April 19, 2008...12:01 am
Buchanan: In Darkest Pennsylvania
by Pat Buchanan
It was said behind closed doors to the chablis-and-brie set of San Francisco, in response to a question as to why he was not doing better in that benighted and barbarous land they call Pennsylvania.
Like Dr. Schweitzer, home from Africa to address the Royal Society on the customs of the upper Zambezi, Barack described Pennsylvanians in their native habitats of Atloona, Alquippa, Johnstown and McKeesport.
“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and … the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them.
“And 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.”
This is the pitch-perfect Hollywood-Harvard stereotype of the white working class, the caricature of the urban ethnic — as seen from the San Francisco point of view.
As Linus clung to his security blanket, Barack is saying, out-state Pennsylvanians, bitter at the world that has passed them by, cling to their Bibles and guns and naturally revert to ancestral bigotries against “people who aren’t like them” — blacks, gays and immigrants.
Though he sees himself as a progressive who has risen above prejudice, Barack was reflecting and pandering to the prejudice of the class to which he himself belongs, and which he was then addressing.
A few months back, Michelle Obama revealed her mindset about America with the remark that, “for the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country.” Barack has now revealed how he, too, sees the country. The Great Unifier divides the nation into us and them.
The “us” are the privileged cosmopolitan elite of San Francisco and his Ivy League upbringing. The “them” are the folks in the small towns and rural areas of that other America. Toward these folks, Obama’s attitude is not one of hostility, but of paternalism. Because time has passed them by, Barack believes, they cannot, in their frustration and bitterness, be held fully accountable for their atavistic beliefs and behavior.
Though neither mocking nor malicious, Barack’s remarks are, nonetheless, steeped in condescension. Inherent in his words is that these folks in Middle Pennsylvania are in need of empathy, education, assistance and perhaps therapy.
His remarks are of a piece with his address on civil rights that liberals have compared favorably to Lincoln’s Second Inaugural.
Note, from that Philadelphia address, the highlighted words.
“Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race … as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything. … They … feel their dreams slipping away … opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense.
“Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.”
In Barack’s mind, black anger and resentment at “racial injustice and inequality” are “legitimate.” But the anger and resentment of white folks, about affirmative action, crime and forced busing are born of misperceptions — and of “bogus claims of racism” manipulated and exploited by conservative columnists and commentators to keep the racial pot boiling and retain power, so the right can continue to do the bidding of the corporations that are the real enemy.
Barack has stumbled into the eternal failing of the left-wing populist. He cannot concede that the anger of white America — that its right to equal justice has been sacrificed to salve the consciences of guilt-besotted liberals — is a legitimate anger.
1 Comment
April 23, 2008 at 3:05 am
Obama, when faced with legitimate questions about his associations and his own statements, trivialized those concerns as being nothing more than distractions. An association of 20 years with a man who screams “God damn America” from the pulpit, describing his grandmother in an interview as “a typical white person” and, as I see it, claiming to take the high road while encouraging his campaign and supporters to reiterate the right’s vitriol about the Clinton’s, are not trivial concerns. This is just part of the reason I do not believe he can, or should, win the nomination.
Additionally, while Obama is ahead in the popular vote and the delegate count today, Mrs. Clinton is ahead in what I consider a much more significant statistic in that the total populations of the state she has won , not including Michigan and Florida, adds up to approximately 122 million compared to Obama’s total of 101 million, a difference in her favor of 21 million people. Adding Florida increases her lead in total population of states won to 51 million more than those he has won.
Mrs. Clinton’s proven ability to win the states with the largest populations and, consequently, larger numbers of electoral votes, to me, indicates that she would have a much, much greater chance of emerging as the winner in the general election than Obama would.
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