For all the talk of race and gender in this marathon race for the Democratic presidential nomination, the most visible gap on the left is one most often ignored - the yawning chasm between working-class Democrats and the so-called creative class, well-educated liberals who tend to populate the blogging ranks. Barack Obama's ill-considered remarks about the various salves to poverty and job loss that lower middle-class Americans cling to - religion, guns, nativism, protectionism and the like - fairly accurately reflect what many in the creative class kinda, sorta, actually do believe about those in the working class side of the big Democratic equation.
And besides, we're sick of the this media-fueled myth of the heartland that has elected Republican after Republican, and many of us see Senator Obama's candidacy as a way to crush this myth forever, and proclaim the ascendancy of a new American left that recognizes the true leadership of smart, wired progressives. That's why the chorus of "he's right!" echoed through the liberal blogosphere as the extent of Obama's spring-time gift to John McCain became apparent.
You know, I'm tempted to join the chorus.
After all, I'd like to retire the Second Amendment to emeritus status in the Bill of Rights and strengthen our gun laws to roughly parallel Great Britain's. I do think that poor people cling to religion when all hope of economic advance is stilled. I believe that racial hatred and anti-immigrant vitriol is often rooted in class status and economics.
But Senator Obama is running for president in the United States of 2008, not in the country of liberal elitist dreams. The whole point is to win. And while his words may tilt some of the upcoming primaries, its real import is in throwing away his campaign's greatest currency - the love the media insiders showed for his candidacy. In the bowling alleys of Altoona and the diners of rural Indiana, that love took the slightest of hits as Obama's style of retail politicking was derided as less-than-manly. That was small stuff, basically filling the dead air in this six-week slog to Pennsylvania.
Now they've filed for divorce. Despite his apologies, Obama's remarks to big San Francisco donors already have the dons of the Sunday morning roundtables hurling the most vile of Democratic electoral epithets at his candidacy.
Kerry.
Mondale.
And, oh lord, Dukakis.
Words like "Belgian endive" and "windsurfing" are being tossed about. As Lance Mannion pointed out last summer, "In the journalism of the Beltway Insiders, the only real Americans are white, rural, Southern and Midwestern, salt of the earth types." In their heartland myth, created in Georgetown salons over aged port and Cuban cigars, the only kind of president Americans can stand is the regular Joe, the man you'd enjoy a beer with in that bar down on Main Street, in hardscrabble small towns that are hanging on, by God, to the American Dream.
When they listen to their young college-bound and climbing professional kids, these swaggering 60ish blowhards flirt with post-racial creative class hegemony, feeling the occasional thrill up their legs. When the chips are down, they go with their guts - and John McCain is all guts to them.
Hell, even our creative class icons believe in the strength of the manly leader image. Two years ago, Markos Moulitsas, owner of the hysterically anti-Clinton uberblog, DailyKos, nailed the manly stereotype that excites these media types when he - quite without irony - described the he-man Democratic governor of Montana, Brian Schweitzer, to The New York Times:
“Schweitzer is the antithesis of the Democrat stereotype. Too many Democrats look like targets for the school bully. Schweitzer is a tough guy. And people like guys who will bar-fight their way across a state.”
Barack Obama doesn't look like that kind of Democrat, but his new coalition was in the process of changing the rules and reorganizing the electoral map; perhaps it had a chance to finally banish this stupid bar-fight mentality - to meld the creative class that reads "ideas" into the word "hope" whenever Obama utters it. I think that chance took a severe hit in San Francisco, even as liberals rally to defend his statement. Perhaps they worry that Obama's boneheaded words will hurt him as he tries to close out Hillary Clinton. Class traitor that I may be - believing Clinton would be the better president - I have to disagree with that take, though it pains me.
Obama's gift wasn't wrapped up for Hillary Clinton. No, the gift card reads "John McCain."
UPDATE: You can tell how potentially damaging this thing is by the vehemence with which the toughest pro-Obama bloggers try to make the story about the always nefarious Hillary - with a little Mark Penn thrown in as a chaser. Also, John Cole enters full-on freak-out mode - hilarity ensues.
UPDATE II: Riverdaughter catches me with my elitism showing - good thing I'm not on the ballot. Seriously though, a post worth reading.
UPDATE III: I had to share this Stewart video on the whole thing - it's damned funny - hat tip to Tracy Russo:
