BitterClingElitistGate

Last week Barack Obama violated fundamental political law. In a speech given to already smug San Franciscans, Barack denigrated voters in Pennsylvania which the following, deliciously repeatable sound bite:

“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.”

In a mere three sentences he offended, with a jaw-droppingly precise combination of blatant and implied generalizations, an entire state a mere week before they held a crucial primary. The most offensive part of the statement can be debated ad infinitum. Maybe it was the (hopefully unintended) implication that religion is a negative force that serves as a crutch to the weak (a la Jesse Ventura). Maybe it was that he reinforced the stereotype that Pennsylvanians (and all working class states by association) are gun-toting psychopaths. Or maybe when he insinuated that they’re racist isolationalists.

I don’t personally believe Obama intended any of these negative connotations; call me delusional or hopelessly naïve (or how about hypocritical – would I show such grace towards Clinton or McCain? Hard to say). He made the mistake of forgetting his role as Barack Obama, public official in the spotlight of a vigilant media, and slipping into his role as Professor Obama. He’s done it before (which explains his largely unsuccessful history on the debate circuit) and will undoubtedly do it again. In this instance, he was lecturing as a detached, disinterested anthropologist assessing the struggles of a beleaguered people. He was speaking as if they were a historical case study, long ago undone by economic forces and internal strife. This approach has worked when he has spoken of the African American community, but there is a major difference: his identity is linked with the black community, and when he offers assessments of the tribulations they face he speaks as an insider. When he philosophizes on rural Pennsylvania, he becomes an outsider judging their values and lifestyle (never mind that he is just as much Kansan as he is Kenyan).

But in the end, Barack Obama was merely being honest. He was giving his Harvard educated opinion of an important voting bloc. Unfortunately, in our leaders we rarely desire honesty. We want to be placated, justified. We want leaders to have a beer with us while they tell us who to blame. We want leaders to suffer with us as members of the proletariat, not leaders who deign to step in front and (image that) lead.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on perspective), Barack’s blunder had seemingly minimal effect on the Pennsylvania voters (the primary went largely as predicted, with Clinton riding a wave of old people and uneducated people to a 55% to 45% victory).

The real story here is that Obama’s speech unmasked him as (spoiler alert!) somewhat of an elitist.

And I say: Of course he is. What of it?

All presidential candidates are, by necessity of the position they put themselves in, elitists. They need to believe that they know what’s best for you and I, that they understand our interests better than we do (whether they actually do or not is another issue). They have spent years in high government having their egos inflated by pushy lobbyists and spineless yes-men. Did you know that Senators don’t even pay for postage? Don’t get me started on the postal service, an obsolete, archaic organization that should be done away with, but still, they don’t pay for postage! How bourgeoisie is that? These people are pomp-machines kept afloat on delusions of grandeur. As much as I hate to be the one to shatter any perceptions of the politician-next-door: they think that they’re better than you.

What’s sad is not that our politicians are elitists who think we’re dumb and need to be pandered to. The real tragedy is that (warning: generalization) we ARE dumb and DO need to be pandered to. So Hillary Clinton shot a gun once as a child and Barack Obama spent some time living in Kansas and John McCain served in the Navy. Does this really qualify any one of them as an “everyman?” Do we imagine they can connect with the average American because they go to church sometimes (when the media is present) or have visited a farm in Iowa or because they held a baby in the projects on a press junket and can honestly say that they went slumming once too?

Look at the numbers: McCain’s wealth is somewhere in the $25 million range, and this doesn’t include his wife’s estimated $100 million fortune. The Clintons pulled in $20 million in 2007, and have an accumulated estate of $50 million. The Obamas, poverty stricken by comparison, made $4 million in 2007 alone. These people will never understand what it means to live without medical insurance or worry about paying $4 a gallon for gas. Yet we allow them to commiserate with us.

We’re fools for buying into it time and again. The biggest knock on Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004 was perceived elitism. Their values were out of touch with America. They were incapable of speaking to the masses. Never mind that Bush was an oil-baby and Yale graduate. His muddled thinking and tenuous grasp of the English language were proof enough that he was our buddy, our pal.

This is the game the Republicans understand so much better than the Democrats. They recognize that we don’t want a well-spoken, privately warm but publicly unapproachable aristocrat. No, we want someone who will show us where to point the finger, someone who will arouse our greatest fears, someone who will get our blood boiling.

As a result, the Republican Party has hijacked the vote of a group of people that they (by all reasonable measures) despise. The Republicans are the elitists offering tax breaks to the uber-wealthy and asylum to major corporations, denying health care to the masses, exporting jobs, throwing our hard-earned money at unwinnable wars. Yet they dominate the southern blue-collar belt. They oppress, and the people love them for it.

I liked Cassel’s summation in last week’s post: “It's not that Republicanism or Conservatism is such a horrible ideology. It's that those who represent this ideology (the current admin.) have failed miserably to manifest the foundations of the politically Conservative ideal that it is supposed to stand for!” Speaking personally, the liberal revolution I underwent over the course of several years could be fairly judged as reactionary. I was simply tired of the Republicans so smugly taking my vote (along with the votes of my family, friends, etc.) for granted while doing everything in their power to deprive me of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

I by no means believe the Democratic Party has all the answers. They promise new programs without offering any plan on how they’re going to pay for them, showing themselves to be either A) delusional or B) lying, pandering snakes. They see American opinion has turned against the war in Iraq, so they threaten to immediately withdraw our troops with nary a thought to global consequences. They show their extreme, inexplicable hypocrisy by decrying capital punishment while supporting the termination of unborn children. How can you claim injustice when a psychopathic criminal is executed, yet be perfectly comfortable “executing” an unborn baby that has not even had a chance to sully its innocence? I’m not advocating a stance on either issue; I’m just saying it’s inconsistent.

I freely admit these criticisms; now let’s admit that the Republican Party is not what it claims to be. If they stand for less government, why do they push so hard to regulate abortion and homosexual marriage? (again, not espousing a position one way or the other on the issues; I’m just saying it’s, once again, extremely hypocritical) They say they’re about conservative spending, but let’s talk about the costs of multiple wars and pork-barrel projects (Ted Stevens’ “Road to Nowhere” and Don Young’s “Coconut Road” to name two recent examples). And as with the democrats, they’re stance on the sanctity of life is wildly inconsistent.

Cassel suggests that “The right is simply not working, so let’s try the left.” But what if that’s not good enough? Why will politics as usual be any better?

So I propose a third party. A party that is actually in touch with American values and concerns, a party that follows a consistent ideology and works tirelessly to realize a vision of global peace, prosperity and enlightenment. I submit to you, dear readers, the Zizzle-Zotian United People's Party (ZZUPP).

As the first order of business, I’d like to announce my candidacy to become the President of the United States of America. Unfortunately, there’s some silly, arbitrary rule that I need to be 35 to become president, so I’ll spend the next 12 years launching ruthless smear campaigns against every American born man, woman and child. By the time 2020 rolls around, I’ll be the only viable candidate.

Applications for Vice President will be taken immediately.

Thanks for reading