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Elitist, Populist

In Pennsylvania, Obama did everything conceivable to win over Clinton’s working-class voters. ~David Brooks Yes, he did everything, except offer those voters some concrete proposal that seemed likely to address their concerns and serve their interests.  Brooks’ column does a good job showing the divisions created by differing levels of education, and he could push […]

In Pennsylvania, Obama did everything conceivable to win over Clinton’s working-class voters. ~David Brooks

Yes, he did everything, except offer those voters some concrete proposal that seemed likely to address their concerns and serve their interests.  Brooks’ column does a good job showing the divisions created by differing levels of education, and he could push this idea further in talking about the cultural fragmentation encouraged by the sheer variety of modes of communication that now exist.  It isn’t just that different demographics are cultivated by marketers, but also that ever-narrower niche groups are being self-selected and reinforced through increasingly isolating habits of treating compatibility and similarity as the essential requirements of any relationship.  Yet social identity is not “everything,” as Brooks claims for rhetorical effect, and would not count for nearly as much as it does if the cultural divisions between more and less educated people did not align so closely with different views on policy and different rhetorical styles.  Brooks’ own assessment of Obama’s campaign in Pennsylvania is itself an example of the divide Brooks is describing: Obama did everything on the level of symbolism–eating cheesesteak, bowling, and so forth–that someone like Obama or Brooks thinks might make the candidate more acceptable to the voters in question, assuming that this kind of consciously adopted symbolism will persuade people to back a candidate who does not otherwise seem to represent their interests.  That doesn’t mean that symbolism can’t lead people to vote for candidates who, in fact, don’t represent their interests, but it needs to be employed consistently and regularly to have the desired effect.  When you see stories and columns detailing how affected and calculated the deployment of this symbolism is, the symbolism doesn’t work as well.   

Despite his fairly humble origins, Obama speaks the language of the elite and the highly educated (or at least the thoroughly schooled), which he uses as a marker of the status that he has acquired; despite their more privileged backgrounds, McCain and Clinton are more comfortable speaking in a lower register, or at least have accustomed themselves to speaking this way, because they have nothing to prove and no need to reinforce their right to belong to the elite.  It may be relevant that some of the Democratic candidates over the years who have been derided as elitist, “out of touch” or lacking in some patriotic enthusiasm are the children or grandchildren of immigrants–Kerry, Dukakis and now Obama–so that the very signs of assimilation to the norms of the political class are taken as evidence of a lack of connection to other Americans, when, of course, the retention of visibly ethnic or foreign habits would be considered equally disqualifying in an election. 

Of course, it’s true that McCain and Clinton are immensely wealthy, and Obama is only modestly and very recently so, but it is actually because of how recent his success and wealth are, because he came from that single-parent family and came up from poorer circumstances, that his adoption of the “creative” class’ attitudes and the political class’ assumptions makes him seem somehow especially elitist and allows his rivals, who are every bit as elitist as he is and possibly more so, to exploit this as a wedge.  What you see with the entire controversy over Obama’s elitism is those who are already well-entrenched as part of the elite using the very imitation of elite tropes and attitudes that makes Obama acceptable as part of the political class against him.  Of course, if he did not embrace these attitudes as fully as he has, he would be ridiculed as an arriviste and a gate-crasher, or worse yet he would be denounced by elite commentators with the only insult that they regard as more politically damaging than “elitist,” which is, of course, the name of populist.  The difference in the degree of hostility from most commentators is this: rivals and pundits mock you as an elitist to damage you, but it is still a sign of acceptance that you are a competitor who belongs in the arena with them, who are in reality equally elitist, while the charge of “populist” is intended to stigmatise you and your ideas as dangerous or crazy or both. 

So, in a strange way, Obama has been fortunate to be described as an elitist, and not as a populist.  Elitists are at least allowed to reach the general election; populists must be stopped or politically crippled long before that.  Of course, there is some real relationship between what the candidate proposes to change and the use of the different names: those who actually threaten the status quo in some meaningful way are deemed populists and driven to the margins, while those who represent an acceptable alternative are merely elitist.  People who are a little too visibly elitist are not desirable for other members of the elite, because it reminds everyone else of the disparities and concentration of power and wealth that exist, while people whom they deem populist represent, or at least seem to represent, a real danger to their position.

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