This weekend's tempest in a teapot was a comment by Barack Obama. First reported on The Huffington Post, Obama told a crowd in Pennsylvania, "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. 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."
Of course, the Clinton campaign -- who's only hope in hell is that Obama destroys himself somehow -- jumped right on the comment. She called Obama "elitist" and "out of touch." I suppose, when your only hope is that your opponent throws himself off a cliff, a little push won't hurt any.
The problem is that Obama's isn't really a new argument. Author Thomas Frank made basically the same case in his book, What's the Matter With Kansas? : How Conservatives Won the Heart of America
. People have been manipulated into voting against their own economic interests with BS wedge issues like immigration and abortion and unfounded fear of the government taking their guns away. It's an argument I've made more than once and, in a great example of why I'll never get elected to anything, I've called these voters "chumps." Of course, my motivation is to tell the truth, not to get elected. The truth about a subject is often unpleasant for that subject. These voters are victims of a bait and switch -- they get all freaked out over the homosexual menace or evolution in schools and they vote for people who deliver tax cuts for the rich and trade deals that ship their jobs overseas. They are chumps, since they keep doing this over and over, never noticing that the people they vote for only talk about their issues, but never actually do anything about them. They fall for the same con over and over and over...[CLICK TO READ FULL POST]
