It shouldn't take a historian to remember that the corporate media, led by Rupert Murdoch's FOX News and abetted by writers at supposedly liberal outposts like the New York Times and the Washington Post, joined the Republican Party in branding Al Gore and John Kerry as "out of touch elitists."
Now, it didn't matter what Gore or Kerry actually said, or did, or what their policies were, the Republican party and the Corporate media have collaborated for years on this kind of misleading characterization.
The Republican party, the party that coddles big companies that ship our jobs overseas, the party that destroys our environment by stripping regulations of their teeth, the party that gives deep tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans while leaving our kids saddled with debt, the party of trade deals that screw the little guy in Akron and in Bogota, the party of the war in Iraq, is, per these same media types, the party of the all-American guy you'd like to go to a barbeque with.
Democrats are "latte-sipping liberals" who wear "earth tones" and are "out of touch."
It doesn't matter if that's true or not.
Now, we are seeing a wrinkle in the fabric of this line of attack in 2008.
Bill and Hillary Clinton, who've run an absolutely pathetic campaign that should have won (or thrown in the towel) long ago but didn't...a couple that supported NAFTA, a couple that has made $109 million since leaving the White House in 2001 with large payments coming from deals with corporate tycoons, a couple who hired Mark Penn (who lobbied on behalf of the Colombian trade deal) and allowed Bill to support that same "screw the little guy" Colombian trade deal while Hillary ostensibly opposed it...these folks are using the exact same Republican and Corporate Media frame to inaccurately brand Barack Obama as an elitist who looks down his nose at voters in Pennsylvania and Indiana and North Carolina.
So, in addition to the GOP and the Corporate Media, we've got fellow Democrats dividing our party by using this "elitist" line of attack on other Democrats in April of 2008.
This is not new. It's been brewing since Clinton lost Iowa; this is part of a deliberate attempt to smear Barack Obama and his supporters as elitist and out of touch.
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The Buffenbarger
Thomas Buffenbarger, a union leader in Ohio, used this attack in advance of the primary there:
Well, my friends, here we are today. The Barack show is playing to rave reviews. Sold out on college campuses after college campus. Standing room only crowds to hear his silver-tongued orations. "Hope. Change. Yes we can." GIVE ME A BREAK! I've got news for all the latte-drinking, Prius-driving, Birkenstock-wearing trust-fund babies crowding in to hear him speak. This guy won't last a round against the Republican attack machine. He's a poet not a fighter. Look around you. Look around you. The mortgage crisis is affecting everyone. People are losing their homes. And even the folks who make their payments faithfully are seeing their property values stolen from under their noses...
So, when Barack Obama talks about class resentment being used to distract working people from the economic issues that matter to them, I'd use Thomas Buffenbarger as a case in point.
Here Buffenbarger is giving a speech in support of a candidate, Hillary Clinton, whom we now know supported and campaigned for NAFTA, whose campaign manager was actively working in support of an anti-labor trade deal with Colombia, and whose husband, Bill Clinton, not only favored both...NAFTA and the Colombian trade deal...but spent the six years after he left the White House raking in tens of millions of dollars, including large, non-transparent payments from corporations and huge speaking fees larger than what most American families make in not one, but, two years.
Here is Buffenbarger in Ohio demonizing "latte-drinking, Prius-driving, Birkenstock-wearing trust-fund babies"...#1 as if that's an accurate characterization of Obama's supporters and #2 as if those folks are the reason we have a mortgage crisis today and not the deregulation of the financial sector that Bill Clinton's policies and the Republican party created.
That's exactly the kind of resentment-mongering that Obama is talking about.
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a progressive responds
Now, this kind of thing leaves me fuming.
I'd like to say that, first of all, having been around thousands of progressive Democrats and being one myself...and being, admittedly, someone whose screen name is the not exactly 'small town friendly' moniker "kid oakland"...that on the surface I am exactly the kind of guy that Buffenbarger thinks he's railing against. I own a North Face down vest. I wear Keen shoes. (Tom needs to get up to date on footwear.) I currently sport a beard. I drive a used Volkswagen. And, while I don't like latte's myself, I do like coffee shops and this morning I drank an English Breakfast Tea.
My point, however, is that I am not the enemy. Not simply because I know that the vast majority of people who look like me and who happen to support Barack Obama are not trust fund babies but are, in fact, pro-labor progressives of modest means. (In my case, I attended college on a scholarship and, before I found my current career, worked over the years as a line cook, a union janitor and as an office temp.) But also because the economic policies that we progressive Democrats support are policies that directly and specifically benefit poor and working Americans.
Progressive politics are politics that benefit everyone...and that includes everyday Americans who live in small towns. Progressives opposed NAFTA and have pushed for labor and environmental provisions in the trade deals that Clinton and McCain have let pass unhindered. Progressives are for regulation and transparency in the financial sector so that banks and investment companies can't screw the little guy like they've just done with the mortgage crisis. Progressive Democrats, like Barack Obama, stood up before the war in Iraq and asked tough questions about how much it would cost in dollars and lives lost and whether invading Iraq would, in fact, make us safer as Americans. Progressives in Congress voted against that war. Senators Clinton and McCain voted for it.
I could go on, but I won't. Because there's something at work here that's bigger than my beef with Buffenbarger, and it's this: the Clinton campaign is using a Republican line of attack to smear Barack Obama and divide the Democratic party by attacking Obama's coalition as elitist and un-American. We are now locked in a battle where the DLC and the Republicans are making essentially the same arguments about the campaign of a Democratic reformer. To do this, like Buffenbarger, they must fan resentments that divide our party.
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I am the granddaughter of a factory worker
Take a look at how Clinton strategist Geoffrey Garin foments resentment in this piece from Talking Points Memo:
"Working class people in all parts of America are frustrated, but they are not small-minded in the way that Senator Obama's comments conveyed," Garin said.
Asked what impact the comments could have in a general election, Garin said: "The people who are most likely to be offended by this are also the most likely to be swing voters in general elections."...
"These comments, and the larger issue of the Obama campaign's inability to connect with these working class voters, is not a little thing. It's a big thing. And it's a big thing that is likely to end up making a big difference in November."
Now take a look at this statement from Hillary Clinton from the same day (I'm going to include the full quote from Senator Clinton because it is so crucial to understanding what is going on here):
I am the granddaughter of a factory worker. I grew up in the Midwest. Born in Chicago, raised outside of that great city. I was raised with Midwestern values and an unshakeable faith in America and its promise.
Now, like some of you may have been, I was taken aback by the demeaning remarks Senator Obama made about people in small town America. Senator Obama's remarks are elitist and they are out of touch. They are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans. Certainly not the Americans that I know - not the Americans I grew up with, not the Americans I lived with in Arkansas or represent in New York. You know, Americans who believe in the Second Amendment believe it's a matter of Constitutional rights. Americans who believe in God believe it is a matter of personal faith. Americans who believe in protecting good American jobs believe it is a matter of the American Dream.
When my dad grew up it was in a working class family in Scranton. I grew up in a church-going family, a family that believed in the importance of living out and expressing our faith. The people of faith I know don't "cling to" religion because they're bitter. People embrace faith not because they are materially poor, but because they are spiritually rich. Our faith is the faith of our parents and our grandparents. It is a fundamental expression of who we are and what we believe.
I also disagree with Senator Obama's assertion that people in this country "cling to guns" and have certain attitudes about immigration or trade simply out of frustration. People of all walks of life hunt - and they enjoy doing so because it's an important part of their life, not because they are bitter.
And as I've traveled across Indiana and I've talked to a lot of people what I hear are real concerns about unfair trade practices that cost people jobs. I think hardworking Americans are right to want to see changes in our trade laws. That's what I have said. That's what I have fought for. I would also point out that the vast majority of working Americans reject anti-immigration rhetoric. They want reform so that we remain a nation of immigrants, but also a nation of laws that we enforce and we enforce fairly.
Americans are fair-minded and good-hearted people. We have ups and downs. We face challenges and problems. But our views are rooted in real values, and they should be respected.
Americans out across our country have born the brunt of the Bush administration's assault on the middle class. Contrary to what Senator Obama says, most Americans did much better during the Clinton years than they have done during the Bush years. If we are striving to bring people together - and I believe we should be - I don't think it helps to divide our country into one America that is enlightened and one that is not. We know there is an unacceptable economic divide in America today, but that is certainly not the way to bridge it. The way to do that is to roll up our sleeves and get to work and make sure we provide, once again, economic opportunity and shared prosperity for all Americans.
People don't need a president who looks down on them; they need a president who stands up for them. And that is exactly what I will do as your president. Because I believe if you want to be the president of all Americans, you need to respect all Americans. And that starts with respecting our hard working Americans, and what we need to do here is to take a lesson from Allison transmission.
That Clinton statement represents a major moment in the 2008 presidential race. It's a moment that can't be undone and represents a significant Clinton commitment to a new line of attack: an emphasis on "American-ness" that hides the patronizing elitism that lies at the core of Clinton's DLC views.
In the name of "American-ness" and "bringing America together" Senator Clinton is maligning Barack Obama, the leading Democratic presidential candidate, using a Republican line of attack that makes him out to be elitist and, by implication, un-American...counter to all the available facts.
Clinton is, in the name of 'unity', creating a contrast between what she clearly delineates as her 'American' heritage and her belief in the faith of our parents and grandparents and Senator Barack Obama. The 'American' angle is deliberate and obvious. There is not a sliver of daylight between Clinton's overuse of the quality 'American' to contrast herself with Barack Obama and John McCain's first television ad: "The American President Americans have been waiting for."
While Clinton makes points about trade and immigration that sound within the Democratic frame, she is actually using a highly divisive line of attack against a fellow Democrat that takes his words and ideas in the worst light imaginable and amplifies her disagreement with Obama using Republican frames that have been used to destroy Democrats in previous elections. Further, she is doing this to explicitly hide her own pro-Nafta, pro-corporate, pro-DLC elitist views.
Make no mistake about the gravity and irreversible nature of what Senator Clinton is doing. This is a scorched earth strategy.
What Clinton is saying is that progressive ideas and grassroots reform as embodied in the candidate Barack Obama are elitist and, by implication, somehow un-American. With the above quote she is seeking to utterly destroy Barack Obama and his candidacy. There's no middle ground in the rhetorical challenge Clinton lays down. This tactic has the effect of creating a scorched earth path to the presidency where if Clinton can't win, no Democrat likely will.
With the above statement Hillary Clinton is using the cloak of her "working class" heritage to hide the essentially elitist world view that has informed her entire career. Bill and Hillary Clinton have always judged themselves as the arbiters of just how much reform and progress and transparency the American people deserved. A sense of entitlement and of "speaking for" others has always lived just behind the Clinton public persona. That m.o. gave us the legacy of the "Clinton years:" a Democratic Party with no backbone, no core values to fight for and a party in disarray.
There is no justifiable reason, however, to use a Republican frame of attack to attack a fellow Democrat in the way Clinton does above. In effect, Clinton is engaged in fanning the same flames of resentment and distraction that the Republicans do on exactly the same issues: Religion. Guns. Immigration. Trade. and "American-ness."
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Clinton = DLC
As progressives it should be clear to us what Clinton is doing ideologically. By kow-towing to the American-ness of guns, god and family, Clinton is sending a signal to the reform-oriented left of the Party. This is a DLC attack on Barack Obama's reform movement that goes hand in hand with Buffenbarger's resentment-mongering against the left. The goal is to keep natural allies on economic issues within the party divided and separate by using Republican frames to play up resentment of the left.
The DLC cannot stand the prospect of party reform. The DLC is relentlessly pro-corporate, pro-free trade and anti-transparency and regulation. The DLC has no interest in granting the progressive wing of the party a say in selecting the Democratic nominee, nor in forging a coalition that brings progressives, young people, blacks, Latinos and working class whites together.
The response of the Obama campaign and progressives has to be three-fold.
First, we have to understand the gravity of what Clinton is doing here. Second, we have to emphasize that the policy agreements between us transcend our differences. Third, we need to build a true coalition around our policy agreements that stands up to the Clinton corporate wing of the Democratic party and their resentment mongering and divisiveness.
Defeating the kind of resentments that Senator Clinton uses to divide us will not be easy. We may well fail. But there is one truth that forms the antidote to the poison that Senator Clinton espouses above:
The common ground between young people, progressive reformers, African Americans, Latinos and working class Democrats is profound. We are all Americans, we are all Democrats, we share common goals and have common needs and we all have the right to have our voices respected and heard in Washington D.C.
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Clinton = Elitist
This election campaign could have been different. It is now moving into a perilous phase. A great deal of the outcome of this phase depends on whether voters are able to see through the DLC approach that Senator Clinton is taking and understand just how elitist Bill and Hillary Clinton really are.
Who are the elitists here?
Barack Obama, the son of single-parent mom who relied on food stamps, a candidate who attended high school and college on scholarships and has spent his adult life in service of everyday people in Illinois and who now seeks to reform corporate influence in Washington D.C. by building a nation-wide roots-up movement of grassroots activists intent on electing Democrats in all 50 States? Or Bill and Hillary Clinton, spouses who once occupied the White House and who parlayed their D.C. political career into $109 million in six short years through the high-powered corporate connections they forged and have now chosen to attempt a return to the White House with the help of Mark Penn, Terry McAuliffe and James Carville?
I think the answer is clear. I also think that both Hillary Clinton and Thomas Buffenbarger are the ones who are, in fact, talking down to middle America. Whether this becomes clear in the press or not will perhaps make all the difference in 2008.
When you foment mistrust and resentment that hides your own policy views or the policy views of the candidate you are supporting, you are no friend of the working person. Quite the opposite. When you misrepresent political allies who share broad common ground with your listeners for the sake of political gain, the only thing you favor is the status quo.
At the end of the day, Americans must ask ourselves, what is it that Barack Obama and his coalition of voters are trying to do in 2008? What are Obama's intentions? What does he stand for? How might his statement have been deliberately misconstrued by a corporate media, a Republican Party and a Clinton campaign eager to tear him down?
I've said some strong things about Senator Clinton. If anything, given the above line of attack from Senator Clinton and my understanding of its rhetorical intentions, I've been too easy on her. In their hunger for power and their political cynicism, the Clintons have taken one passage from a speech by Barack Obama and staked the entire future of this campaign upon using that misconstrued passage to tear Senator Obama and the political movement behind him down. The Clintons have no compunction about ripping the Democratic party apart and destroying the career of Barack Obama if it means they might yet win. That, more than anything else, epitomizes and reinforces what is their fundamentally elitist point of view.
I am confident that history will judge the Clintons of 2008 unfavorably. In the meantime, quite frankly, we've got our work cut out for us.
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