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Media and political elites who don't always agree have nevertheless been on the same page about Obama for weeks ... because they are trying to reverse the verdict of 2006 -
I see that Jake Tapper is trying to spin the ABC debacle, saying that they went after the frontrunner and that is normal.
Uh, no. The crowd at ABC's debate openly booed the moderators for being stupid. Even Gibson had to acknowledge it. After the debate, therefore, ABC went into full spin mode, as if ABC itself was a candidate at the debate, a candidate who had stumbled badly. ABC had to say that Obama "struggled," because he kept taking their stupid questions apart. Seven different times. In fairness to Tapper, who has some other good coverage, it's not that simple, but it should have been obvious.
ABC even pressed one of its afternoon entertainment shows into service to repeat the network's ass-covering talking points. But, within twelve hours, a sweep of the news cycle showed that ABC had failed. The story is not that Obama stumbled, but that ABC is a joke. Mark Halperin's legacy is complete. So who is singing along with ABC, and why?
This is politics, and here are its bedfellows:
- Hillary Clinton's contention that Obama 'says one thing to San Francisco and another in public' is supported by ... Newt Gingrich, and that's about it.
- Bill Clinton's contention that Obama is "whining" about the debate is only supported by ... Laura Ingraham, and that's about it.
The elites are getting shrill. "Heh," as they say.
But let's walk through this, because there's some deep structure to be had. You see, a funny thing happened on the way to the high-tech lynching. No one came. Obama's "bitter" comments? The only people who think it was "elitist" are the elites themselves. The American people yawned. The elites, apparently, think that the Heartland is full of a bunch of whiny crybabies who can't take any criticism. But 2006 showed that the elites are wrong about that.
- In 2006, "values voters" walked away from the GOP, in part because David Kuo showed that even the Bush White House thinks religious people are stupid. Scanlon and Abramoff even said so. Other Republicans made their values talk an open joke.
- In 2006, the GOP-controlled Congress publicly announced that they were going to do nothing about immigration, and then went on to campaign on the issue. Republicans think that voters who are concerned with immigration are stupid, because Republicans keep enabling cheap labor while playing on fears not just of immigrants, but of Mexicans specifically.
- In 2006, the NRA tried to scare voters with a luridly illustrated full-color mailer, even though there was no major gun-control legislation pending.
So, for people who cling to religion, xenophobia, or firepower because they're bitter about their lot in life, 2006 was the year they realized they'd been conned, and they punished the GOP.
But 2006 wasn't just bad news for Republicans, it was also trouble for the Village and for the Clintons, who sent their proxies out to attack Howard Dean even before the new Democratic Congress had been sworn in. 2006 scared the shit out of some very powerful people, people who are hell-bent on pushing back in November.
The Republicans think that religious people, people who are concerned with immigration, and gun owners are really, completely, pathetically stupid and can be distracted by decoy issues. In Texas, when they wanted to give highways to private companies and make taxpayers pay twice, Texas Republicans brought out gay marriage. That's how the "values" con works. They'd like to continue ripping off America this way, and the Village agrees and thinks it's cute. This is the David Brooks soft-focus, white picket fence, French-horn-in-the-background America that doesn't exist. This is how they condescend to Americans. Challenge this demeaning fairy-tale, and the Village will call you "elite." It's simple. Then again, it has to be. Brooks isn't that bright.
The Clintons, long victims of this stupid crap, have gone native. Why? The long version is that they're from the same generation of Southern Democrats that produced so many Republicans, and share their attitudes towards people of faith, etc., as the dupes who keep elites in power. But, in the context of this election, when Hillary justifies taking the low road against Obama simply because it's been paved by Republicans, she's admitting up front that she lacks either the brains or the guts to attack Republican frames, which means she's an automatic loser.
And Hillary didn't just pile on, she amplified a message that Republicans will use against any Democrat when they dress up ad hominem attacks as "the character issue." The Village agrees. Stephanapoulos and FOX News are defending the debate's content on the grounds that "character" matters.
But talk of "character" is just an excuse for personal attacks. The last time Americans elected a president under the "character" rubric it was George W. Bush.
I watched The Blondes on FOX "News" use the word over and over and over, so that they could pretend that Obama had never addressed the Rev. Wright issue and dredged up Ayers as if he was some kind of pariah in the present day. "Character" is just a cheap way to pretend that mud-slinging is a principled enterprise. Through the rhetorical use of "character," frivolous journalists, vicious media proxies, and dishonest politicians can pretend that minutiae define a candidate, not policy. Through the magical word "character," idiots can pretend that manufactured controversies matter more than facts.
It's even called "Clinton Rules."
Talk of "character" is cheap, easy, and meaningless, which is why the elites love to use "character" to change the subject from things Americans actually care about. And it's cheap personal attacks like these that are required to reverse the verdict of 2006 and keep failure alive.
But they failed against Obama, who just shook the dust off and kept making fun of the idiots at ABC News. It's Obama's version of "teflon." Clinton claims that this is "whining," but that's because Hillary Clinton thinks you're stupid. It's not like she believes this stuff herself.
So, why did the high-tech lynching fail? Let me back up, because this goes to the heart of the matter. Months ago, I responded to lefty bloggers' concerns about Obama's "high road" approach with two basic points that I had not seen made elsewhere. Obama's approach, I said, had both tactical and strategic utility:
- tactically, Obama made it harder to write him off as an angry black man. This is why the Rev. Wright is so important to elites who are trying to change the subject: Rev. Wright gave them the Willie Horton they needed so badly, something Obama will never give them himself.
- strategically, it makes it harder to attack Obama, because it's more expensive. For Hillary, whose negatives were high to begin with, this has become painfully true of late. As Hillary goes negative, her negatives go up and Obama stays ahead.
But there was a third aspect that I did not recognize at the time, probably because John Edwards was still in the race, so I'll lay it out now:
The more Obama sticks to kitchen-table issues, the more elites look stupid when they try to play the usual "gotcha" games. Why? Because, as we saw with ABC, the "gotcha" games have nothing to do with the issues that are so important to an increasingly anxious electorate.
Hillary, the Republicans, and the media elite merely highlight how irrelevant they are to the American people's interests when they attack Obama with this bullshit. That's why it's not working.
In defense of the elites, they have no choice. The elites owe their very status to the same scams that have hurt and angered so many Americans. The last thing a rapist wants to discuss with his victim is the assault, at least while other people are listening. Therefore, the elites have to keep changing the subject to the stupid "gotcha" games of Washington DC, not because of habit, not because of the mandates of the corporate media, but because this is the gulf between Charles Gibson and you, one measurable in dollars. They don't want to talk about what they've done to you, and they don't want Obama doing it either.
That's the reason that only Obama is asked about lapel pins, even though neither John McCain nor Hillary Clinton, neither George Stephanopoulos nor Charles Gibson were wearing them either. The fact that Obama is the frontrunner does not, by itself, explain why media and political elites are all on the same message about Obama.
But I must admit, it's been fun watching these elites flail and miss. Stephanopoulos borrowed a question from Sean Hannity, only to be humiliated for not doing his homework on the Weathermen. Hillary piled on, only to have Bill Clinton's pardons brought up again. Ooops! Gibson asked, tremble-chinned, if the Democrats would take a no-new-tax pledge. Apparently, dumbass was at the wrong debate.
What the hell is going on here? They've formed a common cause against the Democrats' Fifty-State Strategy success. Any help for working Americans is going to come at the cost, or at least the opportunity cost, of these parasites. So they've set aside their differences, and set their sites on the candidate.
The criticism of Obama from the left was that he wasn't disparaging enough of these stupid questions. But, the following morning, Stephanopoulos was enraged that Obama would do as much as he did, openly mocking the former Clinton aide on the Wright question, where again Stephanopoulos hadn't done his homework. "Our job is to ask the questions," Stephanopoulos insisted, pointlessly.
But you can't say it's your job and then claim you're powerless, that this is just "how politics works." This isn't the kind of politics that George Stephanopoulos used to advocate, but I guess it is the kind of politics that the Republicans taught Stephanopoulos back in the 90's, when they were beating his ass.
So, any time a "journalist" says that Obama is "looking more and more like John Kerry," the proper response is to say, "yeah, and you're going to see to it, aren't you?" Don't let them pretend it's a change in the weather. It's an attack on you by the people who want to leave you to rot.
The late, great Oldman once wrote that good times and boundless credit had made it easy to turn American politics into a clown car. Hard choices could be put off, and frivolous and even metaphysical "issues" ruled politics. Now that times are hard, the voters aren't buying this crap any more, if only because they can't afford to. American families have no room left in the budget for "grinning hypocrite bullshit," or "fawning journalists who want to just mail it in," or "the Clinton's prerogatives as American nobility."
Hey, you gotta cut somewhere. Might as well be the useless people.
But, since paradigmatic changes are often generational ones, it's going to take a lot of retirements before the American political press ceases to suck. The fact that ABC is being criticized by its peers shows that the transformation is underway. Gibson and Stephanopoulos will never reclaim their reputations. See to it.
But, for the political elites, retirement is just an election away. Punish the practitioners of silly politics as if they were your mortal enemies, because their frivolousness would leave you, passive aggressively, to rot. So they are your mortal enemies, if only by default or neglect.
You pay your taxes and you obey the laws. Your politicians should know that they can either serve your interests or watch their ass.
That is the constituency that is challenging the third-world politics of the American elite.
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