Hundreds if not thousands of pages have been written by Democrat apologists trying to rehabilitate Al Gore's reputation after he blurted on Larry King that he had invented the internet. They pointed to the 1992 Gore act that funded various aspects of the expansion of the network, they accused his critics of being unfair, they deployed the oldest defensive cliche in the world
....he was quoted out of context.
None of it mattered. The claim was so outrageous on its face, so beyond the pale, that Gore literally branded himself as a fabulist. The left likes to revise history, as you know, but this wasn't just a Rush Limbaugh thing.
The Press Effect, by Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Paul Waldman is a book that examines how the media caricatures people and events, creating a simplistic shorthand which they rarely deviate from. The media went looking for, found and publicized dozens of instances that affirmed the original impression. There are lots of reasons Al Gore lost an election he should have won in a walk--this was a big one.
Barack Obama may have invented his own internet after comments he made at an April 6th fund-raiser have become public.
But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that 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.
Wow, Barry is liberal elitist, a progressive provincial, an arrogant city-slicker.
The question now is does he get away with it?
I doubt it.
Its too sensational for the media to ignore, and its too baldly insulting for Democrat apologists to explain away (although they will try...). Disdainful elitism will now be part and parcel of the Obama "frame" (as Jamieson and Waldman put it...). What's more--everytime Obama opens his mouth anywhere, there will be someone looking and listening for confirmation of the original assessment--a catalog of elitist pronoucements like Bush's catalog of malapropisms.
Politically, this comment irritates one of the biggest sore spots in the culture--the vast divide between the New York-L.A. axis and people in the fly-over country. It transcends political divides as well, as many, many Democrats are hunting, fishing, church-going good ol' boys.
For the vast majority of the country, all politics is identity politics. Obama just identified himself with the smallest minority in the country--arrogant, rich liberal pinheads.
UPDATE: Funny and insightful stuff from Transterrestial Musings.
"By cracky, it's like the man sees into my soul!"Thirty years ago, I had a good job in the mill in Pittsburgh. I was bringing in a good income, going to jazz clubs, discussing Proust over white wine and brie, with my gay friends of all colors. I was all for free trade, so that we could sell the steel overseas, and I never bothered to go to church, let alone actually believe in God.
"But then, the plant closed down, and I couldn't get another job. I went on unemployment, and found odd jobs here and there, but they barely paid the rent in the loft, and the payment on the Bimmer. I couldn't afford the wine and brie any more, and had to shift over to beer and brats.
"Of course, as a result, I started hanging out with the wrong crowd--the beer drinkers.
"And it wasn't just the beer. Some of them actually went out in the woods in the fall, and shot animals. And kilt 'em. With real guns!
"I was shocked, of course. For all their diversity, none of my gay friends would have ever thought of doing anything like that. But with my job loss, and lack of money for pedicures and pommade, they didn't want to hang with me any more. So I borried a twelve gauge over'n'under, and went out with my new beer-drinking animal-killing friends in the woods. And I'll tell you what, when I shot down that eight-pointer, I felt a sense of power over the helpless in a way that I hadn't since I'd been looking down on the rednecks when I had that good job in Pittsburgh, driving around town in my 528i.
UPDATE II: I recalled reading a particularly apropos insight from a Democrat in Bill Kristol's column last week.
And an experienced Democratic operative e-mailed: “Finally, I think [McCain’s] going to win. Obama isn’t growing in stature. Once I thought he could be Jimmy Carter, but now he reminds me more of Michael Dukakis with the flag lapel thing and defending Wright. Plus he doesn’t have a clue how to talk to the middle class. He’s in the Stevenson reform mold out of Illinois, with a dash of Harvard disease thrown in.”In a close race, that “dash of Harvard disease” could be the difference.
Posted by Mick Stockinger on April 12, 2008 7:11 AM
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