Bingo.

The politicians and pundits are fighting it and denying it, but the voters have seen enough and we're putting them all into rehab.

If special interests want to get things done next year, they better be prepared to do it the old fashioned way, by sending people out to convince the voters first...honest, remember the days of a true presidential address to the nation?

At least, that is this voter's dream.

Nice article Brian, put it in your favorites bucket and visit it next January and see if this was the end of Clinton and the beginning of the end for McCain.

LAMBERT: I hope Obama re-visits this theme. And if McCain thinks there's some big upside for him talking about "elitism" ... well, good luck, pal.

Wonderful entry, Brian. Yeah, this is all very silly. We are silly.

It does seem like these are important times. And I dearly hope we don't get the President we probably deserve.

LAMBERT: I never allow myself to think a guy can't totally screw the pooch, and the "fear strategy" is as consistently reliable as anything in politics. But Obama has a clear advantage over any other politician I can remember in that he seems to have seriously thought about this stuff, which makes him fully capable of expanding on any abbreviated, off-hand comment ... in a way digestible by the "common folk".

Hmm...not to be overtly cynical here, but I'm still trying to figure out if the common folk have ANY friends left in either the wealthy/power classes. I was ruminating about this over a Crown Royal shot and a beer while cradling my Mattel M-14--the closest thing I could find to a gun. Semi-automatic, no less.

Here's the challenge: if us regular folk aren't intelligent or tolerant enough to appreciate honest and thoughtful statements about the middle-class, and see through both the politicians who pander to voters when a less than artful phrase was uttered, or the 24-hour news idiots, we're sunk. It doesn't matter whether you agree or disagree with the statement itself, but like a lot of other things Obama has said, I enjoy being campaigned to like an adult.

Now I have to go outside and figure out why I can't kill any squirrels with this M-14.

LAMBERT: Trying hunting plastic squirrels.

Brian, have you considered the possibility of being a running mate? Excellent article!! Your stuff is up their with the race speech.

LAMBERT: You're very kind. But I'm afraid some opposition investigation would turn up my collection of classic bongs.

Now that Hillary knows she must wait until at least 2012 and has gone to work fulltime on defeating Obama in November, we can sit back and enjoy the spectacle that is the Clintons In Action. The only real question is: Which of them is more ludicrous? There's Bill, face flushed and finger wagging, wandering off-message and into the high weeds of race in America. And there's Hill, making it up as she goes, evidently toting a sidearm, willing to SAY ANYTHING except, I suppose, "I love you," to her lying, philandering husband. That would be one that nobody would ever believe.

But heck, they really should get a room anyway. They're made for each other.

LAMBERT: And this after you and the Clintons exchanged Christmas cards. How sad.

This kind of bullshit in which a candidate's words are parsed to the nth degree and turned into an offensive against his 'elitist' tendencies are the reason I'm about to lock my TV in the garage until mid-November. I keep thinking this campaign can't get any uglier, then am slapped back into reality. Please let me know when it's again safe to come out and play.

LAMBERT: Did you catch Obama's "Annie Oakley" riffs yesterday? At least TiVo this stuff for after the election.

Very interesting. We've had this ‘What’s the Matter with Kansas’ discussion here before.

Obama gets a bad wrap because his rhetoric isn’t explained in context. When he says ‘cling to guns and religion’ he means as voting issues. That’s not articulated by the media. There’s not as much snobbery there as some people are making out. Same with ‘bitter’. What he means is ‘bitter’ about politics.

But Franks argument is fair game, and so is Obama if he’s going to be one of its adherents. The Kansas argument has been bubbling around in the progressive movement for some time, and now it’s out in the open to be critiqued to the extent it deserves.

He, Frank, and other people who believe it are just plain wrong, and it’s harmed the Democrats electoral progress. If a progressive economic policy is so great, I would think Democrats would have an obligation to go to the party platform and detach it from a narrow view of gun rights and try to win some elections. The battle over 2A is coming to a rightful end, with a proper victor. Its over. The Dems need to stop paying lip service to activists in urban enclaves on this.

That should be the easy part. The Democrats still have to reconcile their position on trade, where they are trying to have it both ways. The smart kids – the elite - in the Democrat party are free traders, and rightfully so. But the rubes are not.

Last, I just don’t think this caricature of the rustbelt as some sort of bombed out moonscape is correct, and the people that actually live there know it. Who you going to believe, the politicians or your own lying eyes.

LAMBERT: Well, I'm guessing Obama believes the folks in the Rust Belt can see pretty well what's right in front of their eyes. Those old style manufacturing jobs are gone. There's no "debate" about that. As far as "urban" and "elites" and their thus far clueless interaction with "Kansas", the trick it seems to me is to talk to these "common folks" like they are the adults they are, and explain that someone like Obama has their interests closer to heart than the same old, same old bullshit about "bedrock American values".

There are no end of land mines in this conversation. The global economy is here to stay, (but you might slow the exodus if you force US companies shipping jobs to China to meet every labor and environmental regulation they face here), and obviously a thorough discussion of the productive properties of certain religions ... oh, my god.

But unlike even four years ago, the muted reaction to this "gaffe" leads me to ask if "Kansas" has finally concluded that they've been patronized almost to oblivion and are willing to listen to a full explanation of what Obama is thinking. That alone would be revolutionary.

I don't need the sneering elitist Obama to reveal the "attitudes" of people he knows nothing about.

He is only revealing himself as the empty gasbag that he is, devoid of any real substance, full of the far left's illusions of omnimpotence.

What a farce these two Democratic candidates are.

It will be McCain in a walk, thank heavens.

LAMBERT: And your heroes have done what for "Kansas"?

BTW, "sniper fire" wasn't "stupid", it was proof of Hilary's pathological disengagement form reality.

When you run the national political coverage of Obama's "Bitter" comments side-by-side with each other it is quite amazing how the language used by the reporters but especially the desk jockeys quickly takes on a life of its own.

This is similar to the game we used to play as kids called "Telephone" where you get in a circle and the first person whispers a secret the the next person on the left and around the circle goes the secret. At the end of the circle the secret is cited back to the entire group. The lesson is that the secret and the end rarely, if ever, has any resemblance to the original whispered message.

So much of the political coverage today is the story about the story rather than the story itself. And in today's media climate, every commentator and reporter MUST turn up the heat on their reporting of the story or they will be ignored.

We could well be at the zenith of really awful media reporting on politics, although I might find myself arguing otherwise. In the 19th century and early 20th, there certainly were vicious false attacks, slandering, challenges to public duels, and a practice that broadly became known as "yellow journalism" here in America.

Never-the-less, the reporting we see on politics in America today is horrible and detrimental to our democratic process.

LAMBERT: This is the reason why the web is such a vital anodyne to the commercialized news sector, where, you're absolutely right, there is no (perceived) value in fleshing out what Obama said and testing it on the public and every nickel to be protected in ginning up a simple-minded horse race controversy.

You've seen this, right? Bill Clinton in '91:

"The reason (George H. W. Bush's tactic) works so well now is that you have all these economically insecure white people who are scared to death," Clinton was quoted saying by the Los Angeles Times in September 1991.

A couple months later, Joe Klein, writing for the Sunday Times, reported that Clinton made the following remarks:

"You know, he [Bush] wants to divide us over race. I'm from the South. I understand this. This quota deal they're gonna pull in the next election is the same old scam they've been pulling on us for decade after decade after decade. When their economic policies fail, when the country's coming apart rather than coming together, what do they do? They find the most economically insecure white men and scare the living daylights out of them. They know if they can keep us looking at each other across a racial divide, if I can look at Bobby Rush and think, Bobby wants my job, my promotion, then neither of us can look at George Bush and say, 'What happened to everybody's job? What happened to everybody's income? What ... have ... you ... done ... to ... our ... country?'"

It's Nixon's Southern Strategy and Reagan's "state's Rights" code language. Elitist = uppity.

LAMBERT: Exactly. And as I say, first Hillary Clinton and later John McCain, had better think twice about what they wish for, because there is a very potent, and effective rebuttal waiting for the right voice to deliver it ... you know, like maybe someone who only recently finished paying off his student loans and didn't marry into a liquor distribution fortune.

Nixon's southern strategy my foot. This idea that the religion and other 'wedge issues' distracts the working class from their conditions goes back to Marx, and has recently been restated by Frank and others.

So it must be all right to take Bill Clinto seriously again?

LAMBERT: Marx and Frank noted the phenomena and sought to explain it. Nixon's team, led by Bible-thumping Harry Dent of South Carolina, exploited the hell out of fear of "liberals" and "elitists", (the crowd demanding civil rights and other "wedge issues"), borrowing cues from George Wallace ranting about "pointy-headed intellectuals" -- even as Nixon himself griped about the right-wing whack jobs he was forced to grip and grin.

Again, in this current context, I don't get the feeling that Obama was wading into this -- even in front of a chic Marin County crowd - for its electoral value. On the other hand Clinton's and McCain's exploitation of "elitist" phobia is ENTIRELY about pandering for votes.

I know, I get your references. I'm just trying to go back and remember all the other times Marx was correct and all the other times Bill Clinton said things that weren't completely self serving or contradictory to something else he said.

LAMBERT: Bill Clinton has a lot of political talents. I don't know that campaigning for someone else, someone who doesn't have his rhetorical skills, is his best role. Also, I think Hillary is hopelessly out of step with where this game is going and what is selling this year. Her strategy seems very dated and anachronistic.

When Hillary makes it to the November election (I still think that attorneys and superdelegates will override the primaries), I hope we can see her test out her "Annie Oakley" skills and pose with a Turkey ala John Kerry 2004.

LAMBERT: Well, she's campaigning like something out of the 19th century.

108: I think Clinton's '91 quotes are being exhumed to make the point that Obama's insights into the issues that have been exloited to garner the votes of the economically disadvanatged white, displaced blue collar voter are not entirely novel.

Have you ever spent anytime out on the hustings actually talking to people in small towns and generic suburbs across this great land of ours?

I do it all the time. And I've experienced just what Obama was describing over and over again all across the country.

For example, I recall vividly asking a woman at a Catholic parish casino fundraiser on the west side of Cincinatti in 2004 why she was supporting the President for reelection, her answer was: "Because he's a good, Christian man." When I asked why, if religion is central to her decision making, she was not supporting Sen. John Kerry, a fellow Roman Catholic who can quote scripture from memory, she replied without a moment's reflection: "Cuz he's pro-abortion." When I then asked her for what other issues were informing her thinking on the election, she added that Kerry was "pro-gay."

In the battleground state of Ohio, the Republican Party had gotten onto the ballot a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, thus making it a salient issue in many Ohio voters' minds. This was an entirely representative interaction.

In small towns such as Mill City, Oregon, displaced millworkers angrily blamed their plight on the spotted owl, not on the retooling and computer automation of the mills that occured in the wake of the 1980s downturn in the lumber industry. Mothers angrily lamented to me with out a hint of irony that now their kids would have to go to college in order to make a living. They resented the newcomers to their state (Oregon's self-defeating unofficial motto: "Visit but don't stay), even though these newcomers were helping to tranform the state's extractive, boom-bust prone economy of mining, logging and commercial fishing into a more diverse one where her kids may find a more reliable career out of the woods.

I could go on and on for pages about the misplaced anger and resentment so easily encountered all across the country among the people left behind by the inexorable and inequitable shifts in the economy over the last quarter of a century. And their anger and feelings of tribalism were only too hapiily exploited for cheap electoral advantage rather than straight-forwardly addressed with some practical albeit painful solutions.

Read Jonathon Raban's "Badlands," for an excellent take on the long-seething anger that gave us the Montana "Freemen."

Brian:

Great article. It would be a treat to see Charles Gibson use all of his skills to get both Obama and Clinton to actually answer the questions asked.

The news clip that I kept seeing over the last 24 hours of Hillary having a beer and a shot absolutely threw me for a loop. First I wondered if she was really drinking hard alcohol.
Then it occurred to me that Hillary was one of the last people with whom I would want to have a drink. Although a good debate after a few shots and a couple of beers could be quite enlightening.

B Jr.: Do you honestly think that McCain has a better grasp on the attitudes of the disenfranchised people of Pennsylvania? Did he get that from his prep school upbringing or his marriage to an heiress?

LAMBERT: Come on, wouldn't you want to split a six-pack with Hillary in a duck blind?

And as Jon Stewart pointed out last night, what says egalitarianism better than a product that comes in a soft, purple pouch with "Crown" and "Royal" in the brand name? Has the woman never heard of a boilermaker before, a beer and a bump?

I wonder if she reloads her own ammo.

If Hillary was in a duck blind, would she be wearing a camo pantsuit?

LAMBERT: Maybe something in the scarlet range, with a silk 'kerchief.

This all came at a time when Faux News and various other GOP mouthpieces are STILL pushing the Rev. Wright stuff...they will stay on "Bittergate" this at LEAST until Halloween. Its fascinating how all media will twist all this and try to beat ANYTHING into a story, convoluting the facts and most importatly the context all out of whack. Of course last week Hardball went on and on about whether Obabma's bowling skills will hurt him or not. Aren't we smarter than that?

Apparently so. A Fox crew went out the other day to rural PA and had a difficult time in finding people who WEREN'T bitter at their current situations economically.

Damn right people are bitter. And they should be. Because the people they fearfully voted for have done NOTHING to help them, unless you really believed your marriage was "threatened" by a homosexual or you thought a brown person was going to comitt Jihad at the local mini-mart.

Meanwhile, EVERY economic indicator has spelled failure, UNLESS you're that "elite" upper 2%. Real wages falling every year, homelesness and poverty at record levels. Did anyone read a month or so ago that Plymouth and other suburbs got RECORD turnouts for the annual Section 8 housing lottery.

All of these things have been bubbling under. People are PISSED and waking up! And Obama has clearly tapped into something. More individuals donating than any candidate since they've been counting these things. Obama isn't going to walk on water, and with the lobbyists entrenchment and the basic malaise the current system is afflicted with he - or Hill - probably might not make much difference. But he stands a better chance of cleaning up 8 years of a horrible mess and clearly criminal activities than McCain ever will.

LAMBERT: Now, doesn't that feel good? The chattering classes may think they've struck ratings gold with this thing -- hell, read Maureen Dowd this morning -- but as I've said before, I think Obama wins on this issue if his adversaries force him to explain in greater depth what it is he's talking about.

What's fascinating to me is how much "standard journalism" and by that I mean both the cable news pack and traditional news are stuck in an "old school" paradigm for covering campaign-inspired issues. They really don't know what to do with this other than ... talk amongst themselves.

Jim, heck of a comment about small town USA. You nailed it and I couldn't agree more. The last smaller town I lived in was tied to the paper industry which has since automated and gone global. Guess what those people are now talking about as their town dies.

Back to Obama briefly. I'm beyond tired of all the backseat drivers commenting on phrases from speeches. The candidates are on the stump all day and I'm surprised they don't say even more questionable things. Outside of Hillary supposedly dodging bullets, this is all just noise to me.

I look forward to getting back to the core issues challenging the country. I remain nervous about Obama, but I want to hear his stance on real issues, not all this he said/she said crap (and that goes for the left, right, & media).

LAMBERT: Dave, your Republican roots ... they're fraying. You're getting dangerously nuanced. Like pointy-headed elites. I'll get you've even been to Starbucks.

It's amazing watching cable news all day and seeing them fixating on the so-called "bitter" comments. Not once did I see a cable report on the preznit's okay of torture. So - our president and his top advisers basically approve torture - down to the degree of actually deciding who gets tortured and how it is done, but the cable heads obsess all day, misinterpreting the comments of Obama. Has the day finally come when cable news is nearly irrelevant?

LAMBERT: That day only comes when people who should know better -- that's you and me -- stop watching this crap. But it is like the old Godfather line. "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer."

I find it so interesting that every word that Obama and Clinton, or their minions, speak is parsed to the Nth degree. Yet we have had seven plus years of the Teflon Twins running the country, and the only fallout we have seen is when their appointees or staff are either blocked,removed or resign. The "Current Occupant" has driven the economy so far down the toilet that I could swear that I can see the water swirling in the reverse direction. It would seem to me that the three most important issues discussed in tonight's debate should be the economy, the economy and the economy.

LAMBERT: I think Obama was trying to explain the effect of economic indifference with regards to "the common folk" in his San Francisco speech. He should try again.

Let me shift the subject a bit. I'm sure you watched McCain's hour on Hardball last night. What's his strategy these days? Obfuscate and avoid serious answers. Be more likeable than the mean, elitist, untrustworthy Dems. Pander to the right on abortion. Pump up his defense muscles. Claim America's greatest days are ahead.

Ronnie would have been proud.

LAMBERT: You mean, "Nancy's astrologer would have been proud". I was never sure who ran the store back in Ronnie's days.

What Barack said makes more sense if you look at the genesis or history of his attitude. Ordinarily, all of us judge by our values. We may deny, conceal or exuse these judgments but we do so nonetheless. The outcome of judging,then, is either justify or deny what has been said. From there you go nowhere.

I can think of only one person who tried to understand the overdog/underdog dualism. That person was Nietzsche. He theorized that the underdog/slave/lower SES person had a considerable, automatic "ressentiment." This emotion was automatic, a readiness to action and driven by an understanding of the social and economic inferiority of the social class.

Ressentiment is a French word and not 1:1: equivalent to the English word "resentment." Both resentment and envy are focused outcomes of "ressentiment." They come about as attacks of "justice" which are really nothing but a derived form of revenge. Because the basis of resssentiment is a self-awareness of failure and inferiority it continues and expands as success becomes rare or uncertain.

Senator Obama senses the "ressentiment" of blacks and his minister, Jeremiah Wright, even more so. Senator Oback also assumes that lower SES whites will also respond to ressentiment; however, thye may posess this but always in the back of their thinking is they can overcome or change their fate.

I am a die hard, unequivocal Republican but Senator Obama's approach is surely brilliant albeit flawed with too much honesty from time to time. He knows people. What he doesn't understand is radical egalitarianism, no peace no justice rhetoric or other attempts to pull the black and white underclass out of their plight does not work and actually does harm.

LAMBERT: I was with you until the end there, Bleuler. It goes without saying that Obama has waded into something that requires more explication than two paragraphs, and I think he will, if he judges a lack of negative effect from his SF remarks and even an outpouring of admiration and encouragement from people -- of any ideology -- who think this is another overdue conversation we need to have.

But I'm sensing from your conclusion that you don't hear empathy in his remarks. I do. He may not have lived the life of a hopeless street kid, but from what I know he's seen first hand what social inferiority and futility can do to people. By the way, not all of that crowd lives in those mythologized "small towns".

What would you know about "social inferiority"?

Ironically asking, I mean.

LAMBERT: I grew up in "small town" ... Minnesota. How I escaped the "god 'n guns" thing I'll never know.

Medina is a "small town".

LAMBERT: Technically speaking, isn't it an enclave?

what did you think of maureen dowd's column today?

LAMBERT: One her worst. Relentlessly glib. I don't think she intended to seriously examine what Obama was trying to say.

Looks like its subsiding. Too bad, I think its a worthy topic.

The whole argument is basically false consciousness as described by Marx. We can trade anecdotes all day long. I don't know what to make of a woman who's glad her kids don't have to go college, it strikes me as illustrative only of a very ignorant person. I went to Bemidji state in the late 80's. There weren't that many Twin Cities suburbanites (like me) enrolled there. The place was filled with the kids of iron rangers and loggers from Northern Minnesota. My sense is they were just fine with the idea they didn't have to take those jobs.

And the Freeman. I won't be reading the book, not interested. I've had conversations with people like that, they struck me as a bizarre mashing of left/right/LaRouche quackery. I could just as easily ask you to explain SLA or Jim Jones.

The problem is the Kansas argument presupposes that progressive economics are better for Joe Sixpack. Thats never been demostrated at all. In the absence of some evidence progressive econmics work, why shouldn't people vote on social issues? Why shouldn't they vote on them anyway, why does economic interests have to be the determinant factor when a person is otherwise having their hierarchy of needs fulfilled in most ways?

LAMBERT: I'd never describe Clinton-style economics as "progressive", but then these terms are relative aren't they? Compared to what doesn't even rise to the level of "benign neglect" from the Cheney team, "Kansas" did quite well under Clinton and there are numerous studies out showing -- conclusively, if you choose to accept statistical evidence such as jobs created and growth in real income, that the economy traditionally does better under Democrats than "free market" conservatives. But as I say, neither Clinton or Carter or LBJ ever impressed me as "progressive". Just "more progressive than the other guys".

Brian, thats exactly right, and entirely the point. Clintononmics were not progressive. We've been operating under the Reagan income tax structure for nearly 30 years now, and it works.

Interesting that last night Obama conceded the validity of the Laffer Curve, that low capital gains tax rates generate more tax money. of course, he says hed act in defiance of that reality, and have higher rates anyway, even though ostensibly the lower the rates are, the more the revenue, the more social programs can be funded.

LAMBERT: Well, there you go again. While not my idea of a progressive, Clinton at least understood that fiscal discipline -- actually managing the gigantic business that is the American economy, instead of out-sourcing it to the richest dude that got in the Oval Office door -- was key to establishing credibility, not just with the hidebound barons of Wall St. but also with the international banking community. Clinton was a long overdue CORRECTIVE to Reaganomics. What Cheney sought to do was waken the vampire from the casket one more time, which might have had an outside shot of working were in not for his decision to invade Iraq and pay for a trillion dollar war on credit cards and loans from the Chinese.

Hey, I agree. Its the monetary policy, not the taxes. There was not much corrective about the Clinton tax plan.

But taxes are the end game here, thats what progressive economics are. Thats how liberals want to deKulak American society.

LAMBERT: And the so-called Bush tax "cuts" are, to your thinking, a boon to "small town" America? Now THAT is tough sell.

Its not a tough sell. My taxes went down under the Bush tax cuts. My income is similar to that of tens of millions who live in small towns. You telling me there were negative consequences to cutting those peoples taxes? No public services has been cut as a result.

What 'boon' is government supposed to be able to bring to small towns to ensure a vital economy when things change over time?

LAMBERT: "Tax policy" effects more than a line on your annual return, which I'm guessing wasn't more than a couple hundred bucks less, if that. "Tax policy" has impacts on all sorts of other "fees" and prices we pay every day, other than straight income tax. And you think "services" haven't been impacted? Well, I'm happy for you. But I'm guessing you and I aren't living on the same planet.

The same planet, but one of us is living in a false consciousness, see.

LAMBERT: Is Sean Hannity regarded as a wise man on your planet?

What's the real cost of someone's taxes going down by a couple hundred bucks? A staggering deficit, radical income disparity, crumbling infrastructure, state taxes and fees ratcheting up every year. An uneven tax structure where not just the rich but corporations and everyone but the people paying the most in payroll taxes are able to get away from paying their fair share. And moving jobs overseas as the result.

Shouldn't we all be in this together? Shouldn't there be a shared sacrifice and a fairness incumbent in where we try to go and what we try to do as a nation?

LAMBERT: I don't know, that sounds dangerously radical. The king(s) won't like it.