Hillary Clinton's Sad and Desperate Pounce

[babylonsister]

Hillary Clinton's Sad and Desperate Pounce
Submitted by pmcarpenter on Sun, 04/13/2008 - 7:02am. P.M. Carpenter

THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter



How perfectly demagogic, which is so typically democratic.

Barack Obama utters a less than attractive truth about the American working class which historians, sociopsychologists, anthropologists, theologians, economists and political scientists have been writing for decades and his opponent pounces with feigned outrage and panders with saccharine homilies.

Should Sen. Obama fail to make it to the White House, it will only be by virtue of his being too damned dumb to know he's too damned smart for the Reagan Democrat crowd.

His heresy? By now, I'm sure, you know it well. Obama was being honestly, historically analytical:

In a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long. They feel so betrayed by government that when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn't buy it....

But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. 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. And 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 anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

I defy any self-respecting social or economic or political historian to find one dram of intellectual fault with any part of that passage. Obama, they would all tell you, nailed in a few sentences the industrial and postindustrial socio-political history of working-class Americans. They are bitter because they have indeed been "beaten down" for generations and in response they do cling to comforting irrelevancies and scapegoats.

more...

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/carpenter/042

[Clear Blue Sky]

1. Hillary is behind and is making a risky play to catch up.

Watch the Masters this afternoon. Anyone two strokes behind with a few holes to play will be taking risky desperation shots to try to catch up. Politics is no different.

[babylonsister]

2. In keeping with the golf analogy, I hope she winds up in water

up to her neck. :hi:

[Clear Blue Sky]

5. In Amen corner perhaps?

[Fovea]

3. Even in the Urbanities

there is bitterness.

I had the new MoDOT bicycle/pedestrian/ADA coodinator (who has a staff of zero) tell me that she was proud to have two SUVs and there was no tipping point for gas prices. She replaced someone sane, who was recently fired.

The drive in mega church of endless cheap gas through endless war is a suicide cult of bitter hatred. I know. I operate a bicycle on the streets of a city recently considered the least safe cycling environment in America. A month rarely goes by when someone doesn't hurl something at me from a car.

At the junction of the local bike ped trail with a major street, broken beer bottles occur with such regularity that I carry a small whisk broom on my bike.

But anti immigrant, and anti globalism anger are not irrelevant displacements of working class anger, but two fronts in the war on labor: cheap domestic labor, and off shoring jobs. For Americans who don't manage stock portfolios, or corporations, they represent real attacks on their livelihoods.

The real irrelevancies can be seen by looking at Karl Rove's boogie man du jour for the last three election cycles. And they all pander to the Christian religious right. That, Obama understands, but is struggling to express in ways that unite. I am not sure how that can be done.

[madrchsod]

4. this is what pisses me off about this

what is the difference a between the down and outers in small towns or those in the big city?


nothing. this is what obama is saying.
we only divide ourselves

and hillary thinks we live at the end of the yellow brick road..

[unblock]

6. this is close the my point in another post

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=5482548&mesg_id=5482548

obama did create an opportunity for hillary.

unfortuntately, she's ignoring the substantive part of obama's statement and going for the cheap gotcha. she can capitalize, but ONLY IF SHE CONNECTS WITH THE "BITTER" VOTERS BETTER.

she needs to understand that emotion and come up with a better name for it, not simply dismiss it and cover it up with optimism. that leaves voters feeling that obama, however inartfully, nevertheless DOES understand them better.

[FredStembottom]

7. A perfect summation of Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas

This country needs to leave Junior High School and get out more!

Thinking is like exercise - it only hurts at first.

[CADEMOCRAT7]

8. Very well said

We know what he said is the truth. He is not "afraid" to tell the truth. He is also not afraid to talk to us as adults. He is raising the bar, and trying his best to help US evolve. Bravo !