I don't think it was an accident that he made those comments in California rather than Pennsylvania.... He would find a home town audience to condescension to those of us in fly over states.Fred Zed said:
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Obama says some voters are angry, bitter
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Today, Obama said "Shame on you (Hillary Clinton)!" I recall Hillary saying "Shame on you, Barack Obama!" in the recent past. Oh boy, this is great!
Gyaos Baltar.
Gyaos Baltar.
and that is exactly how he meant it..period...it is sad to see how the press and the left is trying to spin this.onthebottom said:
Don likewise with respect.DonQuixote said:
But isn't your statement true of all political comment. And isn't part of being a statesman attempting to anticipate how others are likely to take your comments and to use language accordingly?
While there may be more bullshit to sift through, there is also more truth.DonQuixote said:
Anyone with a digitial camera can be an amateur news reporter. From: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/13/BA161046G7.DTL
Undercover blogger taped Obama's blunt remarks
Presidential candidate Barack Obama's campaign has been in full damage control mode since the senator's blunt remarks about the nature of small town Pennsylvania voters were secretly recorded by a Huffington Post blogger at a recent San Francisco fundraiser that was supposed to be off limits to the press.
...
Yes, but that isn't what's happening. Any time any politician strays off the beaten path and leave themselves open to real discourse and all the scutiny that brings, they are walking into a minefield. Far better to stay on message and utter the same meaningless platitudes endlessly. We've wound up with a system that rewards banality.Aardvark154 said:
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Look at the audience he spoke in front off...he is just another elitist politician out of touch with most of America...just like the rest.DonQuixote said:
Surprising to me you haven't figured that one out yet..I remember you saying being a Jefferson Anarchist.
If he would be alive today he would be uphauled on how much power we have relinquished to our goverment..how disconnect it has become.....and how corrupt.
While we the little people ruffle our feathers of who is better liberals or conservatives..the political elite of this country is taking us for a ride.
The word is appalled not uphauled, unless you meant something entirely different. Hard to imagine exactly how Jefferson and other founders would view us today, but I can't help feeling they would think us spoiled brats who had wasted the land.frasier said:
If Senator Obama had merely said a lot of rural white blue collar voters or a lot of rural (lower) middle class voters have lost faith in the ability of the Government to pay attention to their problems and more importantly to do anything to solve them. I don't think we here on TERB or far more importantly most major press outlets world wide would be talking about this.
That isn't, however, what he said. And what he said has been taken very negatively, by a lot of Americans. At that is the critical point, to say they shouldn't feel that way is fine but it is how they feel and where do any of us "get off," telling someone that they don't have the right to feel the way they do.
That isn't, however, what he said. And what he said has been taken very negatively, by a lot of Americans. At that is the critical point, to say they shouldn't feel that way is fine but it is how they feel and where do any of us "get off," telling someone that they don't have the right to feel the way they do.
I was speaking more of the land itself, and what was here when we found it. Not a good day in the press for Chinook Salmon. The king of Salmon had a run on the West coast in 2005 of around 1.5 million, pathetically low. This year before they cut off fishing, they estimated the number that could be caught at 35,000. When I was a kid it was in the tens of millions. I know I go on about this, but the possible extinction of Salmon in the Pacific Northwest offends me deeply.DonQuixote said:
In today's New York Times:
Some Perspective on ‘Bitter’
By BOB HERBERT
Published: April 15, 2008
Maybe Barack Obama felt he couldn’t afford to give the correct answer.
He was asked at a fund-raiser in San Francisco about his campaign’s experiences in the run-up to next week’s Democratic primary in Pennsylvania. One of the main problems, of course, is that he hasn’t generated as much support as he’d like among white working-class voters.
There is no mystery here. Except for people who have been hiding in caves or living in denial, it’s pretty widely understood that a substantial number of those voters — in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and elsewhere — will not vote for a black candidate for president.
Pennsylvanians themselves will tell you that racial attitudes in some parts of the state are, to be kind, less than enlightened. Gov. Ed Rendell, Hillary Clinton’s most powerful advocate in the state, put it bluntly last February: “I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate.”
This toxic issue is at the core of the Clinton camp’s relentless effort to persuade superdelegates that Senator Obama “can’t win” the White House. It’s the only weapon left in the Clintons’ depleted armory.
Senator Obama has spent his campaign trying to dodge the race issue, which in America is like trying to dodge the wind. So when he fielded the question in San Francisco, he didn’t say: “A lot of folks are not with me because I’m black — but I’m trying to make my case and bring as many around as I can.”
Instead, he fell back on a tortured response that was demonstrably incorrect. Referring to the long-term economic distress of many working-class voters, Mr. Obama said: “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 antitrade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
He danced all around the truth. Unless you’re Fred Astaire, if your dance steps get too intricate you’re bound to make a misstep. This was a big one.
But there is something perverse in the effort to portray Senator Obama — who has tried hard to promote a message of unity and healing — as some kind of divisive figure. He has spoken with great insight and empathy, most notably in his race speech in Philadelphia, about the anxiety and frustration of middle- and working-class Americans.
In his San Francisco comments, Senator Obama fouled up when he linked frustration and bitterness over economic hard times with America’s romance with guns and embrace of religion. But, please, let’s get a grip. What we ought to be worked up about is the racism that still prevents some people from giving a candidate a fair chance because of his skin color.
Are working people bitter? There’s no doubt that many are extremely bitter over the economic hand they’ve been dealt. Those who believed that America’s industrial heartland was secure and everlasting have been forced to adjust over the past several years to an extremely bitter reality. Jobs and pensions have vanished. The value of the family home is sinking. Health care is increasingly unaffordable. For many, the cost of college is out of reach.
But “bitter” has a connotation that is generally not helpful in a political campaign. Bitter suggests powerlessness and a smallness of spirit. Most people would prefer to be characterized as “angry” — a term that suggests empowerment — rather than “bitter,” with its undertone of defeat.
So this was not a good episode for Senator Obama, however you look at it.
If I were advising him, I would tell him to confront the matter head-on, meeting as often as possible with skeptical, and even hostile, working people in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. Let the questions rip, and answer them honestly.
No one has an obligation to vote for Mr. Obama, and it’s certainly not racist to vote against him. But the senator can make it clear that it is wrong to dismiss a candidacy out of hand solely because of the race or ethnicity or gender of the candidate.
One of Mr. Obama’s strongest points early in this campaign was his capacity to make people feel good about their country again. If I were him, I’d try to re-ignite that flame.
During his victory speech after the Iowa caucuses, he told a tumultuously cheering crowd: “They said this country was too divided, too disillusioned to ever come together around a common purpose.”
Mr. Obama needs to get back on that message of unity and hope, appealing to the better angels of the working classes, while at the same time fashioning an economic message more compelling than what we’ve heard to date.
The various groups, ethnic and otherwise, are not interested in being characterized. They’re interested in being led.
Note: Bob Herbert is an African-American, generally sympathetic to Obama.
Some Perspective on ‘Bitter’
By BOB HERBERT
Published: April 15, 2008
Maybe Barack Obama felt he couldn’t afford to give the correct answer.
He was asked at a fund-raiser in San Francisco about his campaign’s experiences in the run-up to next week’s Democratic primary in Pennsylvania. One of the main problems, of course, is that he hasn’t generated as much support as he’d like among white working-class voters.
There is no mystery here. Except for people who have been hiding in caves or living in denial, it’s pretty widely understood that a substantial number of those voters — in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and elsewhere — will not vote for a black candidate for president.
Pennsylvanians themselves will tell you that racial attitudes in some parts of the state are, to be kind, less than enlightened. Gov. Ed Rendell, Hillary Clinton’s most powerful advocate in the state, put it bluntly last February: “I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate.”
This toxic issue is at the core of the Clinton camp’s relentless effort to persuade superdelegates that Senator Obama “can’t win” the White House. It’s the only weapon left in the Clintons’ depleted armory.
Senator Obama has spent his campaign trying to dodge the race issue, which in America is like trying to dodge the wind. So when he fielded the question in San Francisco, he didn’t say: “A lot of folks are not with me because I’m black — but I’m trying to make my case and bring as many around as I can.”
Instead, he fell back on a tortured response that was demonstrably incorrect. Referring to the long-term economic distress of many working-class voters, Mr. Obama said: “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 antitrade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
He danced all around the truth. Unless you’re Fred Astaire, if your dance steps get too intricate you’re bound to make a misstep. This was a big one.
But there is something perverse in the effort to portray Senator Obama — who has tried hard to promote a message of unity and healing — as some kind of divisive figure. He has spoken with great insight and empathy, most notably in his race speech in Philadelphia, about the anxiety and frustration of middle- and working-class Americans.
In his San Francisco comments, Senator Obama fouled up when he linked frustration and bitterness over economic hard times with America’s romance with guns and embrace of religion. But, please, let’s get a grip. What we ought to be worked up about is the racism that still prevents some people from giving a candidate a fair chance because of his skin color.
Are working people bitter? There’s no doubt that many are extremely bitter over the economic hand they’ve been dealt. Those who believed that America’s industrial heartland was secure and everlasting have been forced to adjust over the past several years to an extremely bitter reality. Jobs and pensions have vanished. The value of the family home is sinking. Health care is increasingly unaffordable. For many, the cost of college is out of reach.
But “bitter” has a connotation that is generally not helpful in a political campaign. Bitter suggests powerlessness and a smallness of spirit. Most people would prefer to be characterized as “angry” — a term that suggests empowerment — rather than “bitter,” with its undertone of defeat.
So this was not a good episode for Senator Obama, however you look at it.
If I were advising him, I would tell him to confront the matter head-on, meeting as often as possible with skeptical, and even hostile, working people in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. Let the questions rip, and answer them honestly.
No one has an obligation to vote for Mr. Obama, and it’s certainly not racist to vote against him. But the senator can make it clear that it is wrong to dismiss a candidacy out of hand solely because of the race or ethnicity or gender of the candidate.
One of Mr. Obama’s strongest points early in this campaign was his capacity to make people feel good about their country again. If I were him, I’d try to re-ignite that flame.
During his victory speech after the Iowa caucuses, he told a tumultuously cheering crowd: “They said this country was too divided, too disillusioned to ever come together around a common purpose.”
Mr. Obama needs to get back on that message of unity and hope, appealing to the better angels of the working classes, while at the same time fashioning an economic message more compelling than what we’ve heard to date.
The various groups, ethnic and otherwise, are not interested in being characterized. They’re interested in being led.
Note: Bob Herbert is an African-American, generally sympathetic to Obama.
Also from today's New York Times, from someone not so enamoured with Obama:
A Speech About Nothing
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: April 15, 2008
We’re in the middle of a series of historic economic transformations.
A string of technological revolutions have made American workers much more productive. Over the past 30 years, steel producers have reduced the number of hours it takes to produce a ton of steel by up to 90 percent.
A social revolution has radically increased the number of women in the work force and pushed down the wages of men.
A medical revolution has led to enhanced diagnosis and treatment but also rapid health care inflation that burdens American employers and eats into workers’ weekly paychecks.
An information revolution has increased the economic rewards of education and punished those who lack it.
A pedagogical revolution has led to ferocious competition to get into the top universities but a decline in quality at the primary and secondary levels. For the first time in the nation’s history, workers retiring from the labor force are better educated than the ones coming in.
All of these huge social forces have had profound effects on how Americans work and live. All of them have combined to create a mass upper class, but also a struggling working class. They have all contributed to rising living standards — and also to the feelings of anxiety that show up in poll after poll.
You would think that if you were a thoughtful presidential candidate, addressing voters in an economically complicated state like Pennsylvania, you would want to describe how these pervasive forces are shaping the lives of voters and how government should respond. But, then again, you are not trapped in a campaign bubble. You have not outsourced your brain to political tacticians.
Barack Obama delivered a speech in Pittsburgh on Monday on the economic stresses facing American workers. In the speech, he devoted one clause in one sentence to the single biggest factor affecting the workplace: technological change. He then devoted 45 sentences to one of the least important: trade deals.
Economists differ over how much outsourcing will change the American job market in the future, but there is little evidence that trade has been a major cause of job loss or even wage stagnation so far. As Robert Z. Lawrence of the Peterson Institute for International Economics wrote in a recent study: “The recent increase in U.S. inequality ... has little to do with global forces that might especially affect unskilled workers — namely, immigration and expanded trade with developing countries.”
And yet all Democratic domestic policy discussions have to start with trade and, in 99.9 percent of the cases, end with trade.
And we have not even begun to plumb the insignificance of Obama’s emphasis on Monday. He wasn’t even talking about trade in general. He was talking about the Nafta- and Cafta-style trade agreements whose negative effects on the American economy are barely measurable. And, to make matters even more inconsequential, he wasn’t even taking a clear stand on such deals themselves.
Obama stuffed his speech with the textbook clichés that Democratic consultants tell their candidates to use when talking about trade — warnings about Chinese perfidy and lead paint in toys. But instead of following those clichés into the realm of economic populism, he hedged.
He wound up in the no-man’s land between Lou Dobbs-style populism and Bill Clinton-style free trade. He made a series of on-the-one-hand/on-the-other-hand distinctions about which sort of trade deals he’d support and which he wouldn’t. It added up to a vague, watered-down version of economic light beer. In the end, he suggested a few minor tweaks in the U.S. tax code that would have a microscopic effect on outsourcing, and a few health and safety provisions which might have teenie-weenie effects on investment decisions. The ideas he sketched out in the speech aren’t dangerous. They’re just trivial.
We all know why Obama spoke the way he did on Monday. The forces transforming the American economy are big and hard to control. If you think your listeners aren’t sophisticated enough to grasp them, it’s much easier to blame those perfidious foreigners for all economic woes. It’s much more heroic to pretend that, by opposing Nafta, you can improve the lives of middle-class voters. Furthermore, these trade deals have become symbolic bogies for union activists. Instead of concerning themselves with the tidal waves washing overhead, they’ve decided to insist on bended-knee submission in the holy war against Colombia.
What I don’t understand is why the political consultants prefer this kind of rhetoric. Aren’t there windows in the vans they use to drive around the state? Don’t they see that most middle-class voters are service workers in suburban office parks, not 1930s-style proletarians in the steel mills?
American voters aren’t so stupid as to think their problems are caused by foreigners and malevolent lobbyists. When Obama speaks down to his audiences, it makes me so bitter I want to cling to my laptop and my college degree.
(Hope these two opinion pieces further the discussion at a more reasoned approach.)
A Speech About Nothing
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: April 15, 2008
We’re in the middle of a series of historic economic transformations.
A string of technological revolutions have made American workers much more productive. Over the past 30 years, steel producers have reduced the number of hours it takes to produce a ton of steel by up to 90 percent.
A social revolution has radically increased the number of women in the work force and pushed down the wages of men.
A medical revolution has led to enhanced diagnosis and treatment but also rapid health care inflation that burdens American employers and eats into workers’ weekly paychecks.
An information revolution has increased the economic rewards of education and punished those who lack it.
A pedagogical revolution has led to ferocious competition to get into the top universities but a decline in quality at the primary and secondary levels. For the first time in the nation’s history, workers retiring from the labor force are better educated than the ones coming in.
All of these huge social forces have had profound effects on how Americans work and live. All of them have combined to create a mass upper class, but also a struggling working class. They have all contributed to rising living standards — and also to the feelings of anxiety that show up in poll after poll.
You would think that if you were a thoughtful presidential candidate, addressing voters in an economically complicated state like Pennsylvania, you would want to describe how these pervasive forces are shaping the lives of voters and how government should respond. But, then again, you are not trapped in a campaign bubble. You have not outsourced your brain to political tacticians.
Barack Obama delivered a speech in Pittsburgh on Monday on the economic stresses facing American workers. In the speech, he devoted one clause in one sentence to the single biggest factor affecting the workplace: technological change. He then devoted 45 sentences to one of the least important: trade deals.
Economists differ over how much outsourcing will change the American job market in the future, but there is little evidence that trade has been a major cause of job loss or even wage stagnation so far. As Robert Z. Lawrence of the Peterson Institute for International Economics wrote in a recent study: “The recent increase in U.S. inequality ... has little to do with global forces that might especially affect unskilled workers — namely, immigration and expanded trade with developing countries.”
And yet all Democratic domestic policy discussions have to start with trade and, in 99.9 percent of the cases, end with trade.
And we have not even begun to plumb the insignificance of Obama’s emphasis on Monday. He wasn’t even talking about trade in general. He was talking about the Nafta- and Cafta-style trade agreements whose negative effects on the American economy are barely measurable. And, to make matters even more inconsequential, he wasn’t even taking a clear stand on such deals themselves.
Obama stuffed his speech with the textbook clichés that Democratic consultants tell their candidates to use when talking about trade — warnings about Chinese perfidy and lead paint in toys. But instead of following those clichés into the realm of economic populism, he hedged.
He wound up in the no-man’s land between Lou Dobbs-style populism and Bill Clinton-style free trade. He made a series of on-the-one-hand/on-the-other-hand distinctions about which sort of trade deals he’d support and which he wouldn’t. It added up to a vague, watered-down version of economic light beer. In the end, he suggested a few minor tweaks in the U.S. tax code that would have a microscopic effect on outsourcing, and a few health and safety provisions which might have teenie-weenie effects on investment decisions. The ideas he sketched out in the speech aren’t dangerous. They’re just trivial.
We all know why Obama spoke the way he did on Monday. The forces transforming the American economy are big and hard to control. If you think your listeners aren’t sophisticated enough to grasp them, it’s much easier to blame those perfidious foreigners for all economic woes. It’s much more heroic to pretend that, by opposing Nafta, you can improve the lives of middle-class voters. Furthermore, these trade deals have become symbolic bogies for union activists. Instead of concerning themselves with the tidal waves washing overhead, they’ve decided to insist on bended-knee submission in the holy war against Colombia.
What I don’t understand is why the political consultants prefer this kind of rhetoric. Aren’t there windows in the vans they use to drive around the state? Don’t they see that most middle-class voters are service workers in suburban office parks, not 1930s-style proletarians in the steel mills?
American voters aren’t so stupid as to think their problems are caused by foreigners and malevolent lobbyists. When Obama speaks down to his audiences, it makes me so bitter I want to cling to my laptop and my college degree.
(Hope these two opinion pieces further the discussion at a more reasoned approach.)
It's times like these I can see how an idiot like Bush can get elected.....twice!
Obama's comments were accurate. People are disenfranchised with their government and they have good reason to be. Unfortunately his remarks are considered "elitist" (by the way, isn't being elite a good thing? Jon Stewart had a great take on this last night. I wanted to add a link but I couldn't). Further proof the best and the brightest will never gain high office in today's political age. You have to bowl over 145 and be "folksy" to get elected. How sad.
Meanwhile Clinton, being the opportunistic skank that she is, jumps at the chance to prolong the issue. She is now giving anecdotes of her grandfather taking her out behind the barn to teach her how to shoot a gun or how she found the Holy Spirit while walking in the woods. GIVE ME A FUKIN BREAK! Is there anything this bitch won't pander to? Of course, her little stories must be true. Sorta like her dodging bullets in Bosnia.
So now Obama is in trouble because he can't bowl, his minister is nuts and he speaks the truth.
As for the posts regarding Jefferson; he would never get elected today. Neither would Lincoln. They could never conform to today's political environment. Dumb it down, tell people what they want to hear and try to get through the campaign without saying anything or addressing real issues.
Obama's comments were accurate. People are disenfranchised with their government and they have good reason to be. Unfortunately his remarks are considered "elitist" (by the way, isn't being elite a good thing? Jon Stewart had a great take on this last night. I wanted to add a link but I couldn't). Further proof the best and the brightest will never gain high office in today's political age. You have to bowl over 145 and be "folksy" to get elected. How sad.
Meanwhile Clinton, being the opportunistic skank that she is, jumps at the chance to prolong the issue. She is now giving anecdotes of her grandfather taking her out behind the barn to teach her how to shoot a gun or how she found the Holy Spirit while walking in the woods. GIVE ME A FUKIN BREAK! Is there anything this bitch won't pander to? Of course, her little stories must be true. Sorta like her dodging bullets in Bosnia.
So now Obama is in trouble because he can't bowl, his minister is nuts and he speaks the truth.
As for the posts regarding Jefferson; he would never get elected today. Neither would Lincoln. They could never conform to today's political environment. Dumb it down, tell people what they want to hear and try to get through the campaign without saying anything or addressing real issues.
No, they are not accurate, but you don't see that because you're elitistlookingforitallthetime said:
People don't believe in religion, secure borders or the second amendment because of economic hardship.....
OTB
