Newsweek Cover Story: Obama's "Bubba" Gap

Newsweek:

There was a time, not so long ago, when the advisers to John McCain worried a great deal about running against Barack Obama. "We'll never get those kind of crowds," a McCain aide admitted, almost mournfully, to a NEWSWEEK reporter as they stood watching television coverage of a packed Obama rally in South Carolina last January. Obama seemed to have a kind of transcendent power, an ability to convince voters that he was not just another politician. Most McCain aides at the time wanted to run against Hillary Clinton, whom they regarded as a traditional tax-and-spend Democrat with unusually high negative ratings.

But lately, McCain aides have been making gleeful jokes about Obama. On the campaign trail, at dinner with reporters, they sometimes order the arugula salad, poking fun at some comments Obama made last summer in Iowa ("Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?"). "Do you see how much they are charging for this?" a McCain aide asked a reporter at one such dinner at a restaurant, pointing to the menu and feigning shock. Following Hillary Clinton's lead, the McCain team sees an opportunity to paint Obama as an out-of-touch elitist, a Harvard toff who nibbles daintily at designer salads while the working man, worried about layoffs at the plant, belts another shot. Though the McCain advisers are divided about who would make the more beatable candidate in November, they see a chance to peel off Reagan Democrats--older working-class voters--in key swing states of the rust belt if Obama is the Democratic nominee. While McCain himself is publicly neutral on which Democrat he would prefer to oppose, in recent weeks he has noticeably gone easier on Clinton than Obama, perhaps out of hopes of winning over some of her working-class base.

Read the whole story: Newsweek

Comments

[aznurse]

Hey! Not for nothing, but what is this Newsweek day?
Aren't they the ones who hired Karl Rove as a columnist? (He's giving advise to Obama on how to
run his campaign)
who gives a crap or a dime what they say.

[zull2]

This strategy is actually pretty funny. The types of people I've seen campaigning for Obama AREN'T the types that go to Whole Foods. I see those folks campaigning for Hillary, actually. They're the ones who still have money in this economy.

I'm an educated white male. Somehow this makes me an elitist and that I wear birkenstocks and shop at Whole Foods. My average salary has steadily declined over the past several years, as I've watched jobs similar to mine sent overseas, and I've had to take less and less for salary to keep going. When I went to the Obama headquarters opening, there were a heck of a lot of folks there like me.

Just because you're educated, doesn't mean you're rich. Not in the Bush economy. But we can tell which candidates are getting beholden financially to the folks who are screwing us. McCain and Clinton taking big bucks from the oil industry, from the telecom industry..­.we're the ones scrapping for what we have left, and you can bet we'll be voting too.

[nellie]

And as Bush so excellently illustrates, just because you're rich, doesn't mean you're educated.

[JJaye]

We've have Beer & Nuts for the last 7+ years. I think I'll take Arugula and White Wine this time thank you.

[Kynn]

Bush isn't a beer drinker.

Well, only in that the guy will drink anything you put in front of him.

[qdog112]

Bubba Gap? F**k a Bubba Gap! Barack has opened up to all citizens and welcomed them to joint his change campaign. He is not Bubba and frankly should not want to be. He is educated and should not apologize for that. Americans claim to want be educated, yet want leaders to meet them in the bar or bowling alley for effect. Instead they should reach up and aspire to be more like the leadership rather than the reverse. While we are trying to "dumb down" the world is getting smarter. Employers tell us they hire foreigners because our work force is not smart enough and we relish in our relative "Bubba dom" and ridicule anyone who actually attains the education we all should seek. Black students mock other black students who want to learn , saying they're trying to be "white". Now showing that stupidity has no race, Americans at large use the term "elitist" to describe a scholastic achiever. I say let them stay stupid. Go have a beer with George - Bubba.

[masee]

::applause applause:::


well said and well worth repeating

[SaddieMcCall]

Have you noticed the media dumbing down? I used to respect Anderson Cooper, but now his show is just like a tabloid entertainment news show. The way the media exploited the Reverend Wright soundbytes, (where was the 360 coverage on that one?) Only PBS did an interview to get information other than what was being spoon fed to the stations.