It DOES Have Legs
…and the Hillary campaign is making sure of it. I’m referring, of course, to the second big Obama kerfuffle of Campaign 2008, affectionately known as ‘Bittergate’. Now, it’s almost impossible to know how badly this has hurt him from all the background noise the Hillary backers are making – but it has hurt, of that I have no doubt. Here’s John Judis of The New Republic:
Some liberal commentators have downplayed the effect of Barack Obama’s fundraising speech at a San Francisco fundraiser last week. But that’s wishful thinking. Along with the revelations about Obama’s pastor Jeremiah Wright, his remarks in San Francisco will haunt him not only in the upcoming primaries in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Kentucky, and West Virginia, but also in the general election against John McCain, assuming he gets the Democratic nomination.
…In the speech, Obama appeared to say that Pennsylvania voters’ opposition to gun control or abortion or immigration or free trade was pathological–a product of what Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse once called “false consciousness.” On the other hand, he implied that when he voiced opposition to an issue like free trade–Obama has consistently hammered Clinton on her support for the North American Free Trade Agreement–he was simply pandering to these voters’ displaced anxieties. He was saying to these upscale San Francisco Democrats, “I am really one of you, and I am not one of them.”
There is even a slight chance that Obama’s words in San Francisco could cost him the nomination. Obama is almost certain to have more elected delegates in June than Hillary Clinton, but if he loses Pennsylvania by 15 percentage points (which is not out of the question), that could start a media firestorm around his candidacy that could contribute to other primary defeats and to superdelegate support for Clinton. It’s not likely to happen, but after Obama spoke his mind, and, perhaps, lost small-town voters’ hearts, in San Francisco, it has suddenly become conceivable.
We’ll get back to those superdelegates, but first George Will, who also noticed the Marxist angle, in a scathing analysis:
Obama may be the fulfillment of modern liberalism. Explaining why many working-class voters are “bitter,” he said they “cling” to guns, religion and “antipathy to people who aren’t like them” because of “frustrations.” His implication was that their primitivism, superstition and bigotry are balm for resentments they feel because of America’s grinding injustice.
…The emblematic book of the new liberalism was “The Affluent Society” by Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith. He argued that the power of advertising to manipulate the bovine public is so powerful that the law of supply and demand has been vitiated. Manufacturers can manufacture in the American herd whatever demand the manufacturers want to supply. Because the manipulable masses are easily given a “false consciousness” (another category, like religion as the “opiate” of the suffering masses, that liberalism appropriated from Marxism), four things follow:
First, the consent of the governed, when their behavior is governed by their false consciousnesses, is unimportant. Second, the public requires the supervision of a progressive elite which, somehow emancipated from false consciousness, can engineer true consciousness. Third, because consciousness is a reflection of social conditions, true consciousness is engineered by progressive social reforms. Fourth, because people in the grip of false consciousness cannot be expected to demand or even consent to such reforms, those reforms usually must be imposed, for example, by judicial fiats.
The iconic public intellectual of liberal condescension was Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter, who died in 1970 but whose spirit still permeated that school when Obama matriculated there in 1981. Hofstadter pioneered the rhetorical tactic that Obama has revived with his diagnosis of working-class Democrats as victims — the indispensable category in liberal theory. The tactic is to dismiss rather than refute those with whom you disagree.
Obama’s dismissal is: Americans, especially working-class conservatives, are unable, because of their false consciousness, to deconstruct their social context and embrace the liberal program. Today that program is to elect Obama, thereby making his wife at long last proud of America.
Hofstadter dismissed conservatives as victims of character flaws and psychological disorders — a “paranoid style” of politics rooted in “status anxiety,” etc. Conservatism rose on a tide of votes cast by people irritated by the liberalism of condescension.
Obama voiced such liberalism with his “bitterness” remarks to an audience of affluent San Franciscans. Perfect.
It seems a bit far-fetched to say that Obama has thrown away either the nomination or the general election. The Wright remarks were far, far worse (though this time, the controversial remarks are from the mouth of the candidate himself). What Obama has done, however, is once again put oxygen back into the nearly-dead Clinton campaign, and he has given superdelegates a real reason to pause – can Hillary be right? Is he, in fact, unelectable? Are we looking at the next John Kerry, a candidate who manages to do the impossible and make it three straight losses for the Democrats at a time of historic dissatisfaction with the ruling Republicans? (Never mind that Hillary herself may very well be unelectable, and for better reasons).
For the last two months or so, there has been a story circulating just outside of the public view that there are a large number of superdelegates who are privately committed to Obama and waiting for the right moment to pledge their allegiance. Do Obama’s comments freeze these superdelegates in their current undecided pose? Or, more problematic for his campaign, do some significant number of undecided superdelegates side with Clinton — citing Obama’s comments as their prime reason for choosing the New York senator?
Let me reiterate for the record that I think the reaction at this point is overblown – but what is undeniable is that Obama is a green candidate who keeps shooting himself in the foot right at the most inopportune moments – and that plays right into Hillary Clinton’s whispering campaign to the superdelegates…
What’s really great about this is that both Hillary and Obama are self-destructing over it. Obama refuses to apologize . . . at least for anything he’s said. Sure, he’ll say he’s sorry . . . that people who thought what he said was offensive were too stupid either to understand him or accept the truth from the Chosen One. His attempts to justify his remarks are just as condescending and elitist as the remarks themselves. In the same way his supposedly unifying speech on race made reference to the “typical white person.”
Meanwhile Hillary is going off the deep end, talking about how she, a leading gun control advocate in the 1990’s, learned how to shoot as a little girl and is downing shots with construction workers. She could have just condemned him and moved on, not pretended that she was one of the victims of Obama’s condescension herself. Instead she’s made this into another sniper fire fantasy.
Meanwhile, McCain gets to sit back, relax, and watch the money flow in and the poll numbers rise.
Meanwhile, Obama either doesn’t seem to think that an American flag lapel pin doesn’t represent phony patriotism anymore, or he’s just figured that everyone knows any patriotism he claims to have is as phony as everything else that comes out of his mouth, so “What the heck!”
Remember, he’s a uniter, not a divider. Of course, what he means by a uniter, is that he will allow you to make him your leader, not that he’s at all interested in taking into account what you believe.
If he didn’t have such a huge money edge over both Hillary and McCain he’d be doomed, not only for the rest of the Dem primaries, but especially for the general. He’s currently trailing McCain in OH, MI, and FL, and just barely leads in PA. He has the money to fix that, but he’s going to have to spend like crazy. Because he absolutely has to have at least two of those states, and it’s hard to see him winning the Presidency without taking three.
His biggest Achilles heel is his youth and inexperience. This will not be the last moment like this in the campaign, unless he gets some far better handlers.
Here’s an absolutely beautiful quote from this article:
So true.
He hasn’t lost any ground in polls against Hillary yet, so I have to believe that this really doesn’t matter. It is fun to watch a bunch of political elites discuss how this played among the masses, though. As if George Will has ever even met a member of the working class.
It’s also fun to watch conservatives parse and analyze this after completely papering over their own candidate’s inability to understand the basics of Mideast politics. John McCain just misspoke (several times, consistently) – he’s not actually a crazy old warmonger who wants to blow up the world and bankrupt the United States, even though he has come right out and said both things. It’s really that Obama we can’t trust because he might think gay people and brown people aren’t ruining the world.
That bow tie is a dead givaway, as is the fact that he will wax eloquent on the topic of baseball at the slightest invitation. Elitist creep.
Can we please dispense with the notion that Obama “misspoke”? He spoke candidly, in a room full of rich folks that agree with him. The “mis” part is inadvertently allowing a quasi-reporter into the room and allowing her to record his words. It’s not that Obama thinks gay people and brown people aren’t ruining the world, it’s all those bitter rubes in rural America that can’t be trusted to vote properly – even though we charitably understand why they think, and vote, the way they do (hint: REPUBLICANS!). Heck, I’m a conservative and agree with the notion that a great number of people can’t be trusted with voting. Not because they’re poor, or black, or gay, or what have you, but because they’re ignorant.
I agree this has legs enough to get it into this week from last, but the interest won’t last and there will be no long-lasting harm to candidate Obama, not even in the Fall.
The lead editorial in the Times today — which castigated both Obama and Clinton — had it right: another week or two of this Punch and Judy show, and we’ll all tune out.
Jay Leno also had it right, in describing how the Presidential race is like American Idol: a black guy, a woman, and a cranky white guy.
That’s a great line.
Hey, I don’t think he misspoke. I’ll even admit he’s wrong on the causality and agree with TMS: a lot of people vote poorly because they’re ignorant. And a whole hell of a lot of them are racists or xenophobes or homophobes or just general wankers to boot. I, of course, don’t have to win the votes of so-called Middle America so I’m free to call BS on their crap. Obama doesn’t have that luxury.
Too many steves is right on the money. I think this incident, misstep, elitist rhetoric, liberal pandering, heartfelt spoken truth, (call it what you want to call it) won’t make it deep into next week’s news cycles. I spend almost every evening watching everything from Bill O’Reilly, to Hannity and Colmes to Keith Olbermann and back and one thing seems certain: Hillary’s missteps are actually far more damning to her campaign than anything that has struck Obama broadside yet. I mean, only pure desperation would have Hillary claiming that she was once under fire in Bosnia or that she fondly remembers her ol’ grandpappy teaching her to shoot a rifle, (God almighty, what a strange vision that is). She’s trying to fill the “void” that Obama’s remarks probably should have left with rural voters. Too little too late for her. My guess is that she’ll win Penn by seven to ten percentage points, keeping her head above water for a moment, then she’ll face her Waterloo in a close loss in Indiana. Just a guess.
It’s weird Will would fuss so much about false consciousness, since those theories are equally popular on the right (see, eg, theories of liberal bias and liberal academy as explanatory theories). It’s just a popular way to explain why other people don’t agree. It can’t be that difference is reasonable, so it must be that they were brainwashed by something, be it the GOP for Thomas Frank or the liberal academy for David Horowitz.