small town america
by Jeremy Skinner
Published: April 14, 2008
As John Mellencamp sang, I was born in a small town, unlike Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton (or John McCain). Sure, I moved away and I live in a big city – more people live on my block than went to my hometown’s only high school. And the only cowboy hat I own is pink. Still, I retained enough small town attitude to go on alert when people who can’t sing a Garth Brooks or Reba McEntire tune start talking like they know the place where I grew up. Since I’m not alone in that, you might think Clinton (along with McCain) was politically smart to condemn Obama’s comments last week about us small-town folks. But there is something else about that small-town attitude that Clinton does not yet understand: we also don’t like liars.
The comments that started it all came at a private Obama fundraiser in San Francisco. Obama was asked why his campaign has struggled with white, working-class voters in small towns. Since most pundits attribute Clinton’s win in Ohio (which saved her) and her lead in Pennsylvania (which will likely save her again) to this bloc of voters, it’s a significant issue. Obama stated that these people, who have suffered greatly from changing economic realities, often become “bitter” and “cling” to guns, religion or anti-immigrant or anti-trade sentiments out of frustration. He later tied this into the argument he’s been making all along that too many Americans have lost hope in the face of a political system that has ignored them for too long.
While McCain also strongly criticized Obama’s comments, Clinton really pounced. She claimed that Obama’s remarks were “demeaning” and showed that he is elitist and out of touch. She reminisced about her hunting days and noted that she just went to church on Easter (when Obama went on vacation). And she did a shot of whiskey in Indiana – I guess she’s Carrie Underwood in “Before He Cheats,” while Obama’s off drinking some “fruity little drink.”
Having grown up among the “working-class lunch-pail folks” Obama discussed, I am more upset by Clinton’s response than by anything Obama said.
First, whether he said it artfully or not, Obama is right – and Clinton knows it. Everyone in politics knows that there is a whole strategy for reaching small town voters based on the three Gs: God, guns and gays. This strategy diverts attention from the economic troubles that have plagued small towns like mine, where people like my father work in factories with no unions and still vote Republican. It doesn’t seem to make sense; as one pundit asked on Meet the Press, “How the hell do working class whites vote Republican?” It turns out an explanation just like Obama’s was given long ago by none other than Bill Clinton, who was quoted in the L.A. Times in 1991, saying, “You have all these economically insecure white people who are scared to death.”
Second, Clinton once again showed her willingness to copy from the Republican playbook in order to score political points against Obama. She noted herself that the GOP’s success in painting both Al Gore and John Kerry as elitists played a large role in the last two Democratic presidential election defeats. In her constant attempts to make the case to undeclared superdelegates that Obama would be a worse general election candidate, she keeps doing McCain’s dirty work for him. My dad loves hunting and has a horde of guns, but this wouldn’t dominate working-class small town voting patterns if Republicans didn’t regularly and cynically use these facts to divide us.
Third – and worst, from my “country” perspective – Clinton’s “elitist” and “out of touch” attacks are just plain fake. It’s almost funny to hear the $109 million candidate scold the man who grew up in a single-parent home and just paid off his student loans. Clinton grew up in the affluent suburbs of Chicago. She went to the snooty Wellesley College depicted in the film Mona Lisa Smile. She hasn’t bought her own groceries in decades.
Furthermore, as Tim Russert suggested in a debate earlier this year, Clinton has failed as a senator to fulfill her promise to bring jobs to the small towns of upstate New York. Then, of course, Clinton’s campaign has argued for weeks that Obama’s wins in rural states across the country somehow mean less than her wins in states with big urban populations like New York and California. If one of the Democratic candidates is a new Michael Dukakis, I don’t think it’s Obama.
On a related note, I’m still waiting for Clinton to tell us, since the sniper fire that she “particularly” remembered in Bosnia didn’t really happen, where was the actual sniper fire? Until she clears the record by finding out and telling us what trip she was remembering, we have to assume the story was completely fabricated. I’ll take the candidate who speaks a little too honestly any day over the candidate who can’t stop lying.
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(6)
April 15th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Clinton has lied plenty, the problem is that she just isn’t as smooth a liar as Obama. Don’t try to defend him. In this closed meeting of elitist and wealthy donators his true colors came out for bit. He doesn’t like the poor any more then he likes mormons or jews. It is just that he needs the poor ignorant vote so much. That is why so many of us college age stundents are voting for him. He is supposed to be for the little guy. But really He and Clinton are the same animal, elite, wealthy, powerful, and selfish. Neither of which really cares for Americans, but rather what Americans think of them. I am leaning towards clinton over Obama, but I can still come and out say what clinton is. She is a liar. But Obama is too. They are both liars, we just have to figure out which poison will kill us less. Just don’t try to defend Obama from what he really is. And the Clintons are politically very smart to attack this slite show of his true character. The problem is that while both of them go at each other, America is being exposed to who they both really are….America needs to maintain the ignorant euphoric idea of what great Americans these two are in order to win the election. Them going at each other like this is shedding too much light on them.
April 15th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
What has he lied about?
I think we’re so used to hearing politicians lie, we don’t recognize it when one’s being honest.