disdain. Any wonder why Reverand Wright would resonate with him?
Mark, that same thought crossed my mind also. One thing I have learned in my years in ministry, it's that misery in all its form demands validation by others. Miserable (angry, bitter, etc.) people always seek out others they think are the same way to be justified in their discontent. They are embittered and wnat to make sure others are, too. That's why a very small clique of malcontents in a church or synagogue can get a pastor, priest or rabbi fired or transferred. Embittered people must flock together to validate their bitterness. But happy people, OTOH, tend to assume everyone else is happy, too. And one never need to justify one's contentedness; it is self justifying.
You are right that by this repetitive insistence of how great swaths of anger and bitterness are broiling across America, Obama is saying much more about his own interior state than he is about the true state of affairs in the country. But you aren't the first to point out that Obama is projecting, I just can't remember where else I read it.
Here's a typical white guy channeling BO on bitterness;
"You go into these urban "neighborhoods" (Don't go at night)and you see 70%+ illegitimacy rates, 50%+ highschool dropout rates, high crime, murder rates that would do Iraq proud, hundreds of thousands of children being raised by their grandparents. Preachers who tell their flocks deliberate lies to inflame their passions. No wonder people are bitter and frustrated. All that time and money for so little resuls. Then Bakack Obama comes along and criticises us for going hunting or to a church which reflects our faith."
But in spite of Barrys deliberate provocations I remain unbitter. I spent 40 years working in a company which hired and promoted on merit. I had bosses and subordinates of more races than you could imagine. So I know he's basically full of s**t. Unfortunately he has a lot of company and has a very good chance of getting elected.
Obama really meant to do middle America a favor. He was trying to explain their "rubeness" to the San Francisco liberal elites. It was just because of Bush that these people were gun toting narrow minded bigots. He wasn't trying to put them down. Give the guy a break! He's just trying to bring us all together. He is going to unite America. If we could all just think like him and Rev. Wright and the SF liberals, there would be no problem with unity in America.
Whether or not Obama is quietly bitter, he certainly knows a lot of people who are bitter, like Wright. Does he suspect that Wright's views - religious, political, and racial - are nothing but a refuge?
How about his friends Ayers and Dohrn? Bernadine Dohrn was considered a psychopath even by other Sixties radicals, especially after she gave a three-finger "fork salute" at an SDS summit, in honor of the meat fork that the Manson family used to murder Sharon Tate. "Dig It. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, they even shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach! Wild!"
I challenge anybody to find one rustic anywhere in Pennsylvania who's as crazy as that. Obviously Dorhn takes refuge from her bitterness by idolizing savage murderers and Chicago politicians, which must be more or less the same kind of medicine.
I begin to think Obama's early campaign success was an accident. It's becoming increasingly obvious he's simply another fairly standard angry lefty, both in policy and attitude.
However, early in his campaign, faced with how to handle the racial issues involved, either he or his advisers chose to ran as a 'uniter'. But the uniting part ended up being a side show, what he really ended up showing off was optimism. His early campaign was very upbeat, optimistic, and heck if he'd hung some flags and thrown in the usual phrases would have been extremely patriotic to boot.
He loved everyone, thought the people of this nation were great, sure we have some issues that need working on, but together we're going to solve those and all be happy. Incredibly successful, heck, even conservatives were thinking that it wouldn't be the end of the world if this guy won.
As time goes on though, either he's proving unable or unwilling to maintain that stance, reverting to the more standard angry lefty trope of 'give us all the power, ignorant peasants, or we're all doomed'. And predictably flaking support off like crazy.
Actually, I'm nearly positive he doesn't really understand how he got popular in the first place, which I think explains his lack of substance and lack of strong moves in any direction. He doesn't dare do anything for risk of screwing up whatever it is that has him where he is.
I think he's a smart, articulate guy. I wish he had more managerial, foreign policy, and political experience than he does. Angry lefty? No. Guy who's attended upper crusty Hawaiian private high school, elite Occidental College and Columbia University, Harvard Law, yes.
It's true Barack Obama is a law school guy, but he only thinks what Dr. Dean also said: "There's no reason why white guys who have a Confederate flag in the back of their pickup truck shouldn't be walking side-by-side with blacks, because they don't have health insurance, either." (link)
Nothing has changed. Liberal views on the culture of non-Democrat voters still fit the same stereotypes. The view is still from high above.
And the solution is still what it was: promise that the government will give 'em material goodies, and make them believe that they really will get those goodies, and all that stuff they think they care about - guns, Jesus, racism, hating on immigrants and all the rest of it - won't matter any more.
In other words, while conservatives have a false consciousness that may make them "think" they care about issues like those little bitty babies being killed, or whatever other bad, silly thing it is, really they don't and they're potentially harmless. They just want material comforts and they'll sleep a dreamless sleep forever.
Revealing that view didn't stop Howard Dean, and revealing the same view isn't going to stop Barack Obama.
As for the religion thing - is Barack Obama that different from Howard Dean, who was wrong on whether the Book of Job was in the Old or the New Testament, and changed his denomination over a bike path? These guys just don't get it. That's not a scandal, it's normal.
#6 from Michael J. Totten (on Barack Obama explaining away people clinking to religion as an effect of people being bitter about the government having failed to bring them good jobs):
Well yeah.
But - same as it ever was, right? Barack Obama is a bit more radical than usual, and to compensate a lot more charming, plus Black. But he's not saying anything that puts him off the reservation, from a liberal point of view, or that won't play on Billionaire's Row.
Given that he's chosen the alternative public financing process, that's what matters most. His money advantage is going to be huge.
Just to clarify - I've read people in different blogs say in different words - Barack gets this from law school. I'm saying he could have gotten this just as easily from medical school, like Howard Dean did, or from anywhere that liberal attitudes are instilled in young people.
This is just normal liberals-talking-to-liberals stuff. It was the same four years ago and a long time before that, and it's going to be the same in the future too.
This is a Kinsleyan Gaffe, where a pol says what he really believes.
That's Obama. Of COURSE he looks down on religious people (his own insane Afrocentric Religion excepted). Of course he looks down on gun owners. On people who don't want to be aliens in their own country. He don't want a flood of immigrants pushing down wages, changing the culture, language, and acceptance of what came before. Of course he disdains people who don't like outsourcing of jobs.
And of course he says this to San Francisco Billionaires.
This is the Dem Party nowadays.
Why do these things (Dukakis, Kerry, Obama, etc.) keep happening over and over again?
Because Dems have that attitude as their social norm.
No of course Guys with Confederate Flags cannot get along with Blacks, or Dems for that matter. Guns, crime, Affirmative Action are all too profoundly different. Blacks for example would like their Gang Members armed with impunity, while everyone else is disarmed. Whites would like tough criminal sentences while Blacks want lenient ones. Depends on who is mostly the victim or perpetrator. These are profound communal differences that cannot be bridged or compromised upon. Only one group defeated politically by the other.
Obama's Billionaire Backers are in a tough spot. Even with their billions there are things that they have that ordinary people can have too. Most of all, physical security. What joy it must be to take that away from "typical white people."
For Obama's Black backers, of course, the joy of sticking it to white people is self-evident as Rev. God Damn America or Rev. Lee show.
Obama said what he meant. Which is his problem.
AJL, even if he is "showing an ability to make/fake an empathic connection with the Rust Belt", what good is that? Even if you take his backpedalling at face value, he's still suggesting something startling:
Obama ostensibly has some better way to do things than these poor rubes' "natural response". And he was quite clear about it in his original quote:
Obama wants to replace faith in religion, guns, the American Dream (as it relates to illegal immigration), etc with faith in government. The underlying premise is that government can provide a sense of empowerment better than those institutions to which people know they can count on.
Note that even though this is the most favorable and forgiving reading one can make of Obama's remarks, it still reveals he made an absurd proposition, stated in a surprisingly poor way by a candidate with alleged oratory finesse and personal charisma. Needless to say I am disinclined to give Obama this much benefit of the doubt, and I suspect he was projecting the modern Democrat's tendency towards identity politics onto a stereotyped voter he sees himself losing.
"I don't think Obama's heading for the bottom. "
He has gone from a dead tie in PA to 20 points behind,
I wonder what "Bottom" looks like?
As always good news from the wing nut front. I suggest you take a look at his complete statement; its available on youtube or look at Fox news website consisting of interviews from Repubicans whom admit they are not going to vote for them but that he is RIGHT. People have lost there jobs, medical insurance, pensions over the last thirty years and BOTH parties have not addressed the issue except by talking about social wedge issues.(try this: philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/17652829,hmtl).
I also love the overeach on Christianity and whose faith is Christian. There are how many divisions in Christainity and you are certain yours is correct. That can only be said to be very Christian of you.
Why don\'t you worry about putting your own house in order, \"Reverend\" Sensing, before criticizing others.
People who live in glass houses should not throw stones.
Hey "\Berger\" you'll be throwing stones from another site if you're that impolite to people here. You've got a point to make, make it in the form of an argument. Save the snark for other snark-friendly sites, OK?
Speaking of which ... I'm about to ban two words from this site: "Moonbat" and "Wingnut". Each has far outlived whatever empty significance it may have had and now just demeans the people who write it.
A.L.
Armed Liberal:
"Ban" meaning what? Marshals should delete forthwith posts using those words?
Because I wouldn't have a problem with that.
"but that he is RIGHT"
Oh yes he is right particularly if the view is narrowed to an edited version of his statement.
Few people get outraged if they are called bitter, they may agree or dispute it but they don't usually get outraged.
It wasn't the Bitter part that created the furor it was the latter part that some people want to take the focus off of.
The bit about
The Bible Thumping, Gun Clinging, Xenophobic Bigots of Middle America.
These kind of Folks