It's The Con Job, Stupid!

[Emillereid]

It's The Con Job, Stupid!

<snip>
Politicians work on much the same principles as con men. We rely on your gullibility, on your venality, and on your unwavering insistence on seeing only what you want to see. We play roles, building elaborate back stories and false fronts. We find out what motivates you - your fears and hatreds are most easily manipulated - and work that angle until, come that magic Tuesday, you go in there and pull a lever, punch a chad or darken an oval for who we want.

The dirty little secret of American politics is that individuals may be smart, but people are stupid. And politicians count on that to get their way. It's why so many people in recent elections voted against their own economic self-interest, and why people like Karl Rove, Ann Coulter and the entirety of Fox News thank whatever God is left to them for that uniquely American brand of stupidity.

No campaign of any size is ever truly free of the grift. If a candidate is free of the graft we consider ourselves lucky, so conditioned are we to expect the worst in public life. But two of the three presidential candidates are running a major con job on you at this very moment. It's the current attack on Obama for his comments at a California fundraiser regarding economically disadvantaged Pennsylvanians.

<snip>
And so the con began. Both Clinton and McCain unloaded with faux-righteous indignation over how "elitist and condescending" Obama was being towards the good folks of Pennsylvania. The Republicans picked up the meme and ran with it, because they want to face Hillary in the fall, while the Clintonistas ran with it, because they're desperate.

<snip>

It's not unsurprising that neither Clinton nor McCain recognized Obama's tone for what it was: empathy. After you make $109 million in seven years or dump your wife to marry a beer heiress, the empathy shine kind of rubs off you. But even if someone has managed to whisper to them that Obama still has that empathy, they don't care, because there are millions of voters who are just dumb enough to believe the worst when they think they hear it. Because Lincoln was right, you CAN fool some of the people all of the time......

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chip-collis/its-about-the-con-job-stu_b_96678.html

[phrigndumass]

1. ...

:thumbsup:

[cliffordu]

2. KEEEKED

:kick:

[nichomachus]

3. This McClone guy

Isn't he the one who said ordinary Americans wouldn't pick lettuce even if you paid them $100,000 a year?

Talk about out of touch.

[grace0418]

4. K&R

[Voice for Peace]

5. Agree with this:

"It's not unsurprising that neither Clinton nor McCain recognized Obama's tone for what it was: empathy."

Don't entirely agree with this: "people are stupid"

but I think Clinton & McCain are making that assumption; and it will be their downfall.