04.15.08

Not keeping it real: Barack, small towns and liberal elitism

Posted in Uncategorized at 3:08 pm by Administrator

Barack Obama’s comments about small town folks being bitter and clinging to religion and guns may have been politically dumb and elitist, but when taken in context are much ado about nothing. All three candidates have spent most of their lives living in urban environments, so I don’t think any of them can naturally relate to people in small towns without sounding phony. The best that can be said about Obama in this incident is that he was honest, although he made the comments in the safe confines of a San Francisco fundraiser.

As someone who grew up in a small town turned suburb in Oregon, went to college in a small city in rural eastern Washington, and started my journalism career in a small cities in Oregon and northern California, I think Obama’s comments are an oversimplification. I also was born in Pennsylvania and lived in the small college town of Carlisle although I don’t remember it.

Places I’ve lived, Walla Walla, Wash. and maybe Carlisle aside, are probably more liberal than the towns that Obama is referring to but he’s not completely wrong. Anti-immigrant sentiment ran high in my hometown in Oregon when Mexican migrants starting arriving to work in area farms. People own guns and go to church, certainly, but as has been pointed out this is part of a long tradition. Obama probably wouldn’t go to many small towns other than to wrassle votes, but then again neither would Hillary Clinton or John McCain. The question is, as author Thomas Frank asks in “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” why do working class folks vote for Republicans who don’t advocate policies that benefit working class people? Part of the problem, in my view, is liberal condescension of the average person’s lifestyle and paternalism. To this end, Obama may have become a victim of his own education, ambition and success in elite institutions like Harvard and the U.S. Senate. Obama does have a history of “keeping it real” but it happened on the streets of Chicago which gives him credibility among urbanites and blacks but won’t appeal to as much to blue collar whites. Hillary Clinton, other than living Arkansas, doesn’t have this experience either, but for some reason people perceive that she will pursue policies that will benefit them. However, her actions in the Whitewater scandal demonstrate that her love for working class people is abstract.

Conservative George Will, in a column today, jumps all over Obama’s comments and ties them to a history of liberal condescension that he maintains developed after Roosevelt.

Obama has fueled this fire, but in the end, though, this debate is much ado about nothing. The issue is not whether Obama can fit in with blue collar folks, but what he will do as President.
Small town folks don’t need Obama to be their best friend. They just need a government that will care about their jobs, health care and quits sending their kids to Iraq. If he will do that, it doesn’t matter if he is an elitist.

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