Gallup released a poll this week that offered Barack Obama some good news, and some bad, all relating to an “education gap.” As Jonathan Chait noted, “Obama’s lead over Clinton among white college-educated Democrats (and Democratic leaners) has risen from 7 points to 12 points. Among those with post-graduate degrees, it’s exploded, from an 8 point lead to a 29 point lead. But among white voters with a high school degree or less, his deficit has barely budged, from 33 points to 30 points. As it stands, the educational chasm is stark.”
If Obama is struggling with the “working-class blues,” something tells me this won’t help.
As Senator Barack Obama sought to broaden his appeal to voters in southern Indiana on Friday, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain separately criticized him as being out of touch with the middle class, seizing on a remark Mr. Obama made at a California fund-raiser about “bitter” Americans.
At the fund-raiser in San Francisco last Sunday, Mr. Obama outlined challenges facing his presidential candidacy in the coming primaries in Pennsylvania and Indiana, particularly persuading white working-class voters who, he said, fell through the cracks during the Bush and Clinton administrations.
“So it’s not surprising then that 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,” Mr. Obama said, according to a transcript on the Huffington Post Web site, which on Friday published the comments.
The response could fairly be described as ferocious. Almost immediately, John McCain’s campaign told reporters, “It shows an elitism and condescension towards hardworking Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking. It is hard to imagine someone running for president who is more out of touch with average Americans.” Hillary Clinton, nearly as quickly, delivered a speech in which she said people who’ve “faced hard times” are not bitter at all, adding, “Pennsylvanians don’t need a president who looks down on them, they need a president who stands up for them.”
I think Obama’s remarks from last weekend were a little clumsy, but hardly scandalous.
The Huffington Post ran a lengthy item on this, including the audio and full transcript, but here’s the contentious quote in a slightly larger context:
“[T]he truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that 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.”
For those of us who’ve read “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” the quote probably doesn’t sound especially noteworthy. Awkwardly phrased, but largely a common explanation for the ways in which voters place social concerns and the culture war above their economic interests.
Reading over Obama’s quote a few times, I get the sense he ran into trouble by putting two thoughts together without any real transition. The God and Guns idea isn’t exactly the same as the America First idea, though they’re part of the same broader dynamic.
Nevertheless, there are two main angles to consider going forward. The first is that, after a slow week in which nothing especially shocking happened in the presidential campaign, this is the new “new thing.” The media will now obsess over accusations of “elitism,” in part because Clinton and the GOP have settled on the same talking points, and in part because the media has nothing else to do right now. The story broke late on a Friday night, but the discussion will dominate the Sunday morning shows, and Fox News will incorporate the comments into every segment between now and 2011.
The second is that Obama did a pretty good job in Indiana last night of pushing back on the story.
To my ear, this provides important context and meaning to what Obama said on Sunday, though the comments are not identical. Last night, was effectively his way of saying, “What I meant was…” That may work, it may not. Time will tell.
If recent history is any guide, the “bitter” quote won’t change anything. People sympathetic to Obama won’t find this especially noteworthy, and are inclined to agree with his sentiment. Obama’s detractors will characterize his remarks as evidence of liberal elitism. We can discuss, at painful length, whether people are actually bitter or optimistic. Or both. Or something else altogether.