(no subject)

[oselle]

I am starting to feel a mild sense of despair and panic over how quickly the issue of Barack Obama's "elitism" has gone from having a question mark after it to a period. All of a sudden, this supposed elitism is not something that's being questioned but something that's accepted as a genuine hurdle for Obama to overcome if he's going to win. What did that take? A couple of months?

Few things have astounded me as much as the way Republicans have managed to associate themselves with "the common man" while smearing Democrats and liberals as latte-sipping "elitists" who look down their noses at average Americans. How on earth did this bunch of trustfunded country-clubbers manage to pull that off? George W. Bush is the spawn of one of the country's wealthiest and most politically connected families. John McCain dumped his crippled wife to marry an heiress. Nobody even knows how much money Dick Cheney's got. None of these guys knows jack shit about how "the common man" lives, and frankly, they don't give a fuck.

The problems that plague people like you and me are incomprehensible fiction to them. Their lives are all tax shelters and golf courses. Everything else is some sort of vague fantasy, if they even consider it at all. That's elitism. It's not whether Barack Obama doesn't eat at Applebee's or his lousy bowling score. Don't let yourselves be fooled.

Comments

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

This makes me so furious, this whole thing. There was an article in the New Yorker recently about this whole attitude (but happily saying that it shouldn't work for much longer). It seems like basically it's all about the 60s. That's why somebody like Barack Obama is an elitist for being a Democrat and being an academic. That's when there started to be this appeal to "normal Americans" who were against anything new and progressive or whatever--which was probably also associated with college campuses.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

The only reason I think this strategy might be weaker this time around is because we have a lot more young voters right now for whom all those '60s and '70s-era class divisions mean nothing. But I have no reason to believe that the people who were swayed by this crap in the last two presidential elections have suddenly gotten any smarter, and they're still out there.

[claudia603.livejournal.com]

*loud long applause* Exactly!

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Yes!