Obama Stumbles

By now, you have no doubt heard the recent kerfluffle over Obama’s remarks about the working class. The left blogs have mostly adopted three positions:

• Obama supporters are refusing to critique the remarks, and are focused on characterizing Clinton's reaction as more evidence of her joining Republican talking points.
• Clinton-supporting sights are all over it on the electability front.
• They've ignored it in favor of other topics, which I think is a defensible position, but

Why force ourselves to abandon critical analysis just because we have taken a side?

Here are Obama's actual words, in response to questions about how he can draw support from blue-collar voters:

"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."

And you should also give a listen to his first response to that chatter.

Obama’s response here is carefully crafted. Rather than step away from the reaction to the word “bitter”, he steps into it, claims it, and turns it back around. Masterful. And there is no doubt that much of what Obama said – even in his much less judicious original remarks – is largely true.

The problem is that these comments (particularly his original comments) come from the perspective of someone explaining – in fairly broad strokes – one set of people to another. They are socio-psychological in nature and therefore – by definition – apart from and therefore “above” those being described. This is at the heart of what I think folks are reacting to.

Blue-collar voters don’t want to be “explained” to what are then set up (semantically) as the rest of the Democratic electorate. They see themselves at the center of that electorate. Yes, many of them own and use guns and attend church, but in saying that they “cling” to these things only as a way to “explain their frustrations” automatically places them among the wingnuttery who actively wedge around those issues. The blue-collar Democrats I know will resent having things that are a part of their cultural tradition (guns and God) lumped in with anti-immigrant fever or a reasoned rejection of more free trade agreements. This is the real reason this stumble will have resonance, and will stand as a serious self-inflicted wound.

On another note, since I criticized him on the issue in an earlier post, I must let you know that Obama finally sat down with the GLBT press.