I didn't feel that Obama's Bitter Blather comments in San Francisco were condescending, as many working class voters have said in person-on-the-street interviews. He did not, as practically all his opponents have said, say that people hunt and go to church because  they're hurting economically and see no hope. He only said that they "cling" to their life preferences when they're hurting. The point was, as he more extensively said in his interview with Charlie Rose in 2004, they find refuge from an uncaring political culture.

There's a huge difference. The former discredits their life preferences, as though those preferences were not satisfying and meaningful on their own merits. The latter discredits no one. But Obama is condescending in ways that haven't been pointed out.

In dealing with the attacks against him, one of his primary techniques is to name-call the attacks as "negative." Often, he slips into a joking kind of ridicule of his critics. He seems to think that he's only pointing out the obvious and rallying the troops to resist negative campaigning. But look a further under the hood of this technique.

Unfortunately, to the voter who is sincerely worried that Obama might be a closet radical or unfeeling toward working class people, this technique is condescending. Calling an attack or an attacker "negative" is like berating a jury member in a trial for at least initially agreeing with the prosecution. Instead of arguing his side of the case, Obama is not only putting down the prosecutor and the jury but appearing defensive in the bargain. Not good. 

Obama's negative label does make a reasonable point, but he makes it in a condescending way. There's a non-condescending method he needs to incorporate.

He can explain that guilt by association attacks are difficult for all of us, including him. Our entire country was deceived by Joe McCarthy, so it's no sin to be tricked by these attacks. After all, some accusations prove to be true, as in the case of President Clinton's affair and Senator Clinton's puffery about her visit to Bosnia; politicians do unfavorable things and lie about them. That's part of what makes it so difficult for the average, non-junkie voter to figure out what's true. That's an empathic view of the kind of voter I have in mind.

Another name for empathizing is "getting on the side of." Once on the side of this kind of voter, Obama can explain that he's been trying to understand the power of guilt by association attacks and that he realizes why they are so effective. It's that these attacks are, except in the case of extremists, expressed in somewhat polite ways. For instance, Hillary said, "I would've left that church." She didn't say, "He's a closet black radical." She didn't have to, because of guilt by association. But that extreme, hidden accusation, I think, works on people's minds even though they may never bring it out. Accordingly, Obama never addresses the more damning implied criticism. He never challenges people to find any bit of evidence other than his few associations that prove that he is a closet radical. It's as though a powerful subliminal message is flashed on our TV screens whenever a guilt by association attack is made. We don't fully realize that we're in the grip of it, and Obama's failure to bring it out and address it abandons us to the accusation's power.

This kind of empathetic thinking would solve the problem of condescension I've outlined. It would, ironically enough, make people feel that he is in touch with them much more than attendance at a tractor convention or a cheese steak diner.

What many people think the voters want is a pal, which is itself a condescending view that has run riot in America. We've devolved to a shuck and jive approach to selling oneself, truly believing, I think, that voters are stupid and insensitive. But I can tell you from years of working with parolees and working class and very poor people, that my education and erudition haves never gotten in the way of forming viable relationships with them. They call me, "Doc," as a paean to my unhidden sophistication. They respect my intelligence when they see how a clever insight can free them. What keeps us together is not my ability to chug a beer or get down in the mud at a tractor pull, but my consistent enough empathy and genuine encouragement of them. Obama has that to give aplenty, but he needs to deepen his commitment to his natural, mother-given feeling for people and rely on it rather than less.

Most commentators fault Obama for not being like Hillary, not as steeped in policies and programs as she. They think voters want to know what the candidates will put in place after they're elected. That conclusion has some merit, but that's a small picture view. The big picture, as Obama knows, the two parties have been stalemating each other for at least since the Nixon Administration. Neither one can form a consensus long enough to create lasting, viable change. So the overarching problem in America is entirely a process problem.

The problem is, How do you form a consensus to create the kind of progressive changes both candidates envision? To be more precise, How do you take your left of center base and unite it with the Far Left and the 20 percent in the middle to create a 60 percent majority?

It does seem that process really is the most important issue at this point in our history. Were I Obama, I would be pounding the above analysis and conclusion every time I spoke. I agree that it's a difficult point to make, especially with people who don't study process and use it in their work.

The particular difficulty he's having is that his process--his style of creating coalitions--is unfamiliar to most people. The old style, power politics as advocated by Lyndon Johnson, one of Clinton's heroes, is to slap together a package of pork and arm-twisting along with straightforward appeals to enlightened self-interest of the stakeholders. The emphasis is, as Hillary has so frequently said, on being a "fighter."

Of course, she never answers the question, What has your style of fighting gotten us? It can be argued that, if she had Obama's method of solving problems, she could have gotten universal health care approved during the first years of her husband's presidency. She fought. She excluded her opponents from the proceses, which polarized them. Fighting really is the cause of the debilitating stalements from whch we've suffered for decades.
 
Obama relies more on empathy. However, despite long-standing and deepening reliance on it among clinicians and, more recently, experts in international relations, empathy still seems, at best, a reed in the wind of special interests and, at worst, a capitulation. But many of us who have studied and used it for many years know that it truly is the difference that can actually bring people together, as Obama demonstrated in his speech on race.

Of course, he didn't solve the racial divide and said he had no expectation of some huge change in the racial tensions in this country. But he did create lasting change, however small. He enabled people on both sides of the issue to temporarily understand each other and feel for each other enough that they could begin reconsidering their positions.  One can readily imagine how that process could develop over four or eight years to create more substantial progress.

In most political struggles, people take positions and pound them. And they degrade the opposition. From his work as a community organizer helping to build coalitions to create change, Obama knows better than any well known politician that beating up the people that initially oppose you can only destroy any chance you have of uniting enough people to make a change. And he knows that you can't fake empathy. It has to be intellectually credible and you have to be reasonably consistent in expressing it. My only concern is that he lacks the underpinning of professional and academic consensus on empathy as the most powerful influence for betterment. So he is vulnerable to losing his empathic stance at times and being swayed into making disempathic statements. But this failing shouldn't distract us from his fundamental core, his genuine feeling for even the people who oppose him.

Obama's genuineness is easy to prove, most notably because his mother had a solid reputation as an amazingly genuine respectful person. He means what he says about white middle class men when he says that they are understandable and have a real beef against the PC movement that trashed them for being racist. I hope he comes back to that message, because that's not just his strength. It's what America must have to solve the devastating problems that threaten to destroy our heirs' future. 

To deal with the attacks against him, I'd prefer that Obama elevate to the level of statesman, as he did in his speech on race, and again demonstrate rather than talk about his ability to unite us. He can do that most effectively by helping people who are swayed by the attacks against him for being a Wright-style or Ayers type radical and for being out of touch with the middle class and lower class workingclass voters.

At present, he is somewhat ineffective in dealing with the attacks. His defenses mainly boil down to calling the attacks "negative" and arguing the facts of the accusations. Sometimes, he uses humor to ridicule the attacks, which must seem condescending to people who are influenced by the attacks but otherwise could vote for him; that should be stopped. The aguing-the-facts alternative has value, especially if the facts are comprehensive in a major speech rather than given piecemeal. But there is another major tactic he can add.

He can expose how guilt by association depends on us subliminally worrying about the generally unstated implied attack in each instance of guilt by association. For instance, Hillary scored points and was echoed by many voters who were interviewed when she said, "I would have left Wright's church." She nor many non-extremist commentators actually accused him of being an extremist. But Hillary's implied accusation that he is an extremist, I think, subliminally worried these kinds of voters, the voters who thought he should have left the church. Speaking as a therapist, the problem with much of communication is that it is euphemistic rather than explicit, and much of the power of an accusation is that, for the most part, it remains in the shadows and is never explicity addressed.

He can expose this tricky influence of guilt by association attacks, and address them as an ongoing problem in our political life as a nation instead of only taking on each specific accusation against him. After he lays out the facts concerning each accusation, he can then elevate to statesman level by showing that these kinds of implied attacks are hijacking out elections. He can point out historical examples of the subversiveness of these attacks, and dwell on the grandaddy of them all, the McCarthy attacks against progressive citizens for being radicals, in that case, communists. He can review how Hillary was pilloried but never convicted of any of the attacks against her.

He can help innoculate us against these attacks by exhorting journalists to bring out the implied accusations and demand evidence for them instead of just grilling him. Instead of just grilling him, they should be grilling his accusers. And if the circumstantial evidence against him still sways some voters who otherwise could vote for him, he should convene a group of noted journalists to grill him and investigate him, just as John Kerry did in New York. (Unfortunately, that vetting by the press was never capitalized on, but Obama has no trouble getting the press to listen and report on what he says.)

Once he gets into this statesman frame of mind, I'm certain he could do a great job of reversing the negative trend that has worked against him. Had he done so the loss in Pennsylvania would have been much less compelling. To those who argue that the negativity isn't really working, remember that, at this point in the race, even 5 percentage points have meaning.

It's important to note that in all of the blogs about gotcha politics and gotcha journalism, few people are taking seriously those spurious attacks, much less the plight of voters who are swayed by them. Most contributors just mock and decry the attacks. That will have zero impact on the people who are vulnerable to the charges and swayed enough to vote against Obama. If that set of voters is only one percent or only a half a percent of the voting public, this problem is worth taking more seriously than most people are, including Obama.

He also mainly decries the attacks, calling them "negative," which is like calling a prosecutor "negative." What impact can that have on people who are swayed by these attacks? Prosecutions are by definition negative. Obama also tries to argue the facts, and he's more or less successful. But too often, his arguments are piecemeal and, therefore, unconvincing to the voter who is swayed just enough to vote against him. For instance, he first said that he wasn't in church when Wright damned America. Then he explained a bit more fully, that Wright was a like a crazy uncle who had done much good. Finally, he realized that he had to address that particular flap in a major speech, and he was extremely successful, although I think he could do even better, as I suggest below. Moreover, his response to subsequent attacks suffered also from being piecemeal and from sounding defensive rather than convincing to the people who matter most, the people who are swayed by them but are amenable to a carefully thought out, major address.

He needs to elevate into his statesman persona and give a major speech about guilt by association and how vulnerable people are to it, as I suggest in my TPB blog on gotcha politics. He needs to act like a leader rather than a defensive man under indictment.

I'm not satisfied with Obama's response to the guilt by association attacks against him, much less bloggers' and pundits' sympathetic responses. The only response that worked well was his speech on race. In it, he was a statesman. He empathized accurately and deeply with both sides and, in so doing, brought us together and increased his standing in the polls. He needs to do that again. He needs to slip up into his statesman role and lead us again.

What's wrong with his current responses? He drones on about how negative the attacks are. While that's true, it's like calling a prosecutor's attacks negative. Of course, they're negative. That's what they're supposed to be. If you step in the shoes of the befuddled middle of the road voter who is worried about, for instance, Obama's association with the mad bombing radical, Ayers, calling this attack negative sounds only defensive. From the puzzled voters' point of view, this lable actually helps a bit to confirm the truth of the attack. Sometimes, Obama argues the facts. He shot himself in the foot when he tried to argue that he wasn't in church when Wright damned America. The hole he had dug got deeper. Even when he marshaled his best facts--his commitment to the church community, etc.--he wasn't terribly persuasive. The underlying problem is that the public always suspects that there are more facts, more damning ones lurking int he wings. It's the smoke and fire logic. As too many use-of-cliche-challenged politicians have said far too many times, that dog won't hunt. Or at least, it won't most conclusively beat the competition.

To me, the best response begins with exposing the underlying logic of guilt by association, the dynamic of it that is so effective with too many people. What led me into this response to was an article I read months ago that discussed Hillary's troubles with guilt by association. I learned that, in all the years that Hillary was investigated--not just attacked in the press--for her Whitewater real estate dealings, no charge against her was made. Only the most extremist commentators said that she did anything wrong. Rather, the middle of the road foks only said that she was associated with someone who, in other dealings, did something wrong. That realization led to an exploration of all of the guilt by association attacks against Obama.

Regarding all of them, few people have made a specific charge. They only say he's wrong for being associated with Ayers, Wright, and the corrupt developer in Chicago. Of course, there are people throwing red meat to their extreme constituents, for instance, alleging that Obama is a closet reverse racist or anarchist. But most pundits and politicians who seem reasonable to the middle of the road voter only say that Obama was wrong to associate with Wright, Ayers, and others. For instance, Clinton herself only argued that he should have left the church. He shouldn't have been associated with Wright. Those sorts of people also weigh in on how weak and unconvincing Obama seems in responding to those charges; that weak response feels like a kissing cousing of the most damaging wrong doing in politics, a cover up.

Here's the hidden power of guilt by association. Notice first that what's difficult to see is that, if the guilt by association accusation is the only kind of charge being alleged, it would seem that it would have no impact. And there would be no huge outpouring of blogs and mainstream articles about gotcha politics, much less Obama's electability. After all, there is nothing at all wrong with being associated with someone who's done something wrong. I can hear readers' inner wheels spinning. But there is something wrong. Actually, there's nothing wrong with having a relationship with someone who's done something wrong. Otherwise, for instance, everyone in the criminal justice system would be under suspicion. Think about it. There isn't and connection. But then why do these accusations have such power?

There power is that they imply wrongdoing. This may be too obvious to mention, but I don't think so. The implicit accusation is that, if Obama was associated with Wright, he must hate white America. If he associated with a militant, he must be militant. That kind of implied accusation is what guilt by association is all about. That's what gives it its power. And it can now seem plain that, when Obama argues the facts and calls the accusations negative or even despicable, he's not putting his finger on the problem people are having. He's not bringing out into the light of day the implied accusation and addressing it. Here's how I'd advise him to do that. Here's the outlines of a speech he could write much better than I, one that's analogous to his speech on race.

Senator Clinton represented many Americans when she said that I should have left Rev. Wright's church. I've argued that he was like a crazy uncle, somebody I cared about because he did many good things for me and the community. Some people still worry about my association with him. I think that's because they haven't brought their most upsetting worry out into the open, nor have I. That's been my mistake in handling all of these attacks against me.

These attacks are working with some people the same way Joe McCarthy's attacks worked. He would stand up before America with a blank piece of paper, and say things like, I have a list of names of known communists whom you were associated with. He didn't even have to have any evidence at all that the accused was even associated with a communist. That's how much power he had to scare people into believing that a bunch of progressive and patriotic Americans were radicals determined to undermine America. And the people who did have associations with communists, well, he didn't have to even claim that they had tried to undermine America or that they believed that America should be subverted. That's how afraid America had become. That's how much we back then succumbed to guilt by association tactics. We're vulnerable to that. And as long as we are, we will be in danger of allowing this subversive kind of tactic to hijack our elections.

We've got to build up our immunity to these guilt by association tactics. Here's how we do it. Whenever anybody says that somebody else is guilty by association, we've got to demand of them that they make a specific charge. In the case of my association with Rev. Wright, they've first got to make the implied charge, that I too am a radical, that I believe that HIV was a demonic attack against black people launched by the government or whatever. In the case of Mr. Ayers, they've got to charge me with also believing that public buildings should be bombed or something else along the lines of what Mr. Ayers believed.

Then we've got to demand that they bring forward some other evidence to prove whatever charges they want to make. For instance, now the extreme right wing of the Republican Party in the person of Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich are saying that I have Marxist ideas. Okay, show me somewhere in my speeches or conversations with others where I've promoted Marxism. Let's bring this charge out in the open and air it. If you think you've got solid evidence, give it to fifteen top reporters at the major newspapers, and I'll sit down with them and go over it for as long as it takes for them to be convinced one way or the other. This is one way to put guilt by association politics on trial and finally convict it and get rid of it.

Attack politics also works, because people have in mind that some accusations are eventually proven. But most of them will quickly fade if we address them directly as suggested above. And it's vital that we do, because they terribly mislead voters and, thereby, undermine our democracy much more than any of the supposed wrongdoing of all the political candidates in America who have ever been accused of guilt by association.

We can all be forgiven for either practicing this tactic, failing to respond decisively to it, as in my case, or succumbing it, as in the case of some voters. After all, our entire country is so vulnerable to the logic of guilt by association that we once let Joe McCarthy and his supporters undermine almost the entire country. We don't want to go to the opposite extreme and fail to listen to charges and fail to check them out. But we must become educated about the hidden power of the guilt by association tactic and how to see through it and defeat it.