Finding Voters ‘Bitter and Frustrated,’ Obama is Sounding Like Nader

[depakid]

Interesting take (if you can get over being triggered by the N word):

"I haven’t lived in rural Pennsylvania or in rural Indiana, but I have lived in rural upstate New York, in towns where there are so few Democrats that on some local election ballots, not a single position, from town council to justice of the peace, has a contest. As in China, your option is to vote for the Republican candidate, or to leave that line blank.

And many of the people in these towns, uniformly white, when they talk politics, spend a lot of their time complaining about black people, immigrants (neither of whom can even be found in the vicinity) and the threat to their guns.

Barack Obama is exactly right.

In Hancock, NY and Spencer, NY, there are no factory jobs. There used to be in Hancock, but the companies where hundreds of people used to work have long since folded or moved south of the border, courtesy of the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA) aggressively promoted and pushed through Congress by Bill and Hillary Clinton during the 1990s. In Spencer, there are no jobs because in the free-for-all bidding by companies for tax giveaways between communities, Spencer had nothing much to offer. The town is so dirt poor that when the library board, of which I was briefly president, got a measure on the ballot to have one extra dollar per taxpayer of school district taxes allocated to support the local little library, which was at that time totally supported by donations, the measure went down to resounding defeat (I was labeled a communist by some for promoting the idea!).

In 1992, neighbors in Spencer told me they were voting for George H. W. Bush-a patrician blue blood if ever there was one-because Bill Clinton, if elected “would take away our guns.”

Of course, he didn’t, and had no intention of doing so, but that didn’t matter.

Don’t get me wrong-the people in Hancock and Spencer are good folks. I’m pretty sure many of them probably give a higher proportion of their meager incomes to charity than do millionaires John McCain and Hillary Clinton. But Obama is right that in their angst and frustration at seeing the good economic times pass them by, at seeing themselves abandoned by the federal government in hard times, and at seeing candidates promise them everything during campaigns, only to ignore them after winning, they are bitter and frustrated."

More: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/13/8253/

[Warpy]

1. There's certainly plenty of bitterness to go around

and most of it can be traced to piss poor wages combined with a loss in real benefits. Unfortunately for us, people who aren't used to doing much thinking will obligingly hate whomever they've been given permission to hate: blacks, uppity women, gays, Mexicans, and urbanites who are sick of gun crossfire.

Now we can add something else to the mounting bitterness: false outrage that someone has dared to identify it as what it is.

[nichomachus]

2. Guilt by association?

[MindPilot]

3. Barack figured out a way to point out why so many vote against their own best interests

without offending anyone but his opponents.

[zalinda]

5. He actually offended a lot of people, just not you. n/t

[bhikkhu]

7. Do you think he shouldn't have pointed out why ...

why so many people vote against their best interests?

I don't quite follow the point. I think he had every right and reason to point it out, and it is a very important thing for Democrats to address.

[zalinda]

8. He may have had a point, but it he screwed it up

The message came out that rural people are stupid. That they don't know where to place the blame for their "bitterness", so they blame gays, or blacks or whatever. That they "cling" to their guns and their God because they don't know what else to do.

The plain simple truth is he fucked up. Yes, rural people may be bitter, but that's not the reason they hate gays, blacks or whatever. They hate because they don't have any real connection to them. People hate and fear what they don't know, and as more and more people come out, and more and more races inter-marry that will change. People are bitter because the government seems to care more for corporations than people. Rural people aren't stupid, and they don't need some Chicago politician saying they are.

You may not be offended because it's not about you. But others may be offended because it seems he is talking about them. Oh, and the reason that they vote for repubs is because they think the repubs are the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" party. You will find that for the most part rural people are very independent and don't like to depend on anyone but themselves.

zalinda

[TLM]

13. He offended a lot of Hillary and McCain supporters...

which is why they were the source of the attacks and spin.


Here's a hint... if you have to tell someone they should feel offended, what you are really saying is either that there really is nothing to be offended by and you're spinning, or they are just too dumb to understand why this offensive thing is so offensive and need you to tell them when to feel offended.

[zalinda]

4. Excuse me..........but don't lump McCain with Clinton

when it comes to charity contributions. The Clintons gave 10% of their income and paid 33% in income tax. And, Clinton did quite well in upstate NY as a senator, she did get over 50% of the vote.

You're so eager to dump on Clinton you can't even tell the truth about her. Where were you when he tax returns were looked at through a magnifying glass?

zalinda

[depakid]

6. "eager to dump on Clinton?"

I think you have me mistaken with someone else....

That aside, seems to me you miss the key paragraphs from Lindorff's take:

One response to that bitterness and frustration is that they are open to the charlatans in both parties, and especially the Republican Party, who have played on their basest fears. It’s Republicans who have whispered the poison in their ears that their high taxes are because “the Blacks” are getting all that welfare money and are getting all the jobs through “quotas.” It’s the Republicans who have warned them about “hoards” of Mexicans coming across the border to steal their jobs. It’s the Republicans who have been warning them that Democrats are going to take their hunting rifles and shotguns away. It’s the Republicans and their Christian fundamentalist front men who have been saying that the Democrats have been causing the nation’s decline by supporting licentiousness and a “gay” agenda. And it’s Republicans and Democrats who have been hyping the bogus issue of national defense to keep people from focusing on the deliberate dismantling of the US economy that is underway. (Over years of Republican and Democratic administrations, the tax contribution of US corporations to the national budget has fallen from 50% in 1940 to just 14% today. Between 1996 and 2000, 61% of all corporations and 39% or large corporations paid no taxes at all, and that situation has only gotten worse in the Bush years.)

Anything but the real issue, which is how to provide funds so that the children in places like Spencer and Hancock can get a decent education without bankrupting the local taxpayers, how those communities can get jobs again, so that their children won’t have to move out, how to ensure that everyone in town can have health insurance and access to medical care.

These are more or less the same points Joe Bagent makes.

[zalinda]

9. I think that the God, guns and gay issues have been

mostly made up by the media. You take any average voter, and I mean average, not political junkies, and they cannot tell you the reason why they are voting for someone. And, when you ask someone why they voted they way they did, it's much easier to explain with a sound bite than with anything else they may or may not have been thinking about.

Yes, the dems have been framed a certain way, and Obama walked right into that trap. So, Joe down at the diner says, "that black guy says that we're bitter cause they're going to take away our guys. Damn right I'm bitter." And Tom, Jack, Leo and Charlie will all agree with him, even though they have no idea what was said. And, they won't vote for Obama, because he came off as being arrogant and condescending, which he was. He would have been much better off if he would have said nothing about them except that they are working to bring rural folk into the fold.

You don't insult people and then ask them for their vote. That's what dems have yet to learn.

zalinda

[MindPilot]

10. Ok, you claim rural people were insulted by Obama's comments

And then you back that up by explaining that the average voter is too stupid to know what was said or why they voted the way they did. Which is it?

[zalinda]

11. Because the typical voter doesn't pay attention

to the details. Go out onto the street and ask anyone what these candidates stand for, and they will give you talking points. The media decided they wanted a knock down drag out fight between Clinton and Obama for the dem nomination, and they got it. If Obama got a little ahead, he got knocked down, if Clinton got a little ahead, she got knocked down. The vast majority of people get their "news" from the media, and the media actually gives very little news.

And, I didn't say they were stupid, that's your take on them. I said they didn't know why they voted for someone, because for the most part they don't. They know a vagueness about a candidate, they get a gut feeling and go with that. Or, they'll even go with whomever everyone else is going for because hell, if everyone else is voting for them they can't be all bad. It takes work to know about candidates, and quite frankly the media makes it very tough to know what is really going on. You forget that not everyone is on the Internet. You forget that not everyone reads the newspaper (actually, some are not worth reading anyway). You forget that people are involved in their own problems and that an election 7 months away is not high on their list of things to do, keeping a roof over their heads is. So, they turn on their local news, because not everyone has cable, and which ever way the news wants to slant the candidates, that's where they get their impressions.

Nothing is cut and dry. When you realize that it is not an even playing field out there, you find that politicians don't know what they are talking about. Dems seem to think that people either really pay attention or are stupid, and that's why we lose. And, while YOU may like jazz and poetry (which is what Obama reminds me of), others can't understand it at all and don't want to take the time to understand it, that doesn't make them stupid, it just means that they like different things. Dems can't seem to understand that Folgers coffee and country music is preferred over Starbucks and jazz, in most rural areas.......hell, even in some cities.

I will be totally amazed if Obama wins, because he comes off as an elitist snob. He used $100 words when $10 words would be fine, and $1 words would be even more acceptable. Bush won because people thought he wasn't talking down to them, and dems don't understand that.

zalinda

[TLM]

12. Do you not see that you are making the same types of statements...

that you attack obama for making?

"I said they didn't know why they voted for someone, because for the most part they don't."

Now how easy would it be to take that sentence and spin it as if you'd just said that rural voters are too stupid to be informed about a candidate, and need to be spoon fed.

"Dems can't seem to understand that Folgers coffee and country music is preferred over Starbucks and jazz, in most rural areas.......hell, even in some cities."

No what real dems DO understand is that being a dem goes beyond the f-ing coffee you drink... and that type of trite spin is nothing but an attempt to generate divisiveness out of something as simple and meaningless as coffee. I've lived in rural PA... and can tell you from first hand experience the folks there are a little more concerned about the fact that two thirds of the businesses and homes are closed, the buildings empty so long they've been boarded up and trees (YES TREES) have taken root in window ledges where they've been growing for years. Yet a few miles outside of town is a wal*mart... and it's the only place left to shop for all the things the boarded up businesses used to sell.

DO you think for one second that they seriously give a f--k if someone puts milk in their coffee?

As far as I'm concerned anybody who spews that latte liberal right wing bullet point bullshit has no business calling themselves a democrat. That's the crap I find demeaning and elitist... especially when one points out that you can get one of those super elitist lattes at AM\PM, Shell Stations, and McDonalds for christ's sake.

Hillary seems all too happy and eager to buy right into the right wing attack spin and demonize liberals as elitist snobs. Forget the economy, thew war, the taking of our rights, the healthcare problems, the corporate stranglehold, the housing crisis, outsourcing, gas prices... for get all that and focus on coffee and country music.

No, thanks... I prefer to win. It's seems Obama does too.

[cornermouse]

14. Zalinda is using metaphors.

You're using what may be facts on the ground so to speak. Why does a reply require an aggressive attack?