Left Behind
So if it’s “elitist” or “insulting” to note that voters who are otherwise left behind in the global economy sometimes have misdirected frustrations – which can be exploited for political gain – then Barack Obama has plenty of company. ~The San Francisco Chronicle
Yes, he does have plenty of company–a majority of the Democratic Party, if polling is any indication. Obama has plenty of company, and this is a serious problem not just for Obama, but for all those in the party who agree with what he said.
The Chronicle reminds me here of something Obama was saying in his Philadelphia speech last month, which goes to the heart of the charge of his condescensing attitude: some people have correctly directed frustrations (i.e., they blame the right people or institutions for their plight) and some have misdirected frustrations. Resentment about affirmative action is displaced economic anxiety; the answer isn’t to change or eliminate affirmative action, but to rally white voters against corporations and lobbyists. Likewise, frustration with a broken immigration system and mass immigration isn’t actually about national sovereignty, border security, demographic change or anything actually connected to immigration–it is fear of the Other that fills the void that a job would otherwise fill. Never mind that people who have work and economic security oppose mass immigration, often more fervently and actively than those who have some immediate economic interest at stake. The entire issue is written off as “anti-immigrant sentiment,” xenophobia, an irrational fear. This is the essence of the claim: liberals have values and convictions; conservatives have neuroses. This is what we have come to expect from the left, but Obama fans were insistent that their candidate was different. I have never been persuaded that this was true, and the claim is even less credible now.
Naturally, in the Chronicle’s and Obama’s telling, it is whites and cultural conservatives who have misdirected frustrations, which fits with the critique of conservatism from the left, which holds that pretty much all of conservatism is one big exercise in misdirected frustration, usually boiled down (most simplistically by the Krugmans of the world) to that “antipathy to people who are not like them.” Perhaps it is not terribly surprising that a liberal thinks cultural conservatives come up with the wrong answers, since he presumably believes that their cultural conservatism, at least in its political expression, is wrong, but it strikes me as significant that there is an assumption shared by Obama and the Chronicle that the attachments and attitudes Obama mentioned can apparently only be understood as a form of scapegoating and distraction. Obviously, what the Chronicle refers to mockingly as the “horrors of globalization” or an immigrant “invasion” very well could impinge directly on the economic interests of small town Americans and might have an obvious, relevant connection to their economic predicament. Since it is taken for granted among most coastal and urban elites that opposition to these things is the function of ignorance and prejudice, it simply can’t be that these issues might resonate with voters displaced by “creative destruction.”
What seems more significant, however, is that voters in many of the communities most adversely affected by mass immigration might very well be less prone to vote on the basis of immigration policy than voters elsewhere. There may also be cases where small towns that have been hollowed out by offshoring and deindustrialisation have been so battered that they now welcome any new factory or business, even if it employs large numbers of illegal immigrant workers. Having destroyed their means of support through bad trade policy, Washington has made these towns dependent on the import of foreign labour to keep their towns from collapsing all together, and so perhaps perversely traps those worst affected by these wrongheaded policies into accepting them as inevitable. Indeed, one hears quite often the argument from the left and from pro-immigration Republicans that voters in border states are supposedly less concerned about immigration than people in the center of the country who are just experiencing the first waves of immigration in the last decade or so, as if this made the current policy (or rather lack of a policy) more justifiable. One also hears the critique that working class and black voters, who undeniably are negatively affected by mass immigration, don’t care about immigration as much as middle-class whites. If these claims are true, Obama’s analysis is that much more in error and should then be seen as little more than the laziest of stereotyping. Arguably, the people who are most likely to be most concerned with these areas of policy are those who fear or anticipate negative effects from these policies in the future; the communities that these policies have already gutted or transformed beyond recognition may have more immediate and pressing concerns than struggling against policies whose repeal or alteration will now do them little good. It’s not at all obvious that the places that have been “left behind” are more attached to any of the things Obama mentioned than those that have not.
Update: Looking over the Rasmussen numbers on reactions to the remarks, what is striking is how few people outside of the 18-29 age group agree with Obama’s remarks. Among 30-39, those who disagree outnumber those who agree by two to one (50-24); in the 40-49 group, the breakdown is 64-19; among 50-64 year olds it’s 58-26; in the 65+ group it’s 59-20. (The remainder of each group is “not sure.”) Not only is it not the case that “everybody” knows what he said to be true, but the public seems to disagree with him overwhelmingly. Even young voters, one of Obama’s core demographic groups, are split evenly, 40-40. Interestingly, it is the oldest voters who are least likely (39%) to say that the comments reflect an elitist view, while young voters are more likely than some of their elders (48%) to say this.
Update: Fortunately, nobody except the elites care about this controversy.
Hilarious how the elites are the only people who really seem to care about these remarks Obama made. Isn’t it funny that it’s the political elites who are trying to tell the small town folks what should matter to them? The small town folks seem not to care. Who’s more out of touch, Obama, or his elitist critics of elitism?
What’s hilarious is seeing Obama’s boosters pretend that no one cares about this except for pundits. The 40% of respondents in that SUSA poll who claimed to be offended must not exist, or perhaps they are also out of touch elites. Whatever it takes to make Obama look good, right?
This Strategic Vision poll showing 55% of Pennsylvania Democrats disagreeing with Obama’s statement is also worth considering. Obama trails McCain by 10 points in a head-to-head match-up; Clinton trails by 3. Obama’s position has weakened since last week vs. McCain by three points. Clinton used to lead in the primary poll by five and now leads by nine. Somebody out there seems to care about what he said.
Daniel, I guess what I don’t see is what Obama should have said if he genuinely disagrees with these constituencies’ concerns.
If someone has a grievance you don’t share (and you privately think they’re overreacting), and their diagnosis of the root problem is entirely different than yours, what is the correct response? At some point you must say something like, “You’re wrong for the following reasons.”
It seems to me that in a lot of these social issues (gay marriage, gun control, immigration, etc.) there’s very little way to demonstrate empirically that the alarmist side is wrong without actually running the social experiment, which for practical reasons can’t happen.
Alternatively you could make a well-reasoned response based on deep social science research, but it seems like such arguments only convince people who are already on your side.
Or, you could attack the other side’s values, which is essentially what every American politician does, because it seems to be the only solution. The other side is wrong because it is either stupid or evil.
I don’t hold out any hope for Obama transforming American politics. And probably what he said was maladroit and condescending. But I still think it’s worlds kinder than what I’ve been hearing from the White House over the last 8 years, which is that if I disagree with President Bush’s values it’s because I’m an America-hating, French-speaking, terrorist-loving traitor.
The most that can be said about this Obama statement is that he bungled a perfectly routine “political macro”.
Daniel,
Disagreeing with a statement isn’t the same as caring about it. Obama’s polling numbers both in Pennsylvania and nationally haven’t been affected by this media-only “controversy”. If anything, his numbers are going up. The people who are supposed to be most offended and turned off by Obama’s remarks simply don’t place much importance to it. Media elites do. If anything, there may be a backlash going on, and sympathy for Obama brewing over the silly gotcha game and overanalytic crticism he’s getting. Keep it up.
It stands to reason that some number of people who disagree with the remarks also care about them. As I just told you, 2/5 of the respondents in that Harrisburg poll said they were offended; being offended entails “caring” about the remarks to some degree. Is Harrisburg representative? I don’t know, but when you look at SUSA’s statewide polling you can see that Obama is getting destroyed in the regions where a lot of the small town Pennsylvanians live. The Philadelphia area’s huge population is what saves him, since he leads in SE Pennsylvania. That is the only part of the state where he has any kind of lead; he is losing almost every other part of the state by more than 25 points. It must be that no one cares about any of these controversies. And, in fact, his numbers have either remained static or gone down according to almost every company that does regular polling. PPP gives him a lead, but PPP is all over the map in the past few weeks. Most of the fluctuations remain within the margin of error.
I assume that the reason the polling hasn’t changed significantly one way or another is that everyone already committed to Obama probably agrees with some or all of what he said, while those who are likely to disagree tend to support Clinton anyway. The political relevance of the remarks was, after all, that he was seen to be insulting a group of people who usually do not support him in large numbers. The significance of the remarks as a matter of electoral politics is that he is unlikely to make inroads with this set of voters, and that is what we are seeing. How much importance these voters place on this controversy, I have no idea, and neither does anyone else, because we don’t have much information about this, but it is clear that these voters definitely do not support Obama. Those who already do support him are going to ignore the controversy or see it as an attempt to “get” their candidate, but that would only help Obama if he were already in the lead. As it is, he needs to expand his coalition in PA, and these remarks likely hindered that effort.
As for what he should have said, I think he has been quite clear about his disagreements with cultural conservatives without attempting to explain away their beliefs. He could have made his own views perfectly clear, and he could have even declared opposing views to be mistaken, but he should have stayed away from the sociological analysis. Disagreement, even condescending disagreement, is preferable to a condescending effort to analyse someone’s beliefs in the way that he seems to have done.
Btw, polls since bittergate in Pennsylvania: Franlking-Marshall has Clinton +7, LA TImes/Bloomberg has Clinton +5, Zogby has Clinton +1, and PPP has Obama +3. Adding in SV’s +9 gives an average of about Clinton about +4 – still a sign of continued progress over recent weeks.
Daniel,
I think most of the people who are supposed to be caring about this issue aren’t actually changing their votes because they simply don’t put much sgnificance in a few off-the-cuffs remarks he’s made – any more than they care in general about off-the-cuff remarks. The elites think these people are stupid and easily swayed by such things, that they are thin-skinned and can be manipulated by constant sound-bite repetition. Honestly, who but a few elites really thinks this matters in the bigger picture? Who really thinks these remarks are going to be remember by actual working class voters come November? Well, the elites seem to think so, and those with a vested interest in thinking people are that stupid and easily manipulated. Actual working class people living in rural small towns with no college (and I’m one of them) might find the remarks “offensive” if you put them in a poll, but don’t much care when it comes down to it.
As you say, those who are for Obama won’t be swayed by this, and those who are against him won’t be swayed. Which leaves the middle-ground. I seriously doubt this is going to sway them one way or another. People aren’t that naive and silly. Only the out-of-touch elites think ordinary people are that easily manipulated. In the basic sense Obama was right that we are sick and tired of the elites thinking they can manipulate us on the basis of a few emotional-based hot buttons, when we are just being screwed over by people who really couldn’t care less about anything but maintaining their elite status. He was wrong to some degree about the “clinging” stuff, but that’s no big deal. Those are just badly chosen words anyway, and over-analyzing such things is what the elites make their living doing. What matters to me, and I think to a lot of people, is that Obama is actually trying to get rid of that whole emotional manipulation of people based on gotcha games.
Re: Update
OMG, a right-wing Christian blogger overhears one of the hoi poloi saying that this stuff makes Obama sound like a “limousine liberal”. And he even has TWO comments in his blog (who disagree with him). This sounds like an avalanche of working-class sentiment against Obama.
Jeez, Daniel, come up with something a little more convincing than this. Like the latest polls released today in PA which show Hillary’s leading continuing to fall. Rasmussen and Zogby both have her at +3 and +4. Doesn’t sound like a proletarian revolt to me.
I’m a working class dude living in a small town that’s experienced a lot of economic troubles from the failing lumber industry (northern Ca, not PA), and I don’t hear anyone taking this crap seriously. Even the Christian fundamentals here (and there’s plenty) don’t seem to take this seriously. They’ve got lots bigger concerns than whether Obama is more of an elitist than the two centamillionaires in the race. Everyone out there who works in government, the media, or makes a lot of money is an elitist as far as they’re concerned. So what’s the news here?
It’s an anecdote. Of course it has limited relevance. It’s another piece of information. If it doesn’t matter that Obama is losing in every region of PA except Philadelphia, I can’t imagine why you would find a single anecdote meaningful.
Do you suppose that living in northern California has something to do with the fact that no one you know cares about this?
Daniel,
It’s a meaningless anecdote in the overall scheme. Obama was losing in most of PA long before this incident ever happened, so that’s also meaningless. The fact is, he’s been steadily gaining throughout PA ever since he began campaigning there, turning HIllary’s 20 point lead of a few weeks ago in a 3-4 point lead. This elitism controversy doesn’t seem to be changing that. Why? If people in PA think it’s so significant, why don’t they seem to follow the elites in punishing Obama for it? Why do his numbers there continue their steady advance? There’s something deeply wrong about your analysis.Why do you think that is?
Maybe it’s because you’re one of those elites who has so little in common with these people who are supposed to be offended. Now, true I live in No CA, so I can’t speak for the people of PA, but I think I’m more in touch with people who are scrapping by, who struggle to raise kids and pay a mortgage, who live outside the elite centers of academic, cultural, and economic power, and who have seen their interests ignored by those people for decades. The people I know don’t live among the elites, they’ve seen their local industries collapse, and they have real life problems that have little to do with the gaffes of politiicians. Rural No CA is not a liberal hotbed, by the way, but has long been quite conservative and Republican. It’s not the SF Bay Area. Lots of religious people, including myself. Lots of rednecks, though I’m not one of them. Your geography needs some work.
If they’re Republican and conservative, how likely are they to vote for Obama or care about his campaign, or really be surprised by anything that comes out of his mouth?
So Obama can still be losing horribly in the parts of the state whose inhabitants he was referring to in those remarks, but we’re supposed to take Obama’s movement in some statewide polls (while conveniently ignoring the ones showing him down by 14 or more points) as evidence that these remarks don’t matter to the people who were already and still are supporting Clinton? Your best argument is that these remarks will have no impact on the primary and the nominating contest. That is very different from saying that no one cares about them. We have evidence that people care about them–Obama’s unfavs, like Clinton’s, have been shooting up in recent weeks, and many respondents say they found them offensive.
“Northern California” covers a lot of ground. The northern California coast belongs to CA-01, which is a Democratic -held seat and 60% there voted for Kerry. It’s practically like Alabama, isn’t it? In the Democratic primary, it was also a stronghold for Obama, as were several of the interior counties that belong to Republican-held CDs. The second district to its east is heavily Republican, with 62%voting for Bush in ’04. The fourth district voted for Bush by a similarly large margin. On the other hand, CA-06 is a big Democratic district that went for Kerry 70-28. If you live in the second or fourth district, my question makes much less sense, but I had no idea what part of “northern California” you are in. When I think of northern California, I associate it with the towns along the coast, because that’s the part I’ve been to. To be equally vague, I might say that I live in “northern Illinois” and expect someone to guess, knowing nothing else, what that means for the political leanings of my neighbours.
I won’t pretend that I have much in common with the voters in question. I don’t live and haven’t ever lived in small towns. But I have plenty of relatives who do, so I have some idea what their views of things are. I also don’t blithely dismiss evidence that says that large numbers of these voters found these comments offensive. Then again, I’m not flacking for a candidate who just said something foolish.
Daniel,
Yes, Obama can still be losing horribly in parts of PA that he was previously losing horribly in. You would have to show that his numbers have changed significantly there of late to support your assertions. You can’t, however, because it hasn’t happened. That must be frustrating, I know, but stop taking it out on me, and re-assess your own thinking.
Now, as for attacking me as a “flack” for Obama, I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean. It’s pure ad hominem. I’ve never hidden my support for Obama, but I’ve never relied on false assertions in support of him either. If you can show that I’m wrong on the facts here, and that people really do care significantly enough about this issue to change their votes, then you can throw that in my face and I’ll have to concede that you’re right. But you can’t, because the facts thus far don’t support your assertions. It makes no difference what our particular partisan leanings are, and I won’t stoop to the level of accusing you of being motivated by partisanship. I’m not sure why you’re wrong, I just think there’s no evidence to show that you’re right. Maybe it’s just that you can’t resist the notion of a narrative that confirms certain biases of your own. Who knows.You seem like a self-reflecting guy. I’m sure you can figure it out better than I can.
As for No CA, I live in District 01, but the numbers are misleading, in that the district has much of its population centers in the liberal Bay Aread. I live in the sparsely populated northern coastal region which is still predominantly conservative, though it too has a fair share of liberal types. An interesting place to live, with lots of old school rednecks, new age hippies, and the whole dying lumber industry. But it’s still more conservative than the rest of California, if live-and-let-live on the lifestyle front. It’s not Alabama, but having been through Alabama, neither is Alabama. Media stereotypes are hard to break.
Like I say, I’ve got way more in common with these “types” of voters than you, so maybe I know a little more about it than you, and don’t fall so easily into the stereotypes of the rural folk who the elites think are high-strung guys with chips on their shoulders and inferiority complexes that get activated by some remark from you city slickers that’s going to totally change who they’re going to vote for. I can’t believe the horseshit I’m hearing form people these days about how rural people vote. Talk about condescending. Obama was nothing compared to the crap you and Chris Matthews and the general media elite are spewing. I only take the time to respond to you because you seem like a decent guy who’s just not yet beyond the pale. There’s hope for you. I hope you don’t find that condescending, but if you do, now you know how it feels.
So CA-01 is “more conservative than the rest of California,” which is to say not very conservative. As for the polling, as I’ve said before, the simplest explanation why Obama’s remarks may not be having much impact is that the people in PA likely to be insulted by his remarks were already not going to vote for him. That doesn’t mean that they don’t care about what he said. Then again, there’s this ARG poll that shows a huge movement against Obama in the last week. Please feel free to ignore it as you have been ignoring everything else.
I don’t assume that small town folks have chips on their shoulders and inferiority complexes. I do assume that people tend not to like being called racists and xenophobes, and they tend not to like having their attachment to religion treated with what sounded like disrespect. Maybe it wasn’t supposed to be disrespectful, but it certainly sounded that way. I’m not sure why when people from Pennsylvania actually say they are offended by the comments, we are supposed to pretend that they didn’t say that so that we don’t reify some stereotype of small town Americans. If this is the quality we can expect from Obama-led “national conversations,” you can count me out.
As for the last bit, it’s not condescending. It’s just tiresome, like so many of the arguments that Obama supporters deploy these days. It would be a lot easier to dismiss everything people say on behalf of Obama as “crap,” as you keep doing with criticisms of him, but I don’t think that’s very useful.
something from Counterpunch on Sen. Obama’s remarks
Daniel,
Thinking of the people who live in my area as a demographic entity is part of what people who are not part of the elite resent. As I mentioned and you still ignore, CA 01 is a very strangely drawn district. It extends almost 400 miles from the Bay Area all the way to the Oregon border. It’s an articifical “district” in that the peoples in different parts of it have almost nothing to do with one another. It would be like having a district extending from the Philadelpha suburbs up through Amish country and out practically to Buffalo. So the Bay Area liberals in the sourthern, more populous end of the district skew the overall demographics towards the liberal end, while the vast middle and northen stretches of the district are filled with sparsely populated conservatives. This is the genius of gerrymandering, using a portion of the liberal south to negate the ability of Republicans to elect congressmen from the rural north. It doesn’t at all change the conservative nature of the rural north, which is where I live. Take a look at the map of CA 01 on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California's_1st_congressional_district
The larger point is that regardless of how my congressional district is drawn, the actual physical area I live in is a rural, relatively conservative area of declining economic status far from the centers of power and privilege that define the “elites” of this country. And people here aren’t placing much signirficance to these comments.
As for the polls, I notice that you are extremely selective in which polls you point to in support of your argument, while ignoring all polls which don’t support you. This is rather transparently disingenuous. I’m at least pointing to the averaging of the polls. I haven’t seen ARG’s poll on RealClearPolitics yet, but the average of recent polls in PA continues to head Obama’s way.
As for not enjoying being condescended to, yes, I can see how you immediately react to this when the tables are turned on you. Does it make you wonder if maybe you shouldn’t be so condescending in the first place? Something Jesus said about treating others as you would have them treat you?
As for national conversations, I don’t think Obama or his supporters are under any illusions that an honest national conversation about politics will be free of strife and resentments. That’s precisely the main message of these “bitter” comments. He’s acknowledging that people have a lot of angy and divisive feelings about a lot of things, and that these feelings need to get out in the open rather than be manipulated by various subliminal messages and symbols.You seem disappointed that Obama people aren’t Kumbaya idealists. Wow, we have our own resentments at being condescended to. Who could have known?
As for tiresome, yes, it is tiresome to have tiny comments by politicians (I include Hillary, McCain, and every one else in this) being blown up by media elite metanalysis into some kind of hugely “meaningful” status that they simply don’t have. It’s the classic example of making mountains out of someone’s booger hanging from their nose. It cheapens everything in our political discourse. As for dismissing everything people say on behalf of Obama as crap, isn’t that just what you’re doing? Anyone who says anything good about Obama is a “flack”. You’re telling me that isn’t condescending and tiresome?
Now, will it have an effect? Hard to say. There’s certainly little evidence that it will. You have some people saying in polls that they are offended, but no evidence that their offense is swaying their votes. I would call that insignificant offense. I may get offended by something my wife says every now and then about me. It doesn’t mean we’re getting divorced.
The problem here is how everone in the media these days thinks their job is crystal ball gazing. They take tiny scraps of information and think they are supposed to imagine how this will effect the future, rather than simply reporting what’s actually going on. It’s one of your worst faults as a blogger. You’re good at analyzing the past, but just downright terrible at projecting into the future. I’m not sure why you think it’s your job to predict how people are going to respond to Obama and his comments, or anything else for that matter. The truth is, no one knows. If one limits oneself to actual evidence, rather than crystal ball navel-gazing, there doesn’t seem to be much effect on actual polling. We’ll see on tuesday how the voting goes.
I am terrible at projecting into the future, which is why I *stopped doing it months ago*. In talking about all of this, I have been reporting what’s been going on and responding to the remarks themselves. I point out the polls that show a backlash because everyone else seems intent on pointing to the polls that show the opposite. One set is going to be very wrong and one is going to be right.
And, no, not everyone who says something good about Obama is a flack. People who insist on ignoring anything that might contradict their assumptions about him or about reactions to him seem a lot like flacks.
Disputing your interpretations of what’s going on in the world isn’t a form of denial. Disputing the significance of anecodotal evidence isn’t denialism either. And averaging the poll results, rather than only quoting the most favorable polls as you have been doing, isn’t denialism either. I’ve acknowledged time after time that Obama has weaknesses and vulnerabilities. I just think this particular issue is way overblown.You could really benefit by stopping the name-calling and owning up to the weaknesses in your attacks on Obama. Calling me an Obama flack only makes you look sillier, and it does nothing to strengthen your arguments.