The Black Commentator - Obama and Bitterness

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Obama and Bitterness - Analysis

Recently Barack Obama was criticized for making the following statement about working people in rural areas of the U.S. who have suffered from economic downturns:

"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."

What follows is an analysis of that statement and the reaction to it by four BC Editorial Board members.

William L. (Bill) Strickland

Too many Americans, by and large and,unfortunately, seem ensnared in a self- delusional bubble; unable to stand the truth about their society or history whether those unpalatable truths are uttered by Reverend Wright, Barack Obama, The United Nations Commission for Human Rights (re the illegality of torture and the need to close Guantanamo), or that rabid left-wing critic, Alan Greenspan, who explained the Bush-Cheney intervention in Iraq with one simple
word: OIL.

It is, symptomatically, par for the course that, in the predictable rush to excoriate Obama for speculating about the psychological/political behavior of the american working class in Pennsylvania,that no one mentions that Thomas Frank made many of the same points in his 2004 book WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS?

In that book Frank asks: Why do so many Americans vote against their economic and social interests? Where's the outrage at corporate thievery? Why do illusory sleights to the Ten Commandments trouble some people more than do the prospects of falling wages or monopoly power or THE DESTRUCTION OF THEIR VERY WAY OF LIFE? (emphasis mine)

This, it seems to me, is the Great Contemporary Contradiction of american politics and life; a contradiction that causes me to ask why more, if not all Americans,are not "bitter" over the fact of our collective victimization just a very brief summary of which includes the following,that:

The oil companies made more profits last year than any corporation in western history and yet they are also receiving 18 billion dollars in tax subsidies out of our pockets. And,of course,there is no investigation of oil profiteering.

Bush has destroyed the dollar, virtually turning it into toilet paper against the euro and the pound where it has lost 50% of its value.

He has likewise destroyed the economy with his tax cuts for the rich, reducing federal revenues such that he must borrow abroad to cover this year's admitted 450 billion dollar deficit. But more than that, in his two terms Bush has made America the greatest debtor nation in the history of the world. (But in this election cycle so far only George McGovern and Jesse Ventura have even called attention to our 9 trillion dollar debt.)

So,not bitter yet? Wait,There's more...

Your tap water is contaminated with drugs and sewage and human waste because Bush is indifferent to enforcing the Clean Water Act.

Given Columbine, Northern Illinois, Virginia Tech et al,it is no longer safe to send your child to school because the NRA lobby opposes gun control.

They've raised the age requirement for receiving your Social Security benefits, hoping that you'll die before you reach the eligible age for a significant return. But,then,should you live long enough to be entitled to some modest recompense for your lifelong labor, they will,sympathetically, tax your benefits.

Then there's the unspoken corporate scam. Check the due dates on your bills, especially your credit card bill. But also gas and electric, i.e., our oil/energy friends. Typically, you will receive your bill nearly a week after the bill's statement date. But the due date for the bill is usually two weeks, sometimes three,from that statement date. Given the time it takes to reach you through the mail and then for you to return it, customers often have to pay a late fee. But the interest on late fees,computed by the company's accountants, tends to rival what was condemned as usury in the Middle Ages! At any rate, using these tactics US companies made 6.1 billion dollars on late fees in 2006!

And in keeping with the above, 61% of US corporations paid no taxes at all last year.

Then,according to the New York Times, house foreclosures are occuring in America at the rate of 20,000 a week.Thank Bush's deregulation policies once again. But don't fixate on Bush alone. He could not have so blithely castrated the public interest without the help of his party and some "centrist" Democrats.

Then there's the hypocrisy...Bush and his cohorts who are always yelling "support the troops" are, in fact,destroying the very army they celebrate. For example, they hire private military contractors - and give no bid contracts to their friends - in order to avoid the possible political consequences of a draft. The result of this policy of course is that the troops sent back onmultiple deployments are suffering marital breakdowns, experiencing emotional disorders by the thousands, and, upon their return home, are committing acts of violence against others and themselves. Last year 121 vets from Iraq and Afghanistan committed suicide! See the new movie, Stop Loss.

The point Americans need to understand is that Bush and the gang do not care about us. He can veto children's health insurance without giving it a second thought.

But let's fasten a moment on the latest news item:airline safety...Without conscientious whistle-blowers,the public would never have been alerted to the danger that we are in. We knew that our flights are overbooked, that our flights are often cancelled, that our bags are often lost, damaged or stolen, and that the airlines are about to charge us $25 for checking a second bag. But no one made a big deal that we are flying in 35 year old planes monitored by an underfunded and understaffed airtraffic control system that is itself 35 years old. Nor were we told that NASA had conducted a four year study that involved interviews with 29,000 pilots andthat that study had identified the very
problems now acknowledged by the FAA. However NASA turned down past Freedom of Information requests from the media for the results of the study because it "didn't want to undermine public confidence OR HURT AIRLINE PROFITS." (emphasis mine)

So there you have it. And black people should recognize this ercantile
immorality first of all because it is the same mentality that gave the world the slave trade...Profits uber alles.

So if you're not bitter and don't want to change this nefarious system,don't blame Obama,look closer to home.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Member William L. (Bill) Strickland - Teaches political science in the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he is also the Director of the Du Bois Papers Collection. The Du Bois Papers are housed at the University of Massachusetts library, which is named in honor of this prominent African American intellectual and Massachusetts native. Professor Strickland is a founding member of the independent black think tank in Atlanta the Institute of the Black World (IBW), headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. Strickland was a consultant to both series of the prize-winning documentary on the civil rights movement, Eyes on the Prize (PBS Mini Series Boxed Set), and the senior consultant on the PBS documentary, The American Experience: Malcolm X: Make It Plain. He also wrote the companion book Malcolm X: Make It Plain. Most recently, Professor Strickland was a consultant on the Louis Massiah film on W.E.B. Du Bois - W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography in Four Voices. Click here to contact Mr. Strickland.

Dr. James Jennings, PhD

Again, the corporate-oriented media has shown its aversion (of course...) to the interests of White working-class people in this nation.

The attacks on Obama for his statement take place because it actually represents an opportunity for working-class people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds to discuss and analyze their plight.

The statement by Obama represented an opportunity to dialogue about a political reality...the fact that certain sectors of the White working-class sees itself as 'white', first, and then working-class.

It is almost silly to deny that many working-class people are not bitter, or that race has not been utilized in divisive ways to direct this bitterness towards, the 'other' or, 'them', or 'those people'.

Religion and guns have been used by powerful interests to remind some working-class people that they are 'white' before they are poor, or low-income, or working-class. The intense criticism by the Clinton campaign to the effect that the statement belittles small town and rural residents actually shows the little regard it has for the same people it is 'defending'.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Member James Jennings, PhD - Professor of urban and environmental policy and planning at Tufts University. Click here to contact Dr. Jennings.

Dr. Martin Kilson PhD

When Senator Barack Obama remarked to a private fund-raiser in California on April 6th, that he thought many White working-class voters he encountered campaigning in the towns of Pennsylvania felt unhappy about their economic plight and that this unhappiness got reflected in their social and political outlook (“they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them...”), he never imagined that his words would immediately become cannon fodder for Hillary Clinton's campaign. Clinton and her campaign staff - and her supporters in cable television (CNN & Fox News) and conservative Talk Radio - pounced fervently on Obama's remarks, cleverly labeling them as “elitist”. His comments, she said, were “not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans.... People embrace faith not because they are materially poor, but because they are spiritually rich.”

Of course, Obama had to back down from his somewhat leftist characterization of the interplay between American citizens' social discontent and their religious and political choices, because it amounts to a one-dimensional observation of working-class socio-political patterns in our society. Obama admitted the error of his observation, saying he had used “ill-chosen words”.

Also, his “ill-chosen words” were made public by the Huffington Post Web Site and by April 10th Senator Obama was squarely on the defensive, and remains so as I write this on Tuesday, April 16th.

This can be viewed as Obama's first major gaffe, by which I mean a political comment that gives his opponent Clinton an easy political missile to throw at him. And particularly in the current primary contest in the important state of Pennsylvania where around 55% of the White voters are, we might say, disinclined toward Senator Obama's candidacy - mainly working-class and lower middle-class White voters. The Obama campaign has to gain between 5% to 10% of Pennsylvania's working-class/lower middle-class White voters in order either to win the Pennsylvania primary or keep Clinton's victory under a 10 percentage point margin.

Thus, my first reaction is that Senator Obama must recognize that when he's offering political discourse at either private fund raisers or public events, the situations are not academic-debate milieu but real power-game milieu . Which is to say, they are milieu in which a politician's words might carry heavy political consequences. This understanding was clearly not at the forefront of Obama's consciousness at the California fund raiser on Sunday, April 6th. It should have been.

Second, Obama's gaffe translated into an unnecessary tactical error insofar as it gave political maneuvering space to the Clinton campaign at precisely the wrong time. At the start of the week following Obama's April 6 fund-raiser gaffe, the leading front-page article in the Boston Globe (Monday , April 7) on the Democratic primary campaign was titled “Top Strategist For Clinton Quits Post Amid Uproar”. The article reported the removal of Mark Penn from his powerful post as chief strategist for Clinton, owing to his participation as a lobbyist for the government of Columbia's bid to have a trade pact with the United States enacted—a pact that major American trade unions oppose. Furthermore, the following day it was revealed that Bill Clinton had also gained large fees for unofficially assisting the Columbia government. Moreover, Clinton's campaign was simultaneously struggling to counter broadly negative public reactions to her telling a grossly false tale about her trip to Bosnia, a falsehood she repeated on several occasions over the course of several months. So Obama's observation about “small town religion” was just a bad gaffe.

Be that as it may, another fundamental aspect of Obama's gaffe is that the political mileage the Clinton campaign can derive from it is conditioned by racial mindsets among some White voters in Pennsylvania. The New York Times columnist Bob Herbert addressed this issue directly and candidly in his column in the Times April 15, 2008:

There is no mystery here. Except for people who have been hiding in caves or living in denial, it's pretty widely understood that a substantial number of [white working-class] voters—in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and elsewhere - will not vote for a black candidate for president. Pennsylvanians themselves will tell you that racial attitudes in some parts of the state are, to be kind, less than enlightened.

Moreover, Bob Herbert's forthright characterization goes further and provides us a keen understanding of the dynamics that enable the Clinton campaign to maneuver Senator Obama's gaffe—his “ill-chosen words”—into an easy political missile for Clinton to toss in his campaign's path. As Herbert put it: “This toxic issue [white working-class racial mindset] is at the core of the Clinton camp's relentless effort to persuade superdelegates that Senator Obama 'can't win' the White House. It's the only weapon left in the Clintons' depleted armory.”

Thus, as Bob Herbert's keen analysis makes clear, the political dynamics flowing from the Obama gaffe tell Americans more about the depraved political norms and values that have come to define-and-propel Hilliary Clinton's campaign. Interestingly enough, versions of Herbert's analysis can be found in both editorial columns and leading articles in centrist-liberal magazines like The New Republic (March 26, 2008). Here's how w hat might be called the “Herbertian” view of the politically depraved Clinton campaign was formulated by The New Republic's editorial:

....It wasn't the fact [that in lead-up to Ohio/Texas primaries] she was attacking Obama that was problematic, it was how she was attacking him—namely, in a way that will make it more difficult for Obama should he, as is still likely, be the Democratic nominee in November. For instance, it would have been fine for Hillary to argue that she'd make a better commander-in-chief than Obama; but it was wrong for her to essentially argue, as she did on more than one occasion, that she and John McCain would make better commanders-in-chief than Obama. Similarly, her strange hedging on “60 Minutes” about whether she believes Obama isn't a Muslim only added fuel to the unfounded rumors that are already circulating about his faith. Frankly, Clinton's chances are slim enough that a win-at-all-costs mentality from her campaign is not worth the risk of doing irreparable damage to the candidate who will likely be her party's nominee. (Emphasis Added)

Finally, the most recent polls suggest that the political damage that the Clinton campaign's “win-at-all-costs” depraved political maneuvers has been , happily, minimal. A Zogby Poll published in the Wall Street Journal (April 14, 2008) shows Obama “chipping away at Sen. Clinton's double-digit lead in Pennsylvania, with support from 43% of likely voters to 47% for Sen. Clinton.” However, when only Pennsylvania White voters are polled, a Quinnipiac University Poll also published in Wall Street Journal (April 14) shows White voters favoring Clinton 59% to 34% for Obama.

These two polls suggest that Obama's campaign must do one particularly crucial thing in the April 22nd Pennsylvania primary to checkmate the overall White-voters' preference for Clinton. Namely, produce a maximal turnout of Black voters-- thereby ensuring an 85%-plus Black vote for Senator Obama. This can be achieved. Meanwhile, a Gallup Poll on April 12th as reported in Boston Globe (April 9) showing “Obama holding on to a 10-percentage-point advantage over Clinton among [national] Democratic voters [50% Obama to 40% Clinton], matching his biggest lead of the campaign.” Despite Obama's “ill-chosen words” gaffe, the Obama campaign is in-good-stride and vibrant, en route to gaining the Democratic Party presidential nomination at the party's convention in August.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Member Martin Kilson, PhD - Hails from an African Methodist background and clergy: From a great-great grandfather who founded an African Methodist Episcopal church in Maryland in the 1840s; from a great-grandfather AME clergyman; from a Civil War veteran great-grandfather who founded an African Union Methodist Protestant church in Pennsylvania in 1885; and from an African Methodist clergyman father who pastored in an Eastern Pennsylvania milltown--Ambler, PA. He attended Lincoln University (PA), 1949-1953, and Harvard graduate school. Appointed in 1962 as the first African American to teach in Harvard College and in 1969 he was the first African American tenured at Harvard. He retired in 2003 as Frank G. Thomson Professor of Government, Emeritus. His publications include: Political Change in a West African State (Harvard University Press, 1966); Key Issues in the Afro-American Experience (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970); New States in the Modern World (Harvard University Press, 1975); The African Diaspora: Interpretive Essays (Harvard University Press, 1976); The Making of Black Intellectuals: Studies on the African American Intelligentsia (Forthcoming. University of MIssouri Press); and The Transformation of the African American Intelligentsia, 1900-2008 (Forthcoming). Click here to contact Dr. Kilson.

David A. Love, JD

Far too often, it is difficult to find the words “politics,” “intelligence,” and “historical context” in the same sentence. Obama chose the path less traveled when he injected intelligence and historical context into the political season with his statement regarding the bitterness of small-town and rural Americans.

If the senator from Illinois offended the “Alabama” region of Pennsylvania, the middle area between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, then he must have offended humanity as well. The notion that people, bitter, frustrated and economically insecure, will lash out against others and create scapegoats, is a universal phenomenon. Throughout world history, there has been this game of blaming the Blacks, or blaming the Jews, or blaming the Muslims, or the Tutsi, or the immigrants, or the dissenters, or the poor, or anyone outside of one’s group who is perceived as different. With the flames of division often fanned by the political elites, such scapegoating only serves to deflect attention from the real sources of people’s woes, including the policies of those who are in control.

A leader who tells the people what they need to hear, however inconvenient, is not offensive or elitist, but a truth teller. Rather, it is offensive for politicians, their wealth amassed through public service, to drink a beer or a shot of Crown Royal whisky with us and pretend to be with us. Bush became the occupant of the Oval Office because - in addition to stealing votes and getting help from the Supreme Court - some voters believed they would want to have a beer with him. Of course, the Bush presidency has been the most disastrous, elitist and out-of-touch administration in American history. The people need more than beer, and they certainly know that after eight long, painful years. That is why Obama is still standing.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member David A. Love, JD is a lawyer and journalist based in Philadelphia, and a contributor to the Progressive Media Project, McClatchy-Tribune News Service, In These Times and Philadelphia Independent Media Center. He contributed to the book, States of Confinement: Policing, Detention, and Prisons (St. Martin's Press, 2000). Love is a former Amnesty International UK spokesperson, organized the first national police brutality conference as a staff member with the Center for Constitutional Rights, and served as a law clerk to two Black federal judges. His blog is davidalove.com. Click here to contact Mr. Love.

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