George Packer has one of the best takes on Bittergate

Cultural fears and resentments have been exploited by Republican candidates for at least forty years to peel away core working-class Democratic voters. It’s called right-wing populism, and it’s been at least as successful as the left-wing, New Deal version it replaced. It depends on finding targets who can be made into cultural élites, and Democrats from McGovern to Kerry have usually been happy to coöperate—although rarely as obligingly as Obama, whose words couldn’t have been better scripted by William Safire circa 1968, Lee Atwater circa 1988, or Karl Rove circa 2004. But Republicans couldn’t have dominated Presidential elections for nearly half a century if there were nothing to their charges.

To say that you can see through someone—that what someone believes is actually something else entirely—is an act of condescension, and the person being seen through is naturally going to take exception. One doesn’t have to be Bill Kristol to know this. It’s as if a politician were to say to Andrew Sullivan (who won’t tolerate a bad word about Obama), “You’re just clinging to gay rights because you’re frustrated by the size of government. Once we cut entitlements, you won’t care about same-sex marriage.”

The real problem with what Obama said is that it’s basically untrue. In southwestern Pennsylvania, religion, hunting, and insularity predate the post-industrial era. They’ve have become politically manipulable points in part because of economic decline, but to confuse wedge issues with traditional values is the mark of the high-minded reformer or the political junkie, or both. It’s the kind of mistake one could make only from a great distance, once those voters had become almost entirely abstract—and, again, no one wants to be an abstraction. (...) Obama’s devotees, who have an unattractively worshipful tendency to blame his mistakes on everyone but him, would do their candidate and the Democratic Party a favor by acknowledging the damage he’s done to both. It wasn’t accidental. Obama betrayed his own and his Party’s essential weakness, and in the process handed the opposition a great gift. He won’t be able to turn this weakness into the kind of strength that ends eras and wins elections until he understands what happened over the past few days.

http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/

A lot of the flack that Obama is catching for "Bittergate" is because of the idea he puts forward that country people have suddenly fallen on religion as the jobs have disappeared, like turning to drink or dope. They "cling to religion"... On the basis of that remark I think it is fair to say that he is out of touch with a lot of American reality... even the reality of Illinois, which he is supposed to represent in the Senate

As Maureen Dowd puts it the NYT:

"Obama comes across less like a candidate in Pennsylvania than an anthropologist in Borneo."

I happen to have grown up in Illinois and my family goes back some time in that state. My great, great, grandfather emigrated from Glasgow,Scotland  and settled in a tiny village in Western Illinois in the first half of the 1840s. When I was a child I spent at least a month there every summer there from birth till my teens. What rubbed off on me in that "wide place in the road" of "fly over America" has made me indelibly American despite decades living abroad.

Here is how the town's official history describes the place.

Griggsville is located in one of the oldest counties in the state and in one of the earliest townships.  The township was settled as early as 1825 by Henry Bateman whose son was the first-born in the township and whose wife was the first death.(...) Griggsville, named for Richard Griggs, was laid out in 1833(...) The community's active concern over the slavery question resulted in there being more enlistments in the Union army recorded in Griggsville than from any other point in Pike County.  From the earliest days Griggsville citizens had strong religious interest.  The First Regular Baptist Church was organized August 4, 1834 with seven members.  The Methodist-Episcopal Church was organized in 1835 and the Congregational Church on February  1, 1837.  The Church of Christ was organized July 26, 1874.  After meeting in the homes of members and in other churches, St. James Episcopal Church was built in 1882.  The Griggsville Church of Nazarene was organized in 1917. (emphasis mine)

So we are not talking about a bunch of people who are waiting for Hale-Bopp comet, this is a culture with roots and again to quote Maureen Dowd talking about her own family:

"They went to church every Sunday because it was part of their identity, not because they needed a security blanket."

I get the feeling that Obama has a clearer idea of the lives and culture of the villages and small town life of his father's native Kenya than the life of his mother's native Kansas. If he were even in touch with his own constituents in down state Illinois, he never could have even thought, much less said what he said.

I have been saying for months to anyone who would listen that although Barack Obama is a hugely talented politician, this run for the presidency is about twelve to twenty years too early... and this remark, made off the record, at a private gathering proves it.
http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/

He’s disdainful of small-town America — one might say, of bourgeois America. He’s usually good at disguising this. But in San Francisco the mask slipped. And it’s not so easy to get elected by a citizenry you patronize.
William Kristol - New York Times

The quote above from loathsome neocon, William Kristol is only a preview of what is in store for Barack Obama if, as is probable, he wins the Democratic nomination.

Obama's  "small town gaffe" has needlessly opened an important flank for his adversaries to attack him.

In case anyone thinks that I am exaggerating the importance of all of this let me explain a bit of "secret doctrine".

A great many white Americans, and not just uneducated blue-collar types, although they would never ever admit it, even to themselves, are not quite ready to have someone of African ancestry in the White House; at the same time they do not want to appear racist even in their own eyes. Or especially in their own eyes.

What could be more delicious for them than to be able to disqualify an African-American as an elitist snob?

What could be more democratic than to openly consider a black man one's social superior?

It is probably the only acceptable ad-hominem attack that can be used against Obama without disqualifying the attacker as a redneck... and Obama walked right into it.

It immediately turns all of Obama's strong points: his intelligence, his verbal ability and poise, in short his cool, into weaknesses that prove that he is elitist.

And if you say that it is impossible for an African-American to actually be an elitist, then you are the racist practicing the "racism of low expectations"

"Of course a Harvard lawyer, who lives in million dollar townhouse has every right to be an elitist, no matter the color of his skin!"

Checkmate.

The United States of America has become a virtual mega-Bosnia-Herzegovina and Barack Obama has just strolled into a very old and well marked mine field.
http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/

“So it’s not surprising then that 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” - Barack Obama

I am not a great fan of Barack Obama's, but among his possible defects (I say "possible", because so little is really known about him) being dumb was the last one I would ever have thought he possessed.

However, this remark about small town Americans is about the dumbest thing I have ever heard a major, campaigning politician say... and that includes "the decider" himself, who, strangely enough, is rather shrewd when out campaigning.

If you knew the people who live in those places, you would know that there are all kinds of humans living in small towns. But nevertheless stereotypes are wounding even when they hold some truth or especially when they hold some truth.

Can you imagine a white person running for president making a statement about African-Americans with that many patronizing stereotypes? I love to do parodies, but I wouldn't even attempt one here, because even joking, it would be so painfully offensive; and if Obama even so much as dreamed he had said something in a similar tone about Jewish people he would wake up in a cold sweat and immediately phone Abe Foxman to apologize... even at three in the morning.

It is "dumb" to think that small town people have less right to be sensitive than African-Americans or Jewish people, for example.

Despite being a "white wine-espresso", type myself, I spent many childhood summers in the small town where my great, great, grandfather, an immigrant marble carver from Glasgow Scotland, had settled in the 1840s. On reading this horseshit in the Huffington Post and the subsequent play it is getting, I was moved to write a panegyric on the virtues of the small town, but after some rumination decided that to defend the human beings who live in the country against such a patronizing attitude would be like affirming that Obama is "a credit to his race" or something like that.

I just can't get over how dumb Obama's remark is.

"Dumb", because this is going to cost Obama dearly.

http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/