Obama's So-Called Gaffe II (Updated)

It's a gaffe only in the sense of letting slip a truth most people think to radioactive to state in public.  From Mahablog:

It always amuses me when upper-class people with power and privilege start screeching about “elitism.” Today all manner of political, media and blogging elites — people with advanced degrees who’ve never been to a tractor pull in their lives — are snorting about elitism because Barack Obama said something that anyone with a real redneck background knows to be true — working-class, small-town whites feel left behind, bitter and frustrated.

This remark allegedly is an insult to working-class, small-town whites in Pennsylvania. I have a different perspective. Granted, my background is southern Missouri small-town working-class white, rather than Pennsylvania small-town working-class white, and there are subtle cultural distinctions between the two. While I may have kinfolk in half the trailer parks in the Ozarks, I admit that doesn’t qualify me to speak for Pennsylvanians. But over the past forty or so years small-town, working-class white America has been living through the shared experience of diminishing opportunity combined with increasing financial instability.

In community after community, the old factory or mining jobs that sustained the local economy are gone. Forty years ago, young folks left high school, signed on to jobs that paid Union-obtained wages and benefits, and looked forward to all the trappings of American middle-class affluence — homes, new cars, trips to Disney World. Now the bright young people move away to cities, and those who remain in the small towns sustain themselves — barely — by flipping hamburgers or cashiering at Wal-Mart. Read more.

UPDATE: From someone who was at the San Francisco fundraiser:

At the end of Obama's remarks standing between two rooms of guests -- the fourth appearance in California after traveling earlier in the day from Montana -- a questioner asked, "some of us are going to Pennsylvania to campaign for you. What should we be telling the voters we encounter?"

Obama's response to the questioner was that there are many, many different sections in Pennsylvania comprised of a range of racial, geographic, class, and economic groupings from Appalachia to Philadelphia. So there was not one thing to say to such diverse constituencies in Pennsylvania. But having said that, Obama went on say that his campaign staff in Pennsylvania could provide the questioner (an imminent Pennsylvania volunteer) with all the talking points he needed. But Obama cautioned that such talking points were really not what should be stressed with Pennsylvania voters.

Instead he urged the volunteer to tell Pennsylvania voters he encountered that Obama's campaign is about something more than programs and talking points. It was at this point that Obama began to talk about addressing the bitter feelings that many in some rural communities in Pennsylvania have about being brushed aside in the wake of the global economy. Senator Obama appeared to theorize, perhaps improvidently given the coverage this week, that some of the people in those communities take refuge in political concerns about guns, religion and immigration. But what has not so far been reported is that those statements preceded and were joined with additional observations that black youth in urban areas are told they are no longer "relevant" in the global economy and, feeling marginalized, they engage in destructive behavior. Unlike the week's commentators who have seized upon the remarks about "bitter feelings" in some depressed communities in Pennsylvania, I gleaned a different meaning from the entire answer. . . .

The response that followed sounded unscripted, in the moment, as if he were really trying to answer a question with intelligent conversation that explained more about what was going on in the Pennsylvania communities than what was germane to his political agenda. I had never heard him or any politician ever give such insightful, analytical responses. The statements were neither didactic nor contrived to convince. They were simply hypotheses (not unlike the kind made by de Tocqueville three centuries ago ) offered by an observer familiar with American communities. And that kind of thoughtfulness was quite unexpected in the middle of a political event. In my view, the way he answered the question was more important than the sociological accuracy or the cause and effect hypotheses contained in the answer. It was a moment of authenticity demonstrating informed intelligence, and the speaker's desire to have the audience join him in a deeper understanding of American politics.  Read more.

There's a mind at work here; he's not some robopol.

Comments

[Mike McG...]

Counterpoint from Bob Herbert:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/opinion/15herbert.html?th&emc=th

[Matt Zemek]

What's getting lost in all this is the absolutely asinine, sophomoric, and ridiculously phony way in which Hillary is reacting to and pouncing on this situation.

Absolutely embarrassing.

This is why our Republic is dying, if not already dead.

Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Franklin, Henry, Paine, and all the rest have to be rolling over in their graves.

We need to find a way to engage in meaningful political/social activity in the attempt to revive our Republic and improve the lot of those who are being left behind while Clinton (and Obama) consume hundreds of millions of additional dollars so they can act like fools and argue over semantics over many months.

[Mike McG...]

Matt:

Point taken and endorsed.

This episode could be an enormously valuable 'teaching moment' about our common human frailties, our shared struggle to talk both honestly and sensitively about what we believe, and our need for both the reconciling touch and the prophetic word. I'm certain that Obama has this speech within him but I'm not at all at all sanguine about how all of this will play out. The San Francisco comments offer too 'rich' a sound bite for Obama's opponents, both within and outside the Democratic party, to overlook.

And no question: Hillary Clinton needs to be called out on her shameless exploitation of this situation. She may well be overreaching.

[Jack Whelan]

Herbert: The various groups, ethnic and otherwise, are not interested in being characterized. They’re interested in being led.

I understand what Herbert is saying, but the reality is that you have to do both. In order to lead you have to understand the shared attitudes of the people you hope will follow you, and understanding requires that you "characterize" those attitudes. He was also "characterizing" the attitudes of urban black youth. Nobody's making a big deal about that. Bottom line: There is nothing wrong with this effort to characterize if it's in the service of trying to understand. It becomes a problem only insofar as it makes one vulnerable to be mis-"characterized" by one's opponents. Mischaracterization is the problem, not characterization.

Does anybody who has read fuller accounts of Obama's S.F. remarks believe he was mischaracterizing the shared attitudes of many blue-collar Pennsylvanians? You can focus on two or three words that were ill chosen, but this was not a prepared speech. He was thinking on his feet, and the thrust of what he was saying was thoughtful, sympathetic, and quite frankly impressive from a politician. So his opponents can make hay with a few words, but that doesn't mean that they are even close to being right in their characterization of their intent-- ie that they reveal Obama's true colors as a condescending elitist.

[forestwalker]

Jack,
Not arguing against what was said or Obama's overall analysis so much. Just, practically, emotionally, care obviously has to be taken. Imagine McCain accidentally saying 'Negro' in an off-the-cuff remark; even if he's talking sense at the time, the emotional reaction and suspicion the word would generate, however irrational, are unavoidable. Sensitivity is required when talking to or about a group that perceives you as an outsider and potential enemy.

I hope Obama talks much more about class in the future and finds a way to speak about it that resonates with more of those hurt by the system. Even better, it would be nice if he could garner enough trust to lead them in examining some of the very bad political assumptions they now hold.

[Jack Whelan]

FW--

I know what you're driving at, but I just don't agree. I don't want to just be stubbornly argumentative here, but I really feel as though I'm in a carnival house of mirrors here. It's about retaining a sense of correct proportionality.

Do you really think the words "bitter" or "cling" rise to the kind of charged meanings associated with "negro" or "colored"? Do Obama's word really betray condescension in the same way those other words connote residual racism?

Obama is a black man raised by a middle-income single mother. How does elitism tag possibly stick to him? When did talking like a well informed, well-educated thoughtful human being start being considered elitist? McCain is a white Republican who voted against the Martin Luther King holiday, and if he were to use certain racially loaded words it should have far more significant impact.

Context is everything, and the only context in which Obama's words are controversial is in the contrived and distorted world of political gotcha.

Until I see evidence to the contrary, it seems to me the people most offended by these comments are everybody but the people Obama was talking about. See here for a guy who I think has the proportion right. The white guy isn't even voting for Obama: http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/04/13/foxnews-rural-pennsylvanians-find-little-to-argue-with-barack-obama/