The Thing Is, He Got It Right

Obama, I mean. Via DailyKos, some reactions from real Pennsylvanians:





Speaking of which, one of the memes that has had amazingly deep influence on this whole discussion is the "liberal elite." Frankly, at this stage of the game the idea that anyone can still say that with a straight face strains credibility. A piece by Eric Alterman points up the irony:

Yet while unelite America is wonderful in every way, it's just not a place where Laura Ingraham or Rush Limbaugh or Bernard Goldberg or Ann Coulter or John Podhoretz or Newt Gingrich or Peggy Noonan or Andrew Sullivan or David Brooks would ever choose to live.

Yes, the fact of the matter is that we are ruled by an elite, or perhaps several of them, but the real question is, would you rather be ruled by an elite that is enlightened -- one that actually believes in the Enlightenment philosophy on which this country was founded (which is to say, rule by law, government at the will of the people, with safeguards for the inevitable "other", and a strong bent toward social justice) -- or one that only functions for its members? Hint: this is a rather more complicated question that simply "left" or "right," "liberal" or "conservative," "Republican" or "Democrat." To answer it when it comes to practical exercises -- such as election time -- one needs to look carefully at the individuals who want to lead the country. Not just presidential candidates, but all of them, because it's not always easy to tell which elite they belong to.

Scott Lemieux pointed the way to Alterman's piece in a post that's otherwise framed in drivel.

This isn't to exculpate Obama for his comments; it was bad politics to frame his perfectly banal point in the precise way that he did. But wealthy urban conservatives and quasi-liberal pundits pretending to be offended on behalf of working-class rural people is a stupid kabuki, as well as considerably more condescending than anything Obama said.

It occurs to me that Obama is one of the very few who has not condescended to working-class America in this melodrama. It seems we have lost the ability to examine anything without parsing worthy of medieval theologians. In this case, "kabuki" is exactly the right word, but the actors have spanned the political spectrum.

Have we really gotten to the point where we can't digest plain truth spoken plainly?