Getting closer to the Pennsylvania primaries on the 22nd of April a topic has popped up that might do some damage to Barack Obama and his potential results in the East Coast State. It was the Huffington Post, the popular weblog of Ariana Huffington, that brought it up. At a fundraising meeting in San Francisco the other day Obama was asked about his campaign experiences up to now and why he was still lacking support of the working-class voters. In his answer he said: “It’s not surprising that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or antitrade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” This quote made its way through the blogosphere and the traditional media like a firecracker.
Commentators related to Karl Marx and his famous quote of “religion as the opiate for the people” and found it inacceptable for a presidential candidate to argue in such a way. Others said that Obama dances around the truth. Their argument: He should have answered this question in the only possible clear and true way by referring to the racial issue: “A lot of folks are not with me because I am black, but I am trying to make my best of it”, would have been the right answer in the critic’s opinion.
The statement will probably hurt Obama in the Pennsylvania primaries. What I find striking about it is how big a public discussion can arise from some sentences. And what is even more incredible is how the two Democrat candidates intensify their struggle against each other. In a new ad that has just been released today Hillary Clinton tries to take advantage of this rhetorical mistake made by her rival.
It might be true that “bitter” is not the right word to describe how people feel who regard themselves as disadvantaged and neglected by the political leaders. It might also be true that this is one of the examples to show that Barack Obama can still improve his political sensitiveness and sensibility. But more than everything else it might be a bitter experience for the Democratic Party that the two candidates are fighting each other by means of negative campaigning that one could expect not to happen earlier than in the final phase of the election race between the candidate of the Democrats and the Republicans in autumn.
In the end “bitter” could just be the right word to describe what might be the feeling left for the Democratic Party after the elections in November.
I am still going for Hillary for some reasons: gender (yes, I am discriminating Obama here), her ideas about the climate change, her way to deal with the lobbyists and some other small things. On the other hand I dislike this negative campaigning a lot, but it eventually shows that Hillary might consider the people as stupid enough not to know what is good and bad..(concerning Obamas sentences and her campaign as well…)
The distance of the observer.
Barack Obama does not fit in any american cliche, as son of a Kenyan and a white woman from Kansas. He lived in Honululu and Jakarta.
His distance to the american province is his strength- by observing and analyzing from the distance, that gives him a wider view as shows his speech of March 18- and his weakness too- for he detests in some way that provinciality and narrowness of mind.
He has to react- what he is doing- and to explain. And by doing this he will learn- that is essential, a touchstone for his political campaign. If he is not able to learn, he will not be a good president. Even GW Bush seems to learn, s-l-o-w-l-y.
Hillary Clinton has no kindness in this case, just like any other politician.
What I find bitter is the debate on armament of US citizens one year after the massacre at Virginia Tech.
(http://www.nrapvf.org/AtIssue/Default.aspx)
@ Walter: Heard about that just now on SWR3. Hillary Clinton referring to carrying and using weapons: “It’s part of our way of life!” And Obama doesn’t argue against weapons, either.
What a horrible way of life it is that carrying weapons has to be a part of… and those two are democrats!
Tried to imagine students of my university walking around the campus with guns in their belts… it’s surreal.
Oh… just to avoid misunderstandings, I lived in the US for over a year and still have a deep affection for the countryand its people. That’s what makes it even harder for me to understand some things that are happening there…
The mentality of cowboys…
Not less weapons, but more! In order to prevent massacres. Or at least to take part of them.
I don’ t know Barack Obamas actual opinion on this, but I think, he is the fairest. Hillary with smoking colts?
obamas zitat in voller länge:
“You go into 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.
And 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.”
ich kann an diesem zitat nichts falsches finden, genauso wenig wie an marx erkenntnis:
“Religion is the opiate of the people.”
stimmt doch auch!
erst regt man sich auf, dass politiker nie die wahrheit sagen, und wenn sie es dann doch tun, ist es auch wieder nicht richtig. ;-)
What Hillary does turns into a real smear campaign. Fighting the candidate from her own party like this goes under the belt. Such a behaviour is invidious and unfair. What does she expect that voters now think of her?
The politician and the ‘little man’- a kind of metaphor of charity, warmth and generosity- suspicious and pharisaical?
‘guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant’
- religion = guns = xenophobia
This is quite hard stuff. (@Jette)
In my oppinion the Democrats gave away their chance when Obama refused the offer of Clinton to be her Vice President.
Now you may ask: “Why should he have done this?” That`s a legitimate question.
But from this day on it was obvious that Clinton and Obama would have to establish a border between the two of them. From this day forth they did, so to say, “a part of the Republican work”. And I think that the Republicans would attest them that they are doing a very good job. Now they are not able to get out of this predicament. The Republicans only have to take notes of the different arguments of the Democrats and present them as inconsistency in the election.
And, something else may happen. If Obama would be the candidate of the Democrats the voters for Hillary may not go to the election and contrariwise.
As I said elsewhere: I worry that the future president of the USA will be called John McCain.
@Walter:
He says: …”guns… OR…religion…OR…antipathy…”
I can see no camparison in there. I agree with Jette. He is right. No matter what any pr people advice to say or any critics find inefficient. If he had come to the point about his skin color, they would have said: “There you go. Finally he is playing the black card…” I see parallels to Angela Merkel, who refused to play the “first female chancellor”. Obama is clever not to write “next BLACK president” onto his forehead. He wants to become more than this and things he says prove him right.
Sorry, I meant “first BLACK president”. I thought about “next president” probably… :o)
He puts the three words in a line, Cate. Okay, they are not equal, but equivalent- weapons or religion or xenophobia. He may be right as an intellectual, but not as a politician who wants to be elected President of the US of America.
You now, what you just put in a line, Walter? You excluded intellectuality from being a politician who wants to become president of the United States of America.
Walter, am curious, what bothers you most about Obama’s citation. I guess, you are not an arms dealer, who is offended of being compared to the church. And I hope furthermore, that you are no racist, who hates to be linked to weapons and guns. So I think, the disturbing point about the citation is the fact, that Obama includes religion, right? Well, then say so. We can discuss about that, if you like.
I agree, Walter – and you have to take into account what people will make out of your speeches if you are a politician. You can’t just blurt something out and then be all surprised about how people interpret it – you have to think of all possible meanings your sentences may have for other people. That doesn’t only apply to politicians, by the way, it’s a basic rule of communication.
Also, I think Obama showed a quite shocking amount of contempt for working class people by assuming they are too stupid to see reality and instead “cling to guns or
religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them” and so on.
At least that’s how I read that sentence. And, see above…
If we assume Obama isn’t stupid, then we may also assume he knows how to formulate a sentence without offending people unnecessarily.
And that’s not lying, just politeness and respect.
Oh, by the way… with all that assuming going on I recall one of my American host mom’s favorite sentences: “If you ASSUME, you make an ASS out of YOU and ME…”
;-)
Kata:
What people read between the lines of something, says something else about themselves. There is a long way from general social morality to a real inner feeling.
Well… it makes even mor sense if you spell it like this:
“If you ASSUME you make an ASS out of U and ME.”
:-/
morE sense… too tired…
@ Cate: Of course, but that’s not my point. If you want to communicate wih someone, you can’t just throw things at him without thinking about if he or she understands them in the same way that you meant them. That’s not always easy, even with close friends.
Even harder in a blog, as we notice…
And even if Obama may be right about SOME working class people clinging to guns, religion or whatever else, it’s still wrong to generalize it as he did. Not all religious people are narrow-minded, ad not all working class people cling to guns. So this sentence offended all religious people, all working class people and a lot of people who think you should not look down your nose at people who might not have been as lucky as others in their lives.
By the way – you can think Obama’s speech offensive WITHOUT belonging to any of the groups he mentioned. So I don’t really don’t understand why you started accusing Walter of being religious. That was really not very objective – and doesn’t have anything to do with the discussion, in my opinion.
Maybe this is a bit cocky and/or the typical european sceptiscism – but in the end I think it doesn’t make a great difference who is going to be the next president of the United States. There is not that much difference between the democrats on the one hand and McCain on the
other hand. Both will have to deal with the realities of governing and administrating a country. And both will have not much money to spent within the next four years.
I don’t get the religious kind of discussion in here “pro Obama/contra Clinton/contra McCain”. We won’t see much difference, I dare to say that.
@ Antje
many good points that you made. I guess that’s pretty close to the truth.
I have to admit that in my opinion this whole election-to-be-candidate-to-be-finally-maybe-president-stuff is a little monstrous – enormous amounts of money pour down the drain just to make sure that potential democrat voters can see a difference between to democrat candidates.
ähm,
I mean: TWO democrat candidates
*head shaking*
Mir fällt zum Posting nichts ein. Ich kann nur mit dem Kopf schütteln, dass sich zwei Mitglieder einer Partei einem solchen Wettbewerb aussetzen.
Well…, I don’t think I offended Walter in being religious. I didn’t
valuate religiousness in any way. That’s by the way the same with
Obama’s speech. He didn’t valuate any of the named groups either. Take
care about what’s really in the text and what’s not. I remember my
english teacher, when we had to write a summary of Elvis Presley’s “In
the Ghetto” for a test. She almost lost her head about people writing,
that the mother was probably unemployed or the kid had no graduation. I
hear her shouting again and again: “That’s not in the text! That’s not
in the text!” Today I understand, why she was so excited…
To make things clear: Obama said nothing about the intelligence of poor
people. He said nothing about the value of religion, guns or antipathy
against people who aren’t like them. He didn’t judge any of these. He
judged the Bush and the Clinton administration. That’s what he actually
did. You can question if it is reasonable to attack, in some way,
Hillary Clinton by judging her husband’s policy in the past. You can
also question, if it was necessary to reject the offer of Hillary
Clinton to form a democrats’ union… But you cannot project your own
interpretations (wherever they actually come from) onto this one citation
of Barack Obama. Are you in a position to rate the feelings of these
people? I can tell you, by my own experience living in a socially
critical department for more than 15 years now, that no one of these
unemployed and poor people will ever take you serious if you come around
with such social moral declarations. But if you tell them, that it’s
clear they are frustrated and that they no longer care about common
social aspects or moral things, they won’t protest. They are not stupid.
They just don’t care anymore. That’s quite a difference. It’s always the
same: We sit on our high horses and look around. What do we find?
Undemocratic elections in Russia! Oh no, what an injustice! The poor
Russians! Don’t they realize how the government betrays them? Someone
has to do something! The people in Russia seem to be too stupid to
handle it… When they say that they hold on to things like before, they
don’t know what they are saying!
Or on the other side we see criminal youths! These poor young people…
Why did they lose their way? Why are there so many migrant’s children
among them? And why are most of the criminal youths living under poor
circumstances? Who will ever find the answer…? I think a young Turkish
boy, who is on trial for violent acts, will applaud, if the judge would
tell him, that he is just one of this neglected class of migrant’s who
don’t really have the chance to get much higher than their own layer,
who will never become the chairman of the Deutsche Bank, not in 50
years, and who are therefor not caring anymore about consequences,
ideals or moral. He wouldn’t feel offended by that. But I can tell who would: us, the society, who believe that we are the good ones, that we don’t neglect anyone and have the right attitude, the right moral, the right ideals. And that’s when religion plays an important role. It makes people devide the world into good and bad and to believe that you are on the right side if you follow certain rules and ideals, systematized ideals. In other words: theoretical ideals, that are more like a stencil you put on this world. Under this stencil nothing changes at all…
The reason, why the text is so deformed is that I copied it in between to make a pause writing… Sorry for that…
About the elections in Russia and the those who voted for Putin:
I don’t know the appropriate phrase in english, but in Austria we are used to say:
Erst kommen das Fressen, dann die Moral.
Which means, you can’t blame the individual for taking care of his or her existential interests. Including a job, that provides affordable home, food and a futures for your children.
It’s like Margret Thatcher once said: There is not such a thing as society. There are individuals and there are families. Politics doesn’t necessarily start from above, but it always ends reduced in every single persons life.
Or as the 68er movement used to say, that there is in the end nothing private in politics.
I’m sorry for answering too late- there was no time.
I do not feel offended. It is not because of religion but because of arrogance of Barack Obama. I know this well and I don’t approve this by a politician who intends to represent the whole nation and everyone.
Barack Obama is both, an intellectual and a politician. Now he has lost balance for the first time(?) he has lost pity with the ‘small people’, who are not small at all. By saying these sentences he stepped out of the path of charity and solidarity, that he always persued so well.
Hillary Clinton is additionally ex first lady, so she has a history, sometimes wrong. (the airfield of Sarajevo)
McCain too is both and a soldier, still injured.
Without link:
‘In other words: theoretical ideals, that are more like a stencil you put on this world. Under this stencil nothing changes at all…’
I agree- a theory or a system disturb and change our view of reality. We as observers are changed by our different way of observing. And this is very difficult to perceive. David Bohm explained this phenomenon in ‘On Dialogue’.
(questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&docId=103086922) – And we are back to assumptions.
Zum Dauerduell…
Harmful Hillary- but why?
(Jetzt habe ich mehrere Formulierungsversuche – auch auf Englisch – unternommen. Frau Clinton ist doch besessen! Und einen Besessenen haben die USA doch gerade. Es geht doch hier um Geld, Ruhm, Anerkennung, um die Befriedigung der machthungrigen Frau Clinton. Das ist doch nur noch ein reiner Showkampf. Mit den Inhalten wird den Wählern ein wenig Futter gegeben, weil es dazu gehört. Den Wahlkampf verfolge ich nicht mehr wirklich… – harmful Hillary, @Walter)
- oh, wie oft ich “doch” geschrieben habe, nein, sorry, ich habe nur laut gedacht… -
@Angela
Bei allem Respekt, aber glaubt jemand ernsthaft, dass sich irgendjemand um dieses Amt bewirbt weil er mal gerne für vier Jahre eine andere Adresse hätte? Obama, McCain, Clinton sind alle genauso von der Macht fasziniert – sonst würden sie sich gar nicht erst zur Wahl stellen.
Ich finde es reichlich naiv, Hillary Clinton so darzustellen und damit gleichzeitig Obama und Co zu pardonieren. Im übrigen ist Macht ja nicht automatisch etwas schlechtes; es kommt drauf an was man daraus macht.
Liebe Dowanda,
die anderen sind auch nicht besser, denke ich. Mein Kommentar war auch recht emontional, deshalb sprachlich wohl voll daneben. Mir kommt es auch auf das Ergebnis an. Und ich glaube immer noch an das Gute im Menschen bei aller Emontionalität. Also warten wir doch ab…
Schöne Grüße nach Österreich.
(Dowanda, heute ist nicht mein Tag. „Emotionalitätâ€?)
It is maybe more by mission than for power. It is a question of life goal too. But where is the limit? Does the purpose sanctify the means? Each candidate has to answer this question. And the answers make the difference.
@Angela – Yes … we are going to wait and see. And have a nice weekend!
@Walter
Maybe the motives might make the difference for the candidate, but people just see the result. And thats what makes the difference in the end. Aristoteles would have put it like that, I suppose.