Obama Struggles To Connect With Middle Class

Washington Post:

President Obama's 165th flight on Air Force One required all the customary protocols of a presidential trip. He took a helicopter from the White House lawn to Andrews Air Force Base, where seven military officers waited at full attention. He entered his plane through a door decorated by the presidential seal and settled into a suite that includes an office and a conference room. After a short flight, he exited to cheers from a greeting party before disappearing into a limousine that cruised down the barricaded streets of this New Hampshire city.

When Obama arrived here Tuesday afternoon, he stopped at a suburban industrial park to visit a machinery company. Snipers surveyed from the roof. Secret Service agents monitored the warehouse. A 19-car motorcade idled outside. Obama, meanwhile, stood on the gray concrete floor with the company's employees, studying their manufacturing materials and trying to convey his new favorite message: He understands the problems of what he calls "everyday Americans."

Read the whole story: Washington Post

Comments

[raker]

08:12 AM on 02/04/2010

Don't try to connect. Do good and do well and the connection will follow.

[Ifticar2]

03:16 AM on 02/05/2010

How long will it take for the connection to follow. It looks like the connection has turned around and ran the other way over the last year.

[chopel]

06:07 AM on 02/04/2010

If Obama wants to re-connect with the middle-class populist movement that got him elected he's going to have to get out of the White House bubble created by corporatist Rahm Emanuel and inhabited by corporatists Tim Geithner, Larry Summers, Ben Bernanke, Bob Ruben, Michael Fromen, et al.

"Obama's Big Sellout: The president has packed his economic team with
Wall Street insiders intent on turning the bailout into an all-out giveaway"
Rolling Stone mag, Dec 2009; by Matt Taibi http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31234647/obamas_big_sellout/1

[Alsop123]

12:42 AM on 02/04/2010

Congress has no idea what the middle class is all about. If they ever did they have forgotten. Most have lived off the backs of the poor working slob for so long they have forgotten what it is like to be one, if they ever did. If you listen to them or the president they can't even define us. We need to cull out this bloat of wealthy elitists and put some people in congress that can relate to us. I am not hopeful.

[OneConservative]

12:13 AM on 02/04/2010

I cannot tell who the Libs refer to as "the middle class". Is it based on income or assets or something else. Why the class warfare and identity politics?

That said, Obama and the Limousine Liberals cannot identify with anyone who does not run in their circles. Obama and his minions think that they are better than others. He rose up because he is a good con man and there are a lot of gullible Libs that fall for his rhetoric.

[bascombe]

11:30 PM on 02/03/2010

all that bluster when he won't give them a job, help them with their mortgage or see to their healthcare without an intervening corporate profit and campaign donation.

speechifying never filled an empty stomach.

[catbite]

11:10 PM on 02/03/2010

Yah, we had the same routine when he visited Ohio. These town hall meetings don't really accomplish much or convince many unemployed people that the White House is trying to help them. This act is getting old. Obama has a lot of advisors bending his ear and I'm certain that none of them are connected with the middle class either. He keeps saying he gets it, but I don't see it. There are so many things that he should have jumped on a year ago.

[CeeLee]

10:36 PM on 02/03/2010

This is the sameloadofcrap that HUFF and the other so called 'liberal' MSM soap boxes 'tried' to say about Barack Obama during the campaign, like he wasn't black enough or an elitist. YAWN
and predictable.
Democrats are weak and disjointed. Did Repubs trash and try and marginalize
Dubya andhisDickcheney while they were holding up in the Whitehouse?. Democrats are disgustingly predictable, bending over for the GOP and not holding each other accountable to stay strong and get the job done.

[bascombe]

11:31 PM on 02/03/2010

but those same dems love the same lobbyists that the repugs like.

[lemealone]

10:07 PM on 02/03/2010

Maybe he can put a "Foreclosed" sign in front of the White House.

[xilduq]

09:22 PM on 02/03/2010

O lost the TRUST of the avg working stiff.

Why?

Because he's a FR4UD.

Once someone's TRUST has been vio|ated, it's usually gone for good.

[privateersforfreedom]

08:32 PM on 02/03/2010

Obama can't connect with the US middle class, he has no experience in it.

[liberalbug]

09:18 PM on 02/03/2010

You are right, he spent most of his life being poor before picking himself up by the boot straps, getting an education, going on to become quite successful and eventually the POTUS. He just skipped the middle class all together, unlike his predecessor who was born into extreme wealth and an American political dynasty family.

[shp]

09:05 AM on 02/04/2010

We know, we know, all poor people who raised themselves by their bootstraps were raised by a white mother who was a PhD (Doctor) and a grandmother who happened to be a bank vice president. So, how many poor bank vice presidents or doctors in your town? Yea, that's what I thought. Do some research, the truth will set you free.

[quillsinister]

09:26 PM on 02/03/2010

Are you kidding? Do you know nothing of the man's childhood?

[quillsinister]

05:57 PM on 02/03/2010

What a bizarre article. Obama didn't grow up with wealth. Other than his international experience, he grew up more like "one of us" than any other president in recent memory.

And yet a "gentleman's C" student at Yale, child of an oil millionaire who was also a former CIA director and president, is the one who people relate to because he wears a cowboy hat and acts like an idiot.

What is WRONG with us?

[ThruSpaceAndTime]

08:47 PM on 02/03/2010

If you get any clues...let me know.

[catgirl666]

05:24 AM on 02/04/2010

What he said.

[Collielady]

05:06 PM on 02/03/2010

Dubya connected with the people by wearing cowboy clothes and cutting brush. Playing basketball doesn't seem to be the answer, strange enough. He's already connected with those of us who like basketball. Now he must appeal to cowboys. President Obama needs to cut brush.

[chicagogal11]

04:32 PM on 02/03/2010

It is amazing how many people are interpreting this article about Obama not connecting with the middle class are calling him a snob, elitist when what they really mean is the racist remarks of uppity black.
Racism is certainly alive and well, isn't it.?

[pesfb]

04:35 PM on 02/03/2010

It never died, mo ron.

[Aesthete]

02:59 PM on 02/03/2010

Obama was raised by his mother and grandparents to have strong middle class values and a strong work ethic. He could not otherwise have achieved such a high level of education and his current position without those attributes. What is it that people want from him anyway? With the exception of ethnicity, I don't basically find him all that different from most previous presidents, Republican or Democrat, under similar circumstances. His detractors sound childish, making ridiculous, impossible demands for all the nation's problems to be solved by last week when they were decades in the making. Also, why is it that every time a non-white person achieves something of value, he or she is called "uppity" or "elitist," and is viewed through a different prism? Yeah, yeah, I know that many will squeal "race card" like stuck pigs, but there remains a stubborn tendency to want to raise the bar when someone is not considered a "real" (white) American. I'm aware that ALL presidents have had to endure their share of criticism, but in view of the unprecedented number of death threats against Obama, they have a particularly poisonous and malevolent tinge.

[pesfb]

04:29 PM on 02/03/2010

***I don't basically find him all that different from most previous presidents, Republican or Democrat, under similar circumstances. ***

And that in a nutshell is what is so disappointing to so many of his supporters because he presented himself during the campaign, and still tries to, as someone other than the usual lobbyist influenced sellout politician.

[Canuckview]

02:57 PM on 02/03/2010

Gee who would of thought that Obama using the US middle class as a host for his parasitic Big Health and Big Finance corporate donors would not be a vote getter?