They aren't incoherent.  The key term is "cling."  Obama wasn't saying that guns or religion or a concern with immigration are bad in and of themselves.  He was saying that if people suddenly find these issues cropping up as the most highly-charged deal-breaking factors when it comes to political loyalties and voting choices, it's a bad sign.  And that's because they feel a loss of control in other, formerly secured, areas of life such as jobs, pension for old age, health care costs, and education for their children..

The problem is that he was speaking in a kind of shorthand -- his comments make more sense if one inserts "voting on the basis of" or "a political ideology that focuses on" after "they cling to."

Jon, I think he's saying that when things went south in the Rust Belt (occasionally literally, as industry moved to anti-union states), people started clinging to their conservative cultural beliefs. The guns are part of that - not just owning guns, but the fetishization of the gun as an object that allows an blue-collar worker to  maintain dignity in the face of an increasingly humiliating economic environment. And I happen to agree with Obama on this point. With all due respect to the people mentioned baove and yourself, Jon, it makes a lot of sense.

This reminds me of every time I ask a group of baseball fans to explain to me the rules governing how pitches are awarded wins vs. losses vs. no decisions; everyone says "oh it's so simple" and then gives about 15 different contradictory explanations.  This is the same thing; Obama's comments were so poorly worded, they could mean any number of things, but no one meaning is obvious.

I think what BHO meant is that voters' economic anxieties sometimes manifest themselves in other issues. Basically, he means that voters are projecting. We saw this in the 90's, when the good economic times of the last half of the decade insulated Clinton from a lot of issues (guns among them) where voters did not agree with him.

We tend to think that voters going through hard times financially will blame the government, but usually they don't. They blame themselves, or maybe the corporation that laid them off.

It's sort of like when my wife has to drive me to the airport for a business trip. She doesn't want me to go because it creates more work for her when I'm gone (and maybe because she'll miss me), but she knows I have no choice, so she picks up on some other long-held grievance that she would normally cut me a break on. So it is that we end up getting an "on-the-way-to-the-airport" fight every single time, but not about the trip. It's always about replacing the roll of toilet paper when it's out, or trimming the hedges, or taking out the trash. She "clings" to those issues as a way to punish me for something that she secretly blames me for even though she knows that I have no control over it.

Actually, I hope my wife doesn't read this. If she does, well, honey, I misspoke.

However much sense it makes or does not make as Obama said it -- and I'm kind of with Mr. Chait on this one -- it makes _more_ sense if you substitute the word "express" for the word "explain." Reverse the verb of causality and it's a perfectly unobjectionable statement.

ironyroad is on to something.  As unfortunate as Obama's wording was, "cling" was technically correct despite its pejorative connotations.  "Cling" implies holding on more tightly to something you already grasped previously -- i.e., it's not that "before the 1970s, small towns were primarily filled with unarmed atheists"; it's that, subsequent to the dislocations of the last generation or so, people in those towns have "clung" even more intensely to their longstanding traditions regarding faith, gun ownership, etc.  

Oh, please, Jon. This isn't hard, unless you read just that one sentence and give no thought to the context. He was answering a question and speculating about why voters seem to focus on cultural interests instead of economic ones. His thought was that they are disillusioned about the political process, so they have become jaded, bitter, whatever, about the chances of useful economic change arising from it. To suppose instead that he was speculating about why small-town people like their gods and their guns is just ridiculous.

Jon,

For the umpteenth time, of course folks are bitter. In my current position, I am the lead negotiator for a public agency and we are in talks with three service unions and with nothing to offer, all I see is bitter. And more bitter.

In our layoff proceedings, I see tears, then bitter. Only a deaf, dumb, and blind person would deny that working people are frustrated, angry, and bitter. But, in politics, stating this is obviously political poison.

Is there any wonder that voters tune out the system? There is that old adage about the politician who gets into trouble every time he tells the truth.  And Obama was speaking in a conversational manner, not making snide remarks, or like Bush, making fun of condemned prisoners.  Poltiics, though fun for many, is a really screwed up business and, in the end, we end up with the idiots we deserve.

It made perfect sense.  Voters fed up at their economic situation and the failure of the government to make any real difference in their lives, are frustrated and rally around issues they DON'T want changed.  They don't want gun control, they don't want any erosion of the Christian faith in public life, they don't want immigrants and they don't want the government taxing them or telling them what they should do - after all, what have they not screwed up?  They've become single-issue voters as their economic situation worsens and they perceive the world moving away from their core values.

Today at a little event in Mount Joy, PA, I watched three governors from rural states stand up and stump for Obama in your typical small town restaurant.  It was the standard recitation of the campaign speaking points, that Americans should unite over issues that affect everyone, and seek some sort of common ground on everything else.  Towards the end, they solicited questions from the audience and one man (clearly annoyed that he had his lunch interrupted by Democrats) stood up and with obvious contempt in his voice, went on a tirade about protecting the unborn.

That man was bitter.

I'm finding it extremely interesting (and by that, I mean "mind-boggling") that the very people who claim to be sick to death of the political correctness of today's media, academia, or what have you, are the same ones who are up in arms when a politician calls some working-class folks the fairly innocent "bitter."

I think the next time someone describes my (fairly liberal) views as belonging to the "latte-drinking coastal elites", I will go on a rant.

"How DARE you call me that!  I hate coffee and I'm from Texas!"

I think most of the commenters here got it pretty much right.  He was shorthanding (and admittedly clumsily shorthanding) the "What's the matter with Kansas" argument.  That people who find generations of change have eroded their communities economically and socially, find refuge in traditonal cultrual conservatism and a reflexive fear of change and the outsiders who seem to represent it.  Republicans have been exploiting this for years by massaging these greivances and promising to defend folk's "culture" against these liberal city slicker and "elitists" who are trying to find common economic ground but represent lots of non-traditional cultural constituencies.  So in 2004 (for a most recent example) Republicans made sure that there were anti-gay marriage ballot initiatives in critical swing states (Ohio, Missouri, etc) to bring out the "bitter" and "clinging" vote (both white and black) and literally won the election that way.  They have been doing the same for years with gun control and anti-immigrant sentiment....getting people to vote for their perceived cultural safety net and refuse the economic lifeline that Democrats are trying to offer them.  

White planters in the south for the hundred years following the Civil War did the same thing with race....using it to divide poor whites from poor blacks and maintaining their power by exploiting these divisions and grievances.  I think Barack was alluding to that in his remarks as well.

And the Clinton campaign has found common ground with the Bill Kristols, Rush Limbaughs and Karl Roves, and are busy massaging these greivances for their own purposes.  So the fifty percent plus one politics of divide and conquer continues.  So much for a new politics.

Hopefully, this too, shall pass, like Reverend Wright before it.

bigfish, I'm with you when you do it. Latte? Hell, I drink bourbon. And beer. Not the frou-frou imports, mind you, but good, honest, American beer. From the bottle. I need some caffeine, I don't go to Starbuck's, I drink a Coke. And sure, I'm on the coast, but if I worked the same job in the Midwest I couldn't afford to support my retired, widowed mother on the farm back in Iowa.

Have any among you ever tried transcribing speech? Or read a transcript of, say, a deposition?  It almost always looks incoherent when down on paper.  We simply do not normally speak in what would be regarded as coherent sentences for written purposes.  We normally infer a large part of what is intended by the context, tone, etc.  If you had only the written transcription to rely upon, half the time you would never figure out what someone is saying -- not to mention all of the umms, hmmms, etc. interjected to pause for thought.

I think what Obama intended to say is pretty clear:  People are cynical and frustrated in the face of the seeming indifference of government and the unwillingness and/or inability of government to relieve the economic problems produced by global competition.  Rather than vote on those economic issues, which only reinforces the sense of helplessness as nothing ever seems to come of it, they vote on social and demographic issues about which they can then experience a greater sense of control, or they withdraw from politics altogether into a world that consists of family, church, and traditional pastimes like hunting.

But no one would say it that way in the course of making a campaign pitch.  Everyone would fall asleep because people do not speak that way.

The main point I got from Obama is that people feel helpless and bitter in response to government indifference to their economic woes and thus find it hard to vote on the basis of economic issues.

Have any among you ever tried transcribing speech? Or read a transcript of, say, a deposition?  It almost always looks incoherent when down on paper.  We simply do not normally speak in what would be regarded as coherent sentences for written purposes.  We normally infer a large part of what is intended by the context, tone, etc.  If you had only the written transcription to rely upon, half the time you would never figure out what someone is saying -- not to mention all of the umms, hmmms, etc. interjected to pause for thought.

I think what Obama intended to say is pretty clear:  People are cynical and frustrated in the face of the seeming indifference of government and the unwillingness and/or inability of government to relieve the economic problems produced by global competition.  Rather than vote on those economic issues, which only reinforces the sense of helplessness as nothing ever seems to come of it, they vote on social and demographic issues about which they can then experience a greater sense of control, or they withdraw from politics altogether into a world that consists of family, church, and traditional pastimes like hunting.

But no one would say it that way in the course of making a campaign pitch.  Everyone would fall asleep because people do not speak that way.

The main point I got from Obama is that people feel helpless and bitter in response to government indifference to their economic woes and thus find it hard to vote on the basis of economic issues.

I think its pretty clear that he was talking about voting patterns.  He was saying people VOTE based on certain cultural issues when they feel that a voting on economic issues will not result in any positive change.  Basically, he was trying to express that if people have little faith that government will ADD something to their lives, they can at least prevent government fron TAKING something away from their lives, whether that be their guns, their culture or whathave you.

James Carville made a preposterous argument on Meet the Press that suggested Obama was saying that people turned to these ACTIVITIES as a result of the economy, which obviously is meant to make Obama look ridiculous siince guns and religion have been around for time in memoriam.  but, that is not what he was saying at all (and i suspect carville knew this).  He was clearly referring to voting patterns.  By the way, Carville let us know he has 8 guns (why do we care?).

Chait said:

"When politicians say they "misspoke," they usually said exactly what they meant but came to regret it. In this case, Obama really did misspeak."

Of course, Obama misspoke. How could he not have? He is no "regular" politician, so, therefore, he could not have meant what he said [if he did not mean what he said what does not one call that? Silly me, it is called 'misspeak']...

But as they say, those who live by their oratory will die by their oratory. It would be ironic for Obama to be done in because he "misspoke", considering how Chait et al have gone gaga over the Great Orator's oratory.

All of the above comments would make sense except for one thing; blue collar voters tend to vote for Democrats.

It is middle class and affluent voters who have been increasingly voting on the basis of cultural issues.

Obama's assertion that hard times leads to  bigotry (against immigrants and people "who do not look like them") among white, working class Americans is a lefty truism (that many liberals and Obama supporters obviously "cling" to), but is it the truth?

Political scientist Larry Bartels of Princeton, writing in Quarterly Journal of Political Science, offers some interesting findings:

(a) White working class voters identify more with Democrats on cultural issues and more with Republicans on economic issues

(b) the salience of social issues has increased over the past two decades but more so among whites with college degrees

(c) Frank's trend finds statistical support only in the South, where it has an obvious explanantion: Democratic "strength" was "artifically inflated" by segregation and Jim Crow, according to Bartels

The simple reality is this; affluent Americans today lead lives that are more and more isolated from working class people, of all races, while working class people are MUCH MORE likely to live and work in racially and ethnically diverse environments.

It's the prejudices of our increasingly isolated and out-of-touch elites that are creating real political problems -- for the Democrats and the nation at large.

.

esmense  said:

"Obama's assertion that hard times leads to  bigotry (against immigrants and people "who do not look like them") among white, working class Americans is a lefty truism (that many liberals and Obama supporters obviously "cling" to), but is it the truth?"

The assertion that hard times and a government that turns a blind eye on it lead to bigotry (against immigrants and people "who do not look like them") sounds to me like a page out of the Gospel according to Reverend Dr. Jeremiah...

Obama's comments make perfect sense in the context of a Marxian "false consciousness" analysis of voting patterns (see Bill Kristol's op ed piece in today's NYT). Such comments are perfectly appropriate in an undergraduate bull session or a meeting of the American Sociological Association, but not in a presidential campaign. It's a serious gaffe.

esmense said "The simple reality is this; affluent Americans today lead lives that are more and more isolated from working class people."

There is probably some truth in this, but I think it runs both ways.  Working class Americans today lead lives that are more and more isolated from affluent people too, across races.  Whether it's a friend's white father who didn't want to go to a wine tasting (even though he likes wine) because it was too posh (although he didn't use that term), or the ridicule that's put upon some urban African American youths for "acting white" when they care about school, the sorting out isn't always done by the elites.

Obama was doing something a candidate for president should try to avoid at all costs:  thinking out loud.  OK in a graduate seminar; perilous on the campaign trail.  In a graduate seminar, the professor might respond, "hmm, interesting observation, can you elaborate."  On the campaign trail, no one cares what you meant to say, they pounce,

By the way, I'm bitter, but I cling to my book collection.

Dan

The last few posts (i.e ... porterm, esmense, et al..) prove that you can find a study or theory to prove any damn thing you want.  I have an entire family full of folks in Indiana and Kentucky that believe that Unions are bad, Democrats want to take their guns, Faggots getting married will ruin the traditional family (of which they have had serial experiences with.....so much for "till death do us part":...), and those wetbacks and chinese are taking their jobs.  They could use some good union jobs but think that kills their entrepenarial spirit, even though the have never been successful entepreneurs.  They drive pick-up trucks with stickers plastered over their back window, under the gun rack, that say things like "America. Love it or Leave it!" (that one is old...) "Build a Wall" and "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve", and now they can add "I'm not Bitter" to their collection.  People who drive behind them on the highway will be forgven for doubting that last one though.

And, esmense, your fine little studies notwithstanding, they all listen to Rush Limbaugh religiously, vote Republican and think the government is the font of all evil and the big corporations are just great.  

Why would anyone need Kristol's weirdness when it's perfectly obvious to almost everyone on this thread except esmense and a couple of others that what Obama was saying has a real basis in fact?  We can disagree on the tactical quality of the remarks (low to disastrous, imo) but only with the wildest distortion can one turn Obama's language into an attempt to insult or denigrate the working-class people he was talking about.

Once again -- he wasn't saying anything that isn't clear to anyone with ears and eyes traveling around this country.  It's nothing to do with undergrad bull sessions and everything to do with trying to inject a bit of truth into politics.  And it may work, too.

The Bartels analysis is interesting, but it's difficult to relate to empirical observation and electoral results, so it's not a conclusive argument of any kind.  As Bartel's himself says, categories such as "working class," "middle class" and "rural" are elastic and can be pulled and stretched to substantiate different patterns in the data.

vanwurs --

I'm sorry you have such bigoted kin folk. I, on the other hand, come from a (very religious) working class family, with roots in small town Southwestern Missouri and Southern New Jersey, that encouraged me to march, with my church group, for civil rights with Dr. Martin Luther King as a teenager. Racial, ethnic and class based slurs were not allowed in my home. And I never heard a racist joke until I was in my 30s -- when, in a business meeting filled with highly educated, affluent and powerful men, it was told by the Harvard educated CEO of one of our region's, and the nation's, largest corporations.  Most of my close friends come from backgrounds similar to mine, and share similar values.

Is my experience "typical?" I don't know. Is my perspective more or less valid than yours? I don't think so. I just think it is a different perspective that arises from a different experience.

But, I have spent more time in more parts of this country than most Americans, and have associated with people at every level of society, and while I know that there is plenty of bigotry, of all sorts, in America, I also know this; bigotry is not determined by class or level of formal education. It is much more determined by breadth of experience (and many highly educated and affluent people can be quite limited in their experience), capacity for empathy, and moral character.

Perhaps if your relatives had a broader experience of the world they'd be less bigoted. But I would bet that whether they are experiencing good financial times or bad would not make a damn bit of difference to their bigotry.

the esmense and dcsungus just keep a wishin and a hopin that Obama will do something to sink himself and that they can help by trying declare that it has already happened.  BUT back in the real world, he floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee and the flat-footed, tin-eared Hillarious is the one who keeps sinking herself.  She attacks him, and she loses for it.  Just look at the polls!

What a godsend this guy is as a candidate.  My schadenfreud is in overdrive watching Hillary shoot one foot off, then the other, then try to swallow 'em whole -- and I get a great kick out of her cheering section too.  You know who you are:  pc, jacobt, nturner, esmsense , dschungu,  You're doing great work for Hillarious guys.  Too bad you are saddled with such a crummy candidate.

ironyroad --

No one is suggesting that Obama was "attempting" to offend anyone. What is being suggested is that the assumptions he made -- shared it seems by many on the left -- are offensive.

Esmense is exactly right.  Obama's comments belie cultural assumptions that are offensive to white working-class voters.  To my chagrin, Obama's gaffe comes too late for Hillary to derail his nomination.  But the Republicans--to great effect--will use Obama's comments to paint him as a condescending, pointy-headed liberal intellectual who doesn't share the values of average working Americans.  And the context of his remarks is particularly unfortunate: an intimate, off-the-record gathering of wealthy San Francisco donors.  Plus, Obama's smarty-pants, I'm-too-clever-by-half demeanor (see, e.g., his belittling reference to Hillary as Annie Oakley or his comment that Hillary is "likeable enough") will only further alienate working-class voters -- not to mention many Democratic and independent women who now support Hillary.

It was Hillary who suddenly starting talking about her hunting background.  Typical pandering Hillary.  And he made her look every bit as ridiculous as she is by calling attention to her new Annie Oakley persona.  The predictions about how Obama has hurt himself with "working-class" voters seem to have no basis in fact, just wishful thinking by those who do not wish him well.

It seems hard for the wonky bloggers in here to understand that how a politician connects with voters is not primarily a function of the words spoken.  It is a principally a matter of being able to make connections between one's own biography and theirs.  The "issues" and such are just the medium by which this is done.  You don't critique a Picasso bu saying that he should have used a little more blue in the lower section.  It is beside the point of the "work."   A campaign is a type of performance art where the electorate does the judging.  It has to be critiqued on that basis if the critique is to be meaningful.

esmense -- the question is not whether Obama's assumptions were offensive or not -- most people seem to be taking them in their stride precisely because they know that he wasn't being so -- but whether they were true or not, and if so, was it ok tactically to express that truth.  May I point out that your own arguments oscillate wildly between asserting that white rural/suburban working class voters deserted Democrats because of "elitists" like Obama and quoting Larry Bartels to suggest that they never deserted them at all.

Make up your mind!

Wait -- James Carville has guns, plural? Holy crap. I'm all for the right to bear arms, but him, I'm not so sure.

I do wish that more liberal-leaning folks would regard "gaining comfortable proficiency with guns" as one of the boxes they have to check early in their political careers. For one thing, it would lead to better gun-control legislation. For another thing, shooting an old-fashioned single-action revolver or a 1911-style semi-automatic pistol at a target range is hugely fun once you know what you're doing. And for another thing, the simple experience of taking a basic safety course and spending a few hours on the range learning to shoot offers a nearly unparalleled chance to mix with folks a beginning liberal-leaning politician would otherwise never meet.

The final advantage is that most conservative politicians are complete poseurs when it comes to guns. There is a huge opportunity for Democrats who can speak with confidence and understanding about firearms to destroy the GOP on the cultural side of the gun issue.

Isn't Obama foreshadowing the predictable list of appeals to basic fears McCain and the right (and evidently Hillary, if it suits her) are going to make to white working class folks during the recession--a recession that will be significantly worsening along about September?   Won't they be arguing that the problems of the working class are due not to an expensive, pointless war or laissez faire/bailout/no-bid attitude towards the private sector, but rather to illegal immigrants, (aka non-white folks), an "effete corps of impudent snobs that characterize themselves as intellectuals," liberals who are soft on crime, atheists, and people who want to take their guns away?

Sportdoc nails it.

Not quite, doc. "The problems of the working class" long predated "an expensive, pointless war" and your purported "laissez faire/bailout/no-bid attitude towards the private sector". To be exact, they've been around ever since the Japanese began to catch up with the US manufacturing sector in the early 1970s, and have far more to do with global competition than with any of the minor epiphenomena you cite. Including competition with 10+ million unskilled sh*t-wage laborers from Mexico.

Yes, we should redeploy the troops and redeploy the $$$ saved toward domestic uses. Sure, regulate the hedge funders, those same guys who give copiously to Obama, btw. But that's not the point here. _Neither party_ has tried in any meaningful way to address the core problem of our age, which is the eroding position of labor in a global economy. Obama doesn't have any credible program for that; neither does McCain. THe only solution is the difficult one: educate our people better, which means real school reform of the sort that neither Tweedledum nor Tweedledee will countenance.

I think Obama meant that Republicans have successfully made many working-class Americans feel like the government can't do anything to help them economically.  Thus, these people cling to issues such as Gun Rights and Cultural Issues that are typically championed by the Christian-right such as Abortion and gay-marriage.  Howard Dean made this same argument during his run for the White House.  Remember he would say that we need people to vote for health care, education, and jobs instead of voting on God, Gays, and Guns.  I think many democrats feel that these voters routinely vote against their own economic interests because of cultural issues.  

I agree with this assessment, but I also agree that Obama stated it very poorly.

Jonathan,

Brilliant. You're so right. Barack misspeaks, Hillary lies.

Ironyroad --

You are reading something into what I said that isn't there. I didn't say the working class was deserting the Democratic party because of "elitists." As you note, I didn't say they were deserting the party.

What I did say is that the nation's elite's -- meaning the influentional financial, political, media and academic elites, and their increasing isolation from the concerns and realities experienced by the nation's less affluent majority, is creating problems for the country (and the party.) And I do believe that is true -- that the result of their detachment from, lack of understanding of, and stereotypical thinking about, the broader American experience, coupled with their economic power, control of the political process and the media, has led, as it nevitably must, to bad politics and very bad policy.

It's not working class Pennsylvanians that are responsible for the crisis in our economy or the degradation of our political dialogue, after all.  

And the culture wars? That's a war among our elites.

Single working class people don't vote against their economic interests; single yuppies do. It's an open question whether MARRIED workign class people with children, voting Republican, are voting against their economic interests.

esmense writes:  "What I did say is that the nation's elite's -- meaning the influentional financial, political, media and academic elites, and their increasing isolation from the concerns and realities experienced by the nation's less affluent majority, is creating problems for the country (and the party.) And I do believe that is true -- that the result of their detachment from, lack of understanding of, and stereotypical thinking about, the broader American experience, coupled with their economic power, control of the political process and the media, has led, as it nevitably must, to bad politics and very bad policy."

Hm.  I see some ducking and weaving here.  But ok.  In that case, I'd point out that under your definition of "elites," the media and acdemic elites would probably be counted as liberal, and the financial and political elites as conservtive (irrespective of whether it really divides up so neatly, as there are clearly very influential right-of-center academics as well as some corporate and financial folks who are progressive).  The question would be, then, unless you're still on the Bartels trip, why regular white male suburban/rural voters have consistently preferred the Republican Party over the last 30 years or so.  I mean, if all you have is a choice between elites why go for the one that seems to be intent on destroying the American middle class?  Could it just possibly be the case that the one elite has been tactically very smart at making people think that they aren't really an elite but the other side are?

Ironyroad --

You are certainly correct that Conservative elites like to think of and present themselves as the salt of the earth, while liberal elites want everyone else to acknowledge how much more knowledgeable, creative and broad minded they are. Both perspectives are based in quite a bit of self-delusion. But the first delusion is probably more political serviceable, in a nation that still from time to time pays lip service to its (mostly former) equalitarian ideals, than the second. The fact is, conservative and liberal elites share a view of the world that is most often very similar -- both, for instance, have no respect for labor and see the working class as inferior bubbas and Bunkers -- without dignity or moral agency. The difference is how they use this perception politically.

Yes, the Republicans have been very good about exploiting cultural fears of various kinds to persuade the middle class that the Republican party has their interests at heart.  It is perfectly obvious to anyone who has a functioning brain and bothers to pay any attention at all that the Republican party is ENTIRELY devoted to the interests of the monied elite at the expense of every other interest of the nation and its people, be it defense, the economy, job opportunity, the environment, or non-corrupt government.  The modern Republican party is barely more than a criminal organization.

But down think that the Republicans invented these propaganda techniques.  There is long and ugly precedent to be found in the fascist regimes of the 20th century.  As to why people are vulnerable to this sort of manipulation, that's one for the social scientists.