A Second Hand Conjecture

As at least one person has said, there’s the type of slip of the tongue where one accidentally says what one really thinks.Has everyone seen by now Obama’s take on why small town Midwestern sorts cling to religion, guns, racism, and anti-illegal immigrant notions? They’re bitter.

“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.”

So now he’s conceded that his remarks were ill chosen and that of course religion and the second amendment are good things. He attempts to say the same thing but with better chosen words. He also seems to have left out the “antipathy to people who aren’t like them” part. (Which, frankly, I hadn’t seen anyone make much of a deal about but there is a lot I don’t see so…)

You decide if he’s done better.

“Lately there has been a little typical sort of political flare up because I said something that everybody knows is true, which is that there are a whole bunch of folks in small towns in Pennsylvania, in towns right here in Indiana, in my hometown in Illinois who are bitter,”

My “home town” is between 200 and 300 people. I had to go to the next town for school and my graduating class numbered Forty-one. Anywhere that I have gone in my 20+ years of adult life no one has had the first clue of what “depressed local economy” actually means. They just don’t know.

In fact, as a “bitter” Midwesterner, I consider them whiners. Yeah, there’s a sense of superiority that helps people get through when things are bad and if Obama is interested in a clue-bat to the head… it’s a feeling of their own personal fortitude.

When people are clinging to notions of their own personal fortitude they get cranky if you call them bitter. Bitter is a small word for small people. Small people are bitter.

Excusing them for being small is not going to be received as a supportive statement.

Now we’ve heard it all before, haven’t we? In 2004 and the great fly-over state mystery? Why, many magazine articles asked, do these people vote against their self interest? What, they asked, was wrong with Kansas? I seem to recall that one magazine actually sent a reporter on a road trip across the wilds of darkest middle America to report on the curious habits of the natives. Obama has figured it out. Obama explains:

“And so they pray and they count on each other and they count on their families. You know this in your own lives, and what we need is a government that is actually paying attention. Government that is fighting for working people day in and day out making sure that we are trying to allow them to live out the American dream.”

Thank you, Obama, for promising to allow us to live out the American dream. Eff you, sir, and the effing horse you rode in on.

Who needs this sort of support? Who wants it? People want to be told they are strong, that they will over come. They want to be praised for their fortitude. They want to be told they are powerful, effective, human beings no matter what their circumstances.

It’s actually a bit like the “support” that our military gets from certain quarters.

I’m curious about this quote putting his original statements into context:

He explained his troubles winning over working class voters, saying they have become frustrated with economic conditions:

Does this make sense to anyone? I don’t know how the authors came to the conclusion that he was explaining his troubles at winning over working class voters. But people in economically depressed areas, according to liberal understanding of economics, ought to be an easy sell for Democrats. Unless he’s explaining why Clinton does better with them?

It does make sense if the thought sequence goes… bad economy… bitterness towards people not like me… Obama is not like me. Which we could interpret as “Harvard Educated” or we could interpret as “black.”

I think it’s far more likely that Clinton just knows better what to say to those people.

“I was raised with Midwestern values and an unshakable faith in America and its policies,” she said. “Now, Americans who believe in the Second Amendment believe it’s a matter of constitutional right. Americans who believe in God believe it’s a matter of personal faith.

I don’t have to believe her or like her to point out that at least she knows her audience well enough to know what to say.

Tags: bitterness, Clinton, economy, flyover country, Midwest, Obama

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