:: Wog Blog ::

:: WHAT AM I THINKING ABOUT? ::

:: Sunday 13 April 2008 ::

The Patronising Toerag

What the heck question was he answering?

Here is ol' Barack Obama, again with the bloviating, this time describing middle Americans to a bunch of SanFran supporters.

Ripe for another parsing, eh? Urgh. I do and do for youse.

OBAMA: So, it depends on where you are, but I think it's fair to say that the places where we are going to have to do the most work are the places where people feel most cynical about government. The people are mis-appre...I think they're misunderstanding why the demographics in our, in this contest have broken out as they are. Because everybody just ascribes it to 'white working-class don't wanna work -- don't wanna vote for the black guy.' That's...there were intimations of that in an article in the Sunday New York Times today - kind of implies that it's sort of a race thing.

Dems and my campaign specifically have to address cynicism, not some implication that racisim is stopping us getting votes.

Here's how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, and they feel so betrayed by government, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn't buy it. And when it's delivered by -- it's true that when it's delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama (laugher), then that adds another layer of skepticism (laughter).

People in Ohio and Pennsylvania are beaten down. They are cynical about government. They also have a problem with blacks. Hilarious.

But -- so the questions you're most likely to get about me, 'Well, what is this guy going to do for me? What's the concrete thing?' What they wanna hear is -- so, we'll give you talking points about what we're proposing -- close tax loopholes, roll back, you know, the tax cuts for the top 1 percent. Obama's gonna give tax breaks to middle-class folks and we're gonna provide health care for every American. So we'll go down a series of talking points.

People in Ohio and Pennsylvania ask about health and tax for them.

But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives.

Dems and my campaign specifically have to get voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania to vote for us and our promises even though the voters there are cynical because their votes in the past have gone to politicians who have made the same or similar or maybe totally different promises that I am making but have delivered bugger all of what they promised.

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.

Pennsylvania and the Midwest are fucked.

So it's not surprising then that 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.

So it is not surprising people from Pennsylvania and the Midwest are onedimensional gun-totin'-religion-believin'-foreigner-hatin'-free-trade-hatin' folks. You folks here in San Francisco have to understand that that is the inevitable state of being for folks from Pennsylvania and the Midwest. Cos those places are fucked.

Um, now these are in some communities, you know. I think what you'll find is, is that people of every background -- there are gonna be a mix of people, you can go in the toughest neighborhoods, you know working-class lunch-pail folks, you'll find Obama enthusiasts. And you can go into places where you think I'd be very strong and people will just be skeptical. The important thing is that you show up and you're doing what you're doing.

Some people in Pennsylvania and the Midwest are Obama fans and some are not. I have to keep campaigning.


What on earth was the empty suit thinking? Given that he was speaking without a teleprompt I would wager he was thinking that he was not saying anything untoward. He really does think Middle Americans are cynical and they are fucked and they are running to guns n god and hatred of "the other".

He might as well have gone on with it. ...they cling to...appalling architecture, and tracksuits and McMansions and they never go the theatre and blah blah.

Gi. Fa.

He is an empty suit, a patronising toerag, elitist to the core. And before any of youse start up with the 'Hillary is from Yale too, and she's richer, and McCain has 8 houses so he is richer" let us get something straight.

For the hard of thinking.

"Elite" is in the thinking, not in the wallet and not in the school.

The man is a snob.

Urgh.
:: WB 6:51 am [link+] ::