What the Matter With Bitterness?

The New Republic has just put in their rather hefty two cents on the latest Obama imbruglio. John Judis (www.tnr.com/toc/story.html?id=bf08a566-7c44-446a-aa34-7889b0f24b5a) with little supporting evidence, claims that Obama has already essentially lost the general election and maybe the democratic nomination because of this comment. I think there are several problems with this article and this line of reasoning in general. For one, the press seems to have forgotten that Americans put the democrats in charge less than two years ago to end the war in Iraq. The only legitimate anti-war candidate is Obama and McCain, besides being at an age that could make some uneasy and essentially arguing for continuing most of the Bush policies of the past 8 years, is more bullish on Iraq and bellicose on Iran than his newfound hero (Bush; remember the guy who used dirty politics in South Carolina to capture the Republican nomination eight years ago).

I think Obama's charisma, his nonpareil speaking abilities and his ability to toe the line between his earned privelege and his modest background may actually connect with the white working class that may feel wedge issue politics is costing them too much these days: stagnant wages and growing unemployment, increasing income and wealth gaps, rampant political and economic corruption, sons and/or daughters stuck in Iraq or dead and the whole other host of concerns surrounding the failed policies of conservatives.

Obama's comments were right in line with Thomas Frank's book (as I said below) and the press did not lambast him for writing it. The real conceipt is for a senior editor at the New Republic to speak for the majority of people in the U.S. under the premise that the very things Obama is talking about is all that white working class people care about. This is not a cohesive, homogenized mass, but individuals who make decisions based on a number of factors -- unfortunately including gun control, abortion, faith and backlash political strategies. To allow Clinton to continue to use the ugly political strategies of the right as a last ditch effort to squeeze out the nomination shows the extent to which the media and even TNR have turned away from substance to cover politics in purely cynical terms. Hopefully the clarion call for hope and substance will subsume this cynicism outside the towers of our failing fourth estate.