2008 Primaries Thread 3: The Rejecting and Denouncening

if you mean Kerm's OK I totally just read it straight, people sometimes say I'm faux-naive but in fact I'm just naive about people's tone of voice online

I read it as sarcastic but that's just because I have a well of poison where my heart should be.

it must make some people mad that Obama can do populism without hurting the unity message at all

Is that a new campaign requirement?

I have a well of poison where my heart should be.

would love to talk more but I think I need to write a Sisters of Mercy pastiche using this line as the big ramp-up before the minor-key grandiose chorus

I wasn't being sarcastic.

I think the Obama line was pretty cringeworthy. He needs to avoid saying stuff like that.

the 'clinging to religion' line is a bit rich.

yeah sorry by "the Obama line" i meant the part about clinging to guns and religion

I think the Obama line was pretty cringeworthy. He needs to avoid saying stuff like that.

it isn't the first time - this kinda sucked and is already being dredged up by the our-side-rules-your-side-drools brigade - but his gift for saying "look: I meant what I said, and I don't think there's anything wrong with it" without coming off like an asshole is really something else

Yeah, but I think this is worse than the overalls comment.

I am biased insofar as I lived in Iowa for ten years and when people talk about "farmers" lots of people who live there wanna say "you realize that the main farmers here are Monsanto and ConAgra, right?"

can somebody explain to me though how it's ok for ABC news to transcribe an Obama speech substituting ya for you? that's kind of weirdly non-standard - I know this is nitpicking but it seems odd to me

I mean there IS a certain humor in the corn farmer asking Obama about Burma, whereas this is just Obama being somewhat condescending and dismissive under the guise of understanding -- at least that's how it comes off. Of course I forgive the remarks, I just don't think it's going to play well among the voters he's talking about, precisely because he's talking about them instead of to them.

I guess I doubt that the "Obama's an elitist" thing is going to stick more to Obama than to Clinton: the image of Dems as latte-sipping coastal elites was totally common during the Clinton years, so it's her burden too. Clinton's lines about how she was Midwestern-raised are really rich: not enough people are buying it for her to win, nor do enough people care about this if they have something more important to care about. And this is part of the Obama message here: most politicians ignore what you really care about, and so you stop thinking politics is effective, and just wait for supernatural intervention; but if we believe in the here and now that we can make politics effective, then it can be effective. I'm not sure if that's true, but I am sure that if we think it's false, our politics is doomed to be ineffective. So why not have faith?

Yeah, but if a conservative politician said "Hey, I understand how you feel. You don't have Jesus in your life so you cling to music and casual sex and false philosophies and internet discussion boards," I don't think you'd respond very well.

http://media.gallup.com/poll/graphs/041208DailyUpdateGraph1_yrao498jgs8d.gif

Euler hauls in Pascal's armor-piercing ammo! I think there are some shades between "politics" and "the two-party system" but that's a whole different conversation I guess

"And it's not surprising then 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."

v.

"Hey, I understand how you feel. You don't have Jesus in your life so you cling to music and casual sex and false philosophies and internet discussion boards,"

These statements are not analogous because only the first one has any truth to it. That's my favorite facet of this candidacy, that he's slowly but surely testing the boundaries w/r/t actually saying shit that most of us know deep down is true but keep denying in public because it's too caustic.

"us" meaning political figures, a mistype resulting from growing up with WAY too much CNN at Grandma's house.

These statements are not analogous because only the first one has any truth to it

But a person who likes guns and/or Jesus at all is not going to see it that way

Hurting 2 OTM, as soon as you start saying "what I have on my side is The Truth" then charges of elitism are pretty fair

"Gosh, all these years I thought I was going to church because it brought meaning into my life. Now I realize I'm just frustrated."

But if you're not coming from a stance of "What I'm saying is actually True," "Our Ideas are Better," etc. then what's the point?

I mean I know there is no absolute truth the universe is in constant flux maybe we're all in a butterfly's dream but when it comes to policy and such, yes, some things are true and some things are not true and I like this guy because he gets closer to saying the true shit than most in politics.

"more useful," "more likely to help you," "less likely result in more shit you don't believe in" - these are better tactics than "look, what I/my candidate brings is THE TRUTH," everybody hates that shit except the already-converted

He could maybe do with pointing out to the public that whenever he discusses optimism and the willingness of Americans to work hard, his opponents say that he's too idealistic by half and too optimistic about the ability of the people to Do Something but when he mentions the perfectly reasonable beefs of normal working people, who feel underutilized, gleaned in the course of speaking to them, somehow that's condescending and he's out of touch. He should say something along the lines of 'they can't seem to make up their minds about you and what you want, but I bet you've made up your minds about them...'

lol J0hn D, I have been teaching wager-like stuff lately (William James, actually) so that kind of argument is exactly what I had in mind.

But I don't think that anytime we say we're right about something, that makes us an elitist. When I say J0hn D is OTM, does that make me an elitist?

I'm not so much concerned with my candidate, though, as much as anyone who isn't considered out of the mainstream saying it in public.

I dunno, you're probably right about this as far as a political tactic goes, it's just really heartening to see someone who isn't a professor, fringe pundit, or artist-type try and break through some of the intensely strong lies we as a society have been telling so long that we operate as though they were true.

xpost to J0hn 'n' Hurting

J0hn D, otm re THE TRUTH.

If a candidate said, "You know, a lot of voters just aren't bright enough to understand how our trade policy actually works," that would be "true" in a sense. It would not be a good thing to say though.

it's just really heartening to see someone who isn't a professor, fringe pundit, or artist-type try and break through some of the intensely strong lies we as a society have been telling so long that we operate as though they were true.

I agree in general, I just think he took a really bad tack with those remarks.

Hurting 2, obama doesn't seem to be saying that people cling to their guns and their churches because elected leaders aren't making progress on their promises -- he's saying people are VOTING on these issues because their elected leaders aren't making progress on their promises. it's the distinction that all the critics are eliding. clearly yes if he were actually saying the first thing it would be a pretty condescending thing to say. but he's not saying that. he's saying that guns and religion shouldn't be the basis for a vote - that there should more tangible and practical things to base one's choice on.

^This.

Eliding nuances out of your opponent's position is like stealing candy from a baby. Most people can't find a nuance like that in the original statement, let alone in the Limbaugh-noize version.

Sorry, I don't see that. I'd like to, but I don't.

"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," Obama said. "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. And it's not surprising then 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."

I mean if he wants to make the old liberal argument of "You're better off voting on your class issues than your perceived social issues," I don't think he's making it in a very effective way.

Also just the general distant third-person-ness of it. Like is he trying to win over working-class voters or just explain them to non-working-class voters?

weren't those remarks in the context of how people vote, though? i'll admit my take was based more on his speech afterwards, addressing his critics.

in any case i think this is a wash. what's in the spotlight? obama's issues and the people's issues, not mccain's. i think painting the son of a kenyan and kansan who plays a mean game of pick-up basketball and did community work in chicago as an elitist is going to be a tough sell. especially a guy as down to earth as obama.

everyone who's afraid that mccain's going to out-dude obama in the g.e. needs to remember how incredibly uptight and wound-up mccain is. the moment he's asked a non-fawning question he turns into a squeaky, stuttering robot.

not all complexities resolve into "he is right as usual!" I think - this is kinda partly why anti-Obama ppl accuse supporters of being cult-like: the distinction cited (between "it's why they believe this way" vs. "why they vote this way") is so delicate as to be near-meaningless. It sounds like he means "here's why you feel/vote the way you do," and that's condescending. I do like that he doesn't go directly into "I misspoke!" territory though - as I see it, his strength in the general would/will be that he doesn't cower as soon as the spin machine finds something to "gotcha" about.

"The things you care about don't really matter. You vote on them because you're bitter and cynical after listening to politicians promise you a free lunch for 25 years and fail to deliver. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I am here to promise you that free lunch!"

hahaha

the headlines haven't really been so much about the guns n religion thing though, have they? it's all focused on the word "bitter", which honestly i feel like obama's got the upper hand with - his opponents are all "obama says people are bitter!!" and obama's like "damn straight, and it's cause of you"

weren't those remarks in the context of how people vote, though?

-- Tracer Hand, Saturday, April 12, 2008 2:44 PM (47 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

yah this - hes saying i know theres more important stuff youd like to use yr votes on but since washington doesnt listen yr left to vote on bullshit like gay marriage that doesnt really effect your lives

Hurting, what do you think "as a way to explain their frustrations" means?

how are guns "a way to explain their frustrations"?

I read Obama on guns explaining their frustrations as referring to militia culture.

I didn't go that far*; one assumes it's the old 'damn libruls won't let me go duck hunting/conceal and carry' thing.

*hilariously, a lot of militia foax are ex-armed forces.

Maybe he thinks if they had a steady factory job and government health care they'd stop feeling like shooting something. I kinda doubt it.

Main Entry:
alien·ation Listen to the pronunciation of alienation
Pronunciation:
\ˌā-lē-ə-ˈnā-shən, ˌāl-yə-\
Function:
noun
Date:
14th century

1 : a withdrawing or separation of a person or a person's affections from an object or position of former attachment : estrangement

I'm not even sure what "as a way to explain their frustrations" means. If it means voting, but you have to close-read to get that, then it's not a very good statement anyway.

I don't think it comes off as "elitist." I think that word should be banned at this point b/c its become meaningless.