The problem with his comments is not that people aren't bitter--of course they are. Myself, I'm hella-bitter! Instead, it's that this bitterness explains lack of support for gun control or opposition to gay marriage. This statement makes me question my support for him.

But then, Hillary's incessant and hypocritical carping about it brings me back home. She really missed an opportunity to take the high road--something that Obama (Tuzla) has been very good at.

Are they bitter? Of course some of them are bitter. do you think people who work for a company for 15 years, then find themselves unemployed facing the prospect of losing their home are going to feel optimistic? The operative word is SOME. Hell, I know a few bitter people myself, others have a sense of despair and hopelessness. I left America because the printing company that I worked for years, and was over 100 years old, was going under. I had the education and the freedom (since I was single at the time) to do something else. I have been in touch with many of my co-workers and many struggled for a long time afterwards (face it, printing is not a growth industry). I am one of the lucky ones to get out, but if I didn't, damn right I would be bitter to live a life of downward mobility.

Did Obama say anything factually, sociologically wrong? No. Should he have said it? No. But there it is, the only lesson for Obama is never trust that you are in a truly safe place to say the bitter truth because people will just get pissy about it.

Are people bitter? Come on Noam, don't you know any working class people?

The problem with Obama's statement wasn't that they are bitter, but what they do with that bitterness, i.e., pervert their religious faith with it or become racists against illegal immigrants or  delude themselves by going off on the firing range.

And on one point he's definitely factually wrong: it is perfectly logical for a working class voter to 1)be against illegal immigration (especially "green card amensty," which Obama promisses within 9 months of taking office) and 2) recognizing that the majority of unskilled/low-skilled illegal immigration comes from Latin America.  If the Dems really want to stir-up some bitterness, keep telling such voters that they are sinners for being against illegal immigration.  

You know what?  I'm bitter, and I work in a university.  Sometimes it just does you good to be bitter!

Many midwesterners have a knee-jerk defensive-ness about being talked about in anthropological terms by elites from the coasts.  Seems to me that adopting the language Obama did in front of a California audience is enough to raise the ire of many of us in the "flyover states" regardless of whether what he said is true.  I'm still voting for Obama in any case, but have to admit his remarks struck a nerve.  I hope he finds a way to limit the fallout.      

I commend ryanmacd for his usage of hella.  rep the bay!

On the actual subject tho, this whole argument just goes to show you that this primary season has fizzled out into pointlessness.  Debating whether an ambiguous multitude is bitter or not?  Come on. That's completely ridiculous to debate and impossible to answer.  Working class people are people.  Some are bitter, some aren't, some of the bitter ones have drifted towards extremism to relieve themselves, some haven't.  Unless someone has some magic poll (are you bitter?  Do you take out your anger by being a racist? lol) that answers these questions, we should move onto something meaningful, like what to make of Iraq's army purge.

People aren' "bitter", they're anxious, with good reason. They know our prosperity is in large measure borrowed, and that most US households have negative or minuscule net worth.

Look, the unemployment rate is still extremely low. Unemployment's not the main problem. The issue is the disconnect between our rhetorical self-image-- a prosperous, middle-class nation with some measure of security for adults and opportunity for their kids-- and the reality of junk-wage, junk-debt, junk-product ridden bread and circus economy that rides from asset bubble to asset bubble.

Neither party will focus on this fact, or the other hard facts, namely that our working class is atrociously educated, that it is not, as its members desperately wish to believe, part of a secure and prosperous "middle class", and that the only way forward is to fix the f***ing schools, already, reward work instead of lavishing benefits on those earning capital gains, and start investing in ourselves and our infrastructure.

I agree with ryanmacd that the problem with his statement lies in his assertion that widespread opposition to gun control and gay marriage are based upon bitterness.  My opposition to gun control is based upon an unhealthy obsession with pheasants and their tastiness.  When my bitterness requires an outlet, I prefer an extra hoppy IPA or reading blog comments from Hillary supporters.

Regardless of its accuracy, Obama's statement is far more provocative than the one Hillary made giving credit to LBJ for civil rights legislation, which, if I recall, Obama personally denounced and implied that it was racist. Given that, why shouldn't Hillary use Obama's statement against him? TNR's objections sound hollow and partisan.

"Many midwesterners have a knee-jerk defensive-ness about being talked about in anthropological terms by elites from the coasts."

True. But Obama is not from the coast, he's from the Midwest. And he's the least "elite" presidential candidate we've had since Grover Cleveland.

jeide11906:  Since when does gun control have anything to do with stopping people hunting pheasants, tasty or not?  Gun contol is about making it less easy for criminals and psychos to get guns and keeping dangerous battlefield weaponry where it belongs, not about restraining you in your campaign to get even with those pheasants!

ironyroad: Perhaps I should have qualified my remarks.  I agree that battlefield weaponry has no place in the world of pheasant hunting.  

I am also not against the registration of gun owners or requiring permits for certain types of weapons, or even states or municipalities like DC making a decision that a certain type of weapon is not appropriate for their respective jurisdictions.  The type of gun control that I am against is top-down national legislation that bans the ownership of certain classes of weapons that can be and often are enjoyed by law-abiding citizens in areas of the country where their use is more common and accepted than, say, Manhattan.  I know many people who hunt deer exclusively using pistols, for example.  

OK thanks jeidell -- a perfectly reasonable position to take.  Wish more folks would take it.

Rhubarbs,

The son of a Harvard-educated Kenyan and a bohemian amateur anthropologist mother who was raised in Indonesia and Hawaii and educated at Columbia and Harvard is Mr. Working Class?

Puh-leeeze...

r-ennis, provide that quote of Obama denouncing Hillary's statement about LBJ please. What? Can't find it? Then why make it up.

nturner, yeah we all know how rich Indonesia is, especially the Indonesia of 35 years ago. good lord, can you possibly say anything more stupid? Have you ever been to Indonesia? Or even Hawaii?

Blackton,

It's what set of circumstances brings one to Indonesia that matters!  

Obama's mother -- a hippie with the time, inclination and money to pursue her international whims -- will never secure for him the working class credibility he so needs.  That having been said, I lived in Vietnam for a while "finding myself" during college.  In this way, I guess I'm not so different from the not-so-"typical" white mother Obama had.  But my children won't ever be able to claim my time in Vietnam proves how poor, downtrodden, and working class I was.  Mrs. Dunham's son shouldn't be making that kind of claim either -- especially since that son spent his Hawaii years at the Punahou School, formerly known as Oahu College, a private, co-educational, nonsectarian college preparatory school located in Honolulu.

And Blackton... Before you call me "stupid" again, you should probably think twice about what such a denigration of my intelligence does to yours in turn.  I'd put my intellectual gifts up against yours any day of the week, so if I'm "stupid," what does that make you?

People don't like to think of themselves as bitter and they don't like to think of their religion and big-picture political interests as release valves for their thwarted or stillborn hopes for meaningful civic participation.  It's the other brand of political incorrectness, but it offends people who vote in large numbers so it gets a lot of respect.

blackton:

He called the remark "unfortunate" (at the same time he denied commenting on it): firstread.msnbc.msn.com/.../574170.aspx

The complete quote -- saying she offended "some folks" (Obama? Surprise, he doesn't say!)

"She made an unfortunate remark about Martin Luther King and Lyndon Johnson,” he said. “I haven't remarked on it. And she offended some folks who thought she diminished the role about King and the civil rights movement. The notion that this is our doing is ludicrous.”

Did I somewhere miss Obama claiming that he raised himself up by chopping wood (an Illinois tradition)?

As the Hillarista revanchism grows ever more desperate, we increasingly hear the Hillaristas taking Obama to task for things he has never said.

Let me have a say from southern Illinois, a place that Senator Obama probably knows more about than most if not all the commentors here.  He has made more visits to this area than Mosley-Braun and Fitzgerald, his predecessors, did combined.  

I have had not one but two factories close under me in the last 8 years and I am rather bitter about it.  The language from the management is not you all are incompetent, it is we have to move to where we can stay competitive in the labor market - ie away from unions, overseas etc.  

Figuring out what to do about this is what is required, and ever lower prices is probably not it.

This is up on Hillary's website as her new campaign theme song:

______________________________________________________________________________

As soon as you're born they make you feel small

By giving you no time instead of it all

Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all

A working class hero is something to be

A working class hero is something to be

They hurt you at home and they hit you at school

They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool

Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules

A working class hero is something to be

A working class hero is something to be

When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd years

Then they expect you to pick a career

When you can't really function you're so full of fear

A working class hero is something to be

A working class hero is something to be

Keep you doped with religion and sex and tv,

And you think you're so clever and you're classless and free,

But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see,

A working class hero is something to be

A working class hero is something to be

There's room at the top they are telling you still

But first you must learn how to smile as you kill

If you want to be like the fool on the hill

A working class hero is something to be

A working class hero is something to be

A working class hero is something to be

A working class hero is something to be

If you want to be a hero, well just follow me

nturner -- nobody was saying that Obama's background has made him "working-class" and "downtrodden."

Let's be clear on this.

What most people are saying is that his background doesn't make him a member of a social or moneyed elite, which is the explicit or implied accusation now coming from Clinton and the Republicans.

Obama's upbringing gave him some disadvantages -- psychological perhaps, to do with his father disappearing and the different homes he had -- but, yes, also some advantages, such as an ability to connect with a diverse spectrum of people and a capacity to see things from different perspectives.

But anything "elite" about him (Columbia, Harvard Law) has, as far as one knows, been attained by his own hard work and focus and talent.  It seems to be to be next to insane to demand that someone show qualities all Americans admire (ambition, effort etc) and then, when those qualities take them places, we turn on them and accuse them of being "elite," "out of touch" etc.

This term "elite" has become a Republican/conservative weapon to beat down Democrats and progressive politics, and anyone who cares about electing Democrats in November shouldn't be keeping it alive.  Or, if you want to use it, start using it to describe the tax-protected super-rich who have been raking it in for a decade.

blackton, I like your example and second your follow up comments from your first post above, Noam needs to get out more.

I've been scouting some sites in my home state for a potential project for a group.  Although I do enjoy a drive in the countryside on a regular basis, lately I've been bringing up the economy in various ways when I stop at a convenience store to get gas, or some other shop in a small town selling related items to what ever location I'm in, just to see what people have to say.

At one of the first convenience stores  I jumped in on, I got an earful from the young woman behind the counter.  Since gas has gone over three dollars a gallon, drive-offs have risen sharply (drivers that fill up and drive off before paying, to be clear).  In fact, it's become a criminal occupation with multiple players according to this woman.  These players now steal plates from other cars, place the stolen plates on their cars, and when caught, patrolmen find that the plate number doesn't match the description and so on.  Officers have told her that the problem is wide-spread (I didn't pursue this, county-wide, multi-county etc), but diffuse, so it's been hard to investigate.  Her comments were to the effect that too much of this activity will shut the store down as _someone_ has to pay for the gas, which of course means the convenience store..

Now, I'm guessing that if you asked any of the thieves if they'd describe themselves as bitter, they'd say 'no'.  They're getting cheap gas, why worry.  But if their actions don't speak for themselves, people that when gas is something they feel they can pay for do so and not otherwise turn into thieves because now they can't, then I don't know what bitter is.

1. Screw over working people with anti-labor policies, pro corporate trade and immigration policies while simultaneously degrading the social safety net and implementing shockingly regressive tax policies.

2. Scream 'CLASS WAR' at people who point out #1.

3. When working people feel down about the fact that they can't properly provide for their families, tell them to blame taxes/negroes/mexicans/gays.

4. Flatter screwed working people by explaining to them their sense of patriotism and rugged individualism.

5. Tell working people that the 'class war' team are elite french pussies who hate america and love blacks .

6. Return to step 1.

What's really pernicious is now those game players largely inhabit the top echelon of our national media. My hat's off to Bill Kristol, the elite of the elite, the screwer of the screwed, for having the balls to call Obama an uppity Marxist. Wow, good for him.

And yes, only SOME members of the working class will buy this line that a lot of the GOP has been selling, but they have been selling it, and selling it hard for a long time. It obviously must work for some of the people some of the time, or they wouldn't bother.

McCain's wife is really really really poor, she doesn't have any money at all, and McCain himself lives in a log cabin and eats beans.

Mmathog has pretty much nailed it. The most successful formula since Original Coke.

Oh, and what that means is that the working class whites who vote GOP aren't just bitter, they're also stupid.

PS: Obama, you can't say THAT, either.

sully, right. a kinsley gaffe.

nturner, I didn't say you were stupid, just your comment was. And it was since you implied that living in Indonesia was an example (somehow) of elite living. Umm...generally bohemian people are below working class, so you are saying people who are below working class is somehow above working class, well that is just stupid (and Barack had to live with his grandparents for a time due to financial straits, attending private school on scholarship) pretty much defines anyone bona fides, at least as far as his own childhood is concerned. Hell, the same is true for Hillary too. And he was a child in Indonesia, forced to go to a school that spoke Indonesian. It is a hell of a lot different from being a college age person bumming around Asia.

And who the hell are you to say he needs anything? He is beating Hillary, and due to the economy and Iraq is very likely to win in November. McCain's only chance is to run as a conservative Democrat.

Beyond that, his winning the Democratic nomination earns him the right to lose in November. Them is the breaks. The sooner you deal, the better you will feel.

You know, if you've been passed over in Massachusetts and New Jersey and California, and then you've fallen through Ohio and Texas, and all you have to look forward to is Pennsylvania and Indiana, then you are bound to get bitter. You find yourself clinging to angry versions of religion, following the advice of ministers who encourage racial hatred, and talking about how the second amendment protects gun ownership. You might even take up bowling.

pc,

That's a lovely idea!  I think you should take up bowling.  It will relieve your frustration at the outcome of the Democratic primaries.  Keep active.  It will help.

pc, you and your boyfriend pat buchanan both tried the same rhetorical trick, suggesting that it would be outrageous if someone said that black churches are filled with bitter people who cling to religion because they're pissed off.  Of course, that would be yet another true statement that's unworthy of manufactured outrage.

regarding Texas, I'm not familiar with the term,  "falling through"  Does that mean, "winning a majority of pledged delegates" like Obama did (99 is a bigger number than 94)?

Do you guys still disagree with my characterization of him as smug and arrogant?

Does any of you have any idea what it is this man really believes in, and is willing to fight for, when it comes to free trade UHC foreign policy aff action tax policy Mexico/immigration race's role in today's America?

Ball's in your court now. IOW it's up to the Obama-worshippers to convince us that Obama is not a mystery man whose beliefs and character assume whatever outlines his silver tongue deems it necessary to shape them into in order to make his audience swoon.

ps again, idonotsupportHillaryidonotsupportHillaryidonotsupportHillaryidonotsupportHillary

To tell you the truth, tep, I for one don't really give a damn about the specifics of Obama's policy positions or what he is "going to fight for."  The policy platforms of presidential candidates are never translated into policy for a host of reasons.  Public opinion, opposition from the other party, regional differences, and the serendipity of what happens in the world that diverts the course of the agenda.

I am convinced that Obama is a genuine man of the left and a convinced Democrat because that is the life he has lived.  I am far less convinced that Hillary is a genuine progressive.  I think he has more than enough brains to sort through the welter of conflicting advice he will receive as president.  I think he has the political talent to shape public opinion and to move his political opponents out of his way with the least resistance.  I think his political gifts give him the best shot to win the White House for the Democratic party.

That's all I really need to know.  The rest is just window-dressing, and he's doing a pretty decent job of that too if the results of the primaries, caucuses, and polls are any evidence.

M. le Roi -  he won't make these decisions in his ivory tower. His options will be constrained by the shape of the particular coalition that he assembles, and that coalition, at this point, is the kind of schizoid white liberal overeducated yuppie + poor and low-income afr-american coalition that you find in Hyde Park, Berkeley-Oakland etc and nowhere else. Beyond that, his support is paperthin, and I don't think it will enable him to ride out the really tough decisions that he will have to make in the coming sh*tstorm(s).

I'd share your confidence in the ability of his core character to carry him past the inevitable collapse of his coalition of the glamor-worshippers If the man had shown a level of spine and orneriness that you see in a Bobby K or a Truman or, heck, your average tough east coast Irish pol (Biden, Dodd, O'Neill, Teddy K, Moynihan).

But I'm sorry, I just don't see much in the way of toughness beneath the glib patter, the cool and smug manner. I respect your views and hope you're right, but my gut instincts here tell me this will not end well.

rgds,

t

Blackton,

The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy defines "bohemian" as follows:  "A descriptive term for a stereotypical way of life for artists and intellectuals. According to the stereotype, bohemians live in material poverty because they prefer their art or their learning to lesser goods; they are also unconventional in habits and dress, and sometimes in morals."  

Perhaps the term is not perfect, but it surely captures a lot of Ms. Dunham's class -- which was anything but "working class."  

So, I'll repeat what I said before:

The son of a Harvard-educated Kenyan and a bohemian amateur anthropologist mother who was raised in Indonesia and Hawaii and educated at Columbia and Harvard is Mr. Working Class?

Puh-leeeze...

"Do you guys still disagree with my characterization of him as smug and arrogant?"

Yes, I think Obama's kinda uppity also, but no, I don't think he's nearly as arrogant as McCain.

Also Tep, you bitch constantly about taxes while being weirdly ignorant of the fact that taxes=racism in american politics. I don't think you're a racist, but I do think it's weird for you to bitch about taxes when you thought the Iraq War was teh awesome.

Definitely nturner, vote McCain, like I said above, is wife is impoverished and he himself lives in a cabin and eats beans.

Not that it matters that much, but Obama clearly grew up under relatively modest means, but no, he wasn't starving, whatever.

Why the fuck is it always about people's feelings... I mean jesus, churchill was an asshole, who cares.

I  know what McCain will do, destroy the country.

I know what HRC will do, be semi-progressive but also sell out the party to DLC values while perhaps accomplishing nothing substantive.

I think Obama will do better than both.

But who, nturner, ever claimed that Obama was "working class?"  You give new meaning to the notion of setting up a straw man to knock down.  Is Hillary "working class?"  McCain?  Bush?

So is Rep. Geoff Davis racist or not?

polwatchers.typepad.com/.../davis-apologize.html

Or is this vein of racism that runs a mile deep and a mile wide in the Republican Party going to continually be ignored, and when exposed, written off as just another gaffe, something to die in one news cylce?

Yes. We need to stay on Obama's case.

Will McCain condemn Geoff Davis....Jefferson Davis...Kentucky families can be quite clever...or wiill he spend more time on Obama's misstatements? That's an easy one.

Mitch McConnell was in attendance when Davis called Obama "boy" - any word from McConnell??

I'm not sure what Obama's supporters expect he's going to accomplish if he wins.  We're in recession with a budget deficit, with little room left to cut interest rates.  People have already tapped a lot of their personal assets (refinanced their mortgages, charged up their credit cards, etc.).  To paraphrase John Adams, "starve the beast" is a stubborn thing.

Here's what he'll do: he'll set a pull-out date in Iraq and slowly begin to pull troops, he'll reverse the Bush tax cuts and help set the budget back to sanity but not right away, he'll tweak energy and environmental polcies for the better, and unfortunatley he will live up to his pledge to pass "green card amnesty"within 9 months (unless he's suffered an early-Clinton-administration meltdown by then) and do more to harm the African-American underclass than most Republicans.  I think Israel supporters should be concerned: between Iraq and high oil prices, he will be under immense pressure to show "evenhandness" on Israel and pretty much everyone in his foreign policy brain trust that violates the campaign's gag order points in that direction.  

nturner -- as I noted above, and as you completely ignored on your way to raise the same straw man we knocked down earlier:  NOBODY was saying that Obama's background has made him "working-class" or "downtrodden."

Let's be real clear on this.

What people are saying is that his background doesn't make him a member of a social or moneyed elite, which is the explicit or implied accusation now coming from Clinton and the Republicans.

Obama's upbringing gave him some disadvantages -- psychological perhaps, to do with his father disappearing and the different homes he had -- but, yes, also some advantages, such as an ability to connect with a diverse spectrum of people and a capacity to see things from different perspectives.

But anything "elite" about him (Columbia, Harvard Law) has, as far as one knows, been attained by his own hard work and focus and talent.  It seems to be to be next to insane to demand that someone show qualities all Americans admire (ambition, effort etc) and then, when those qualities take them places, we turn on them and accuse them of being "elite," "out of touch" etc.

I was kind of hoping that Obama would take his unfortunate characterization of the God, guns people and use it to connect. It would seem that he does indeed have a conception which will not sit well with these 'townies'.

There is a tangible reality which these folks shoulder. It has more to do with pride and what constitutes pride than any economic gains or opportunities available. There is no acceptable wage or payoff which can buy these folks out of their convictions. Independence and freedom are not negotiated in Philosophy 101 or a government program.

Brothers and sisters. Strip me of everything I own and it gets pretty basic. I find myself looking at a basic truth. I'm still a man. I still retain my dignity by virtue of God given inheritance and station. I'll trade my labor if I must for a morsel. But don't let that labor allow you to think you now own my soul. You may wish to think I am kissing your ass but that is your problem. I have my life and if the only honor which I might carve out is freedom and its defense I'll find a way to make it happen. I consider God, freedom, dignity an experiential truth to be non-negotiable. If I serve this well I can live and die with good conscience.

These things cannot be approached easily in political terms these days given the zeit-geist. This doesn't make them any less real.

"Independence and freedom are not negotiated in Philosophy 101 or a government program."

Indeed not, but neither are they created in a corporate boardroom or made real by wearing a lapel pin.

lymon, I don't expect anything from Obama, or even from McCain. Just no more Bush will keep me happy for at least a year. As to the rest, we are screwed for a while, until at least 2011 before the economy starts to turn around, and not until 2020 until a new wave of prosperity takes hold, until then it is going to be a bumpy ride regardless of the President.

blackton -- true, however if the next president panders and sacrifices long term expansion for short term pain relief, that "new wave of prosperity" is going to look more like the waves on Lake Champlain than the waves the surfers hunt in Hawaii.  

'That doesn't excuse the way Obama expressed himself.' Noam, does Obama's comment really need excusing? I know this doesn't mean much in how these things play politically, but Obama is obviously elite--Columbia, Harvard Law Review, University of Chicago Lecturer, a good writer and speaker. These are good things. The President should be much smarter than most people, and this is bound to create something of a gap between him and the electorate writ-large. Presidents, if they are not corrupt, must attempt to empathize with and understand people very different from them. In a country as big and diverse as America--visit New York and then rural North Dakota and try to make a generalization about the country--this is well nigh impossible to do without the occasional slip. As you show, what Obama said wasn't even necessarily wrong, just tactless. Clinton's strategy is tactful but wrong, presenting herself as Middlebrow personified, a person who leads the crowd where it was already going. It's a shameful thing for an aspiring head of state. I'll take occasionally upsetting sincerity--and really, given their reaction, rural folk seem disturbingly sensitive if not actually bitter--over Clinton's practiced condescension any day.

lymon, my assumption for the next wave is technology based, if we go hydrogen and alternative fuels then it will be lights out for the middle east. The President is almost irrelevant for such trends. Look at the evolution of the PC, can you name one President who has had any impact on it? And the internet was military, again pretty much irrelevant to the President.

mmathog: "taxes = racism in US politics" ? wtf?

I just want a serious debate on rationalizing our rube goldberg tax code. I'd like to see (my, everyone else's) productive WORK not be penalized ie treated differently from collecting capital gains.

Is that so wronnnngggg?

blackton, at least to date that's been a false prophet.  People have scrambled to find the "magic bullet" for energy since the early 1970's (the patent office even gives priority to examination of energy-related inventions) and where are we?  And look at this week's news about biofuels -- they're causing starvation and civil unrest around the world.  Given this history, one can't put "energy independence through science" on a 4 year timetable!  

Second, there's a time lag in waiting for private industry (or the military) to save the day -- we're at war and we're funding our enemies.  The best strategy for Iran would be to depress their oil income while offering economic incentives to any moderate government that arises there.

PS -- on Tep's point on taxes, I'm far from convinced that most flat tax plans out there (which don't tax the first $???? amount of income) aren't more progressive than the convoluted tax code we have now.  

Oops, I should have said 12 year timetable -- (2020 - 2008 =...) My bad!

Tep, there's nothing wrong with a debate on taxes, they are too complicated (everyone agrees) and too regressive (most dems agree).

You've always had this blissful ignorance wrt recent american presidential political history, it's kind of shocking, e.g., you don't realize what a cornpone racist campaign Reagan rested his rise on.

On the issue of taxes=racism in American politics, I refer you to Lee Atwater's deathbed confessions. Super long story short, as the 60s and 70s and 80s passed, the Southern strategy had to move from overt ('welfare queens') to more covert ('willie horton') racist appeals.

'Tax cuts' became the main substitute codeword for ('dirty blacks taking your money') in the late 80s and early 90s ('tough on crime' is another). You don't have to believe me, you can refer to the man who ran these campaigns, Lee Atwater.

You can agree or disagree, but it would behoove you to alert yourself to this portion of modern american history.

lymon, fair enough about the dates, but not the inevitability of it. I am guessing 2020 for the start of it since that was the projections I have read before fuel cell cars become commercially viable. Obviously your mileage (year wise) may vary.

Different century, mmathog. That was over 20 years ago, fer chrissake. Taxes remain a crucial issue, even after all the racial epiphenomena have fallen away. Case in point: we now have probably 10 million + yuppie afr-amer households, an afr-amer woman billionaire who until recently had one of the highest Q ratings in the US entertainment industry, and a large cadre of powerful afr-amer CEOs, investors, four star generals, Sec State and NSA officials etc.

Mr Atwater, he dead. I've no idea why you want to revisit the era of our worst defeats, anyway. Let it go. Different century now.

What Atwater thought was of his own devices. Whether what he believed was manifest as an objective reality is an open question. One might consider the possibility of condescension to wring through even among your adversarial faithful. Not just Democrats. His confessions may have been what he thought took place when in truth reality dictated a different conclusion exclusive of the narrow consraints of identity politics.

mmathog and irony. This much I know and make no bones....I rarely see squarely with your sentiments. You are relentlessly Napoleonic in your own special ways.

boxo, you may well be my Waterloo, if not my Austerlitz.

Well boxo, there's serious debate as to whether Reagan/Atwater's tactics were effective, but they did employ them, they did it for a reason, and they did win.

Tep, I agree that black racism as an issue is fading in this country (Obama's own rise and dramatic attitude shifts regarding miscegenation are testimonies to that fact). But as much as I'd like to believe in your kumbaya view of race relations in America, I'll believe it when I see it.

My beef with you Tep is you clamor for a massive health care plan, a comprehensive immigration policy, you supported the Iraq invasion, and yet you've chosen to hammer the only black candidate as being both 'smug and arrogant' and as someone who might 'raise your taxes.'

I didn't see you bitching about taxes when Edwards was a candidate. I didn't see any comments about Guiliani being 'smug an arrogant' when he was a candidate (has there been, in American history, a more ambitious, more smug, more arrogant candidate than Guiliani?)

It pisses me off.

Because Edwards has the guts and honesty to say, "I'll raise your taxes, and here's what I'll spend the money on. I'm a populist, and what you see is what you get." With Obama, it's what you see is what you want to see, and he's cool with that. Want me to be a lefty? OK, I"m a lefty! A populist anti-free trader? You got it. A yuppie pro-free trader? WInk wink, nudge nudge-- done!

Obama refuses to show even minimal respect for his audience. If he's a liberal, FINE. A DLCer? That's fine, too. But just stop BS'ing us with this now-you-see-it, now-you-don't dance on trade, race, everything except the one issue, IMHO, where we actually should listen to both sides and work out a middle-of-the-road compromise, Iraq.

Ok, now we're getting somewhere...

"Obama refuses to show even minimal respect for his audience."

I would bet a ton of cold hard cash that the majority of Obama supporters would cite, as their #1 or at worst #2 reason, that the reason they support Obama is the fact that he shows incomparable respect for his audience. You go to an event (or listen to a major speech about race) and his trust in his audience's intelligence is unparalleled.

"But just stop BS'ing us with this now-you-see-it, now-you-don't dance on trade, race, everything except the one issue,...."

Clinton has pandered at least as much, and neither of them has pandered even vaguely as much as John McCain. Obama has pandered a lot too, he hardly stands out here though.

I think Obama's problem is that he can't, as a BLACK MAN, run as an 'angry populist.' It would be instant political suicide (he also probably really isn't one... was Edwards? Maybe.) However, he wants to 'change' America and the Democratic Party, we've had 3 consecutive DLC candidates (counting HRC), how/why would he run as a 4th?

You seem far more willing to pick on Obama for a politician's sins than you are any of his competitors, that said, I agree that it's hard to pin him down and his main political act is to get others to project their desires onto him.

"I think Obama's problem is that he can't, as a BLACK MAN, run as an 'angry populist."

Maybe you're right, but I don't see that liberal values have to be accompanied by an "angry as hell" posture. These are valid ideas. They should be offered and debated like any other set of ideas and policies, and I just don't see Obama as more persuasive, more thoughtful, or to be honest more effective, in advancing those ideas than any number of intelligent and vastly more experienced liberal champions on the scene. Barney Frank, Ron Wyden, Feingold, even Paul RIP Wellstone: all of them are/were more effective at persuading people than Obama is.

I confess that the politics and parsing of race, post-race, retro-race etc bores me sh*tless. I just don't care about his or anyone's race. It's not relevant here. And I'd be willing to bet you any sum that a much higher % of NON-college educated people than college-educated ones share my POV on this. Like them, I don't want yet another (I count at least ten in my lifetime) "national dialogue on race."

Especially when same is nothing more than a gambit created on the fly by a candidate trying desperately to redirect public attention away from his stepping in the shit of a race issue created by his willful decision to relabel himself "black" by associating with a Black Power Theologian "spiritual mentor".

"However, he wants to 'change' America and the Democratic Party, we've had 3 consecutive DLC candidates (counting HRC), how/why would he run as a 4th?"

See my comments about WYSI *N* WYG with Obama. To you he's a left-lib; to millions of moderates, he seems like a centrist. I think this kind of deliberate refusal to tease the voters into believing that you agree with them is bad for the Republic. If he's a lefty then he should have the class an guts to say so, to point to his record, and then set about PERSUADING people to adopt his viewpoints. That's how you build a political movement, and political support for institutions, that has real legs.

That's what the conservatives did, successfully, from 1964-1980. They argued for ideas, gave those ideas a name, and set about building insitutions that transcended the glamour of one man and his smile. Reagan didn't pretend to be moderate (even though on many issues he actually wasn't very conservative). He said he was running to shrink the size of govt, roll back Soviet COmmunism, and restore pride in America and "moral values." WYSIWYG.

What, other than "withdrawal" from Iraq, is Obama's big idea? Why, other than his belief that he can scamper through a window of opportunity created by Bush's incompetence, is he running right now?

Again, to be absolutely clear, if he is running to articulate and promote a left-lib agenda, THAT'S FINE by me. But he needs to tell people that's what he's about, and start persuading people rather than gliding by on charm and glib patter.

Appreciate the dialogue, as always,

t