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It Takes Real Chutzpah for a Guy Who Owns Eight Houses (McCain) to Call Barack Obama an "Elitist"
McCain doesn't lack "chutzpah." Yesterday his campaign actually accused Barack Obama of being an "elitist" for saying that it's not surprising that people in small Midwestern towns are bitter after seeing their standard of living systematically destroyed over the last three decades.
Damn right they're bitter; they have good reasons to be. And most of those reasons are the economic and trade policies that have -- and continue to be -- championed by George Bush and John McCain.
The McCain campaign is managed by a cadre of Washington-insider special interest lobbyists. He and his current wife are estimated to be worth about $100 million. He reportedly owns eight houses. His let-them-eat-cake economic policies are based on George Bush's failed radical conservative "you're on your own buddy" philosophy. One after another he supported trade agreements that protect the rights of corporations, but ignore the rights of labor, and have devastated one Pennsylvania community after another. He gets most of his campaign cash from the wealthiest corporate interests around. And he has the gall to call Barack Obama an "elitist"?
This is the same Barack Obama who spent years of his life organizing out-of-work steelworkers on the south side of Chicago -- people just like those who live in Allentown or Erie or Pittsburgh or the Monongehela Valley in western Pennsylvania. He stood shoulder to shoulder with them, sat at their kitchen tables, spent hours in their church basements.
He didn't do those things as a famous candidate, but as a community organizer being paid $8,000 a year by a coalition of churches. You don't build a resume or a client list organizing unemployed steel workers. You do it because you respect the people and you care about justice.
In fact, the trademark of Barack Obama's campaign for president is the honest, respectful way he talks to everyone -- and stands up for everyday Americans.
If you want to talk about patronizing, or "elitism", you need look no farther than the way Bush and McCain attempt to use fear and division to divert the attention of middle class people from the economic policies that pick their pockets, lower their wages, destroy their unions, and outsource their jobs. And all the while they use our money to bail out Wall Street, and give giant tax breaks to the real "elitists" -- the economic elite.
It is Barack Obama who can lead a movement to change the way things are done in Washington. He can do it by empowering and inspiring the people who live in small-town Pennsylvania, and all of the other middle class Americans who have been left out by Bush-McCain policies that have benefited the "masters of the universe" on Wall Street and the Gucci-shoed lobbyist set on "K" Street.
As for Hillary Clinton, who joined in attacking Obama's statement: she should know better. She knows that Obama is the furthest thing from an elitist, and she should know better than to join in the Republican narrative about the candidate who is the likely Democratic standard bearer in the fall.
Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist and author of the recent book: "Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win," available on amazon.com.
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Amazing a more apropos dichotomy of title logic. Some people can post here the most hideous vitriol I've ever read but, if Mr. Creamer's book title "Stand Up Right: How Progressives Can Spin," gets a little fun poked at it, the humor is censored. What a site!
"Stand Up Right: How Progressives Can Spin," a more apropos title.
Defeatist I meant elitist: One who throws away his stepping stones as they now walk on water, ask the "Reverend" Wright.
Elitist, someone who throws away his stepping stones because he walks on water. Ask the "reverend" Wright.
Let me see, McCain's wife when he met her was rich, so he really has no room to talk. What an ass!!! Color this guy clueless!!!! Actually none of these folks will know a day of want so the point is pretty much moot.
I would say we should hark back to the old adage milling about somewhere prior the Bush Administration to: Actions Speaking Louder Than Words.
We can split hairs on his 'attitude', 'gaffe', elitist whatever...but, when it comes to people looking out for the Middle or Even lower classes, I got just two words to say about that:
NEW ORLEANS.
Darling, it's Obama's elitist attitude that is in question. Not his comparative wealth. Not whether or not people are "bitter" or angry. The controversy is over Obama's attitude. It was on display in San Francisco. The way he defined the voters in small-towns says a great deal about Obama.
I grew up and lived in a small town in Upstate New York for 40 years and for 10 more years in small towns in Virginia. Obama got it exactly right. The GOP and the Clinton Administration (to a lesser degree) embraced the rich, the super rich, and the obscenely rich. The average person in small town America got cynical about politics and government a long time ago as it did nothing but take their money and give nothing back to them and their communities but platitudes.
Clinton promised she would create 250,000 new jobs in Upstate New York when she ran the first time. Where are they? The last time I looked not a one was there. She is one empty promise after another, just like Bill was.
McCain is to old, to set in his ways and to bad tempered to bring the changes that America so desperately needs at this time. I suspect his cancer is or will come back so be prepared for either a President Romney or Guiliani or Rice.
Ladies I have heard that men vote (and do other things) using their "third leg" as a brain. Don't use the absence of one as the only quality to consider when choosing the best PERSON to lead this country. In my humble estimation, Obama offers the greatest hope for this country and will be the best President since the time of Kennedy, Kennedy and King. For our grandkids sake give him the chance.
Dear OttoF,
you have it exactly right... every elitist I know coming out of Harvard Law, particularly those who have been President of the Harvard Law Review, eschew corporate law or clerking at the supreme court or investment banking, and take a $12,000 a year job as a community organizer in the tough part of town... this is definitely the pattern I have observed among those with elitist attitudes.... and those who have married into money rather than working for it and those who have profiteered at the expense of the American people by selling influence to private parties for great sums are egalitarians willing to duck sniper fire and throw back a shot and a beer with the appropriately hand picked audience and a camera crew... they think we are dupes, and you think we are dupes... but you are wrong and perhaps will rethink your foolishness or ask the neo-cons for a rise to continue posting such nonsense.
Obama's problem, vis-a-vis McSame's many houses, is that a bit of a cloud still hangs above the one home Barack and his wife bought in Chicago. If he attacked McSame on this basis, the McSame people would blab on and on about how Obama worked a sweetheart, possibly crooked deal with an indicted felon to obtain his own homestead. None of the people running for the White House is a saint, you know, and their handlers would do well to remember the old adage, "People who live in glass houses....."
read the facts, there is no cloud, this is a myth made up by McCain who says that the streets of Baghdad are safe for commerce when he is traveling with helmet and body armor, 100 Soldiers there to protect him and a few Blackhawk helicopters flying overhead, or it is the invention of the hero of Bosnia who family has made 109 million not counting 2007 since leaving office and pedaling influence for foreign government and private parties
Chutzpah? I suppose it was, but it is mostly republican strategy going way back. They have the elitist theme and several other time-tested themes to work into the election. They will trot them all out by November because they work.
You are correct. In my view the term elitist can take different connotations, but that term has been successfully highjacked by the right to mean either wealthy or intellectual "liberals." My question has always been, why are the likes of Kristol, Pearle, Wolfowitz, etc., never referred to as elites? It shows how well the right is duping the general populace with rhetoric.
How can John McCain and Hillary Clinton can't call Barack Obama an elitest? McCain and his wife are worth over $100 million and Bill Clinton get just from speeches over $50 million a year? Why haven't MSNBC and CNN haven't mentioned this at all today......... It appears they are the elite?
This is what conservatives have done for forty years -- use cultural wedge and style issues to get white, working class voters to vote against their own economic interests by feeding off resentments in a divide and conquer strategy.
George W. Bush is a spoiled silver-spoon brat of a human being who gets to look like a regular guy to throw a football and have a beer with. The politicians who would pass legislation to help working and middle class families are portrayed as "elitists" and the politicians who would pass legislation to help corporations and the true elite are portrayed as regular guys.
Anger is a powerful energy. Conservatives are very good at using people's anger in a way that causes them to oppose their self-interests. Anger can also be the energy for positive change,
However, no matter how many "new" people Obama brings into the process, he has to, somehow, someway carry working class white voters in the fall.
The conservative slime machine will through every cultural wedge issue in the book and then some to make what worked for the last 40 years work again.
Obama has to find a way to connect with these voters better Gore or Kerry was able to do so.
Think of adding Roseanne, not just Oprah.
a good number of white americans abandoned their union solidarity and jobs first ethos to follow their cultural values to the republican right. black americans, traditionally very strong christians, nevertheless stayed with a party that advanced women's rights, gay rights, academic freedom, artistic expression and liberal immigration. the white middle class is under tremendous pressure because the republican way has turned out to be prosperity for the rich and decline for everyone else. but taking responsibility for their own decisions- a trait they're supposed to value- is really too much to expect of them. so they blame others who made different choices. it is very comforting for them to have a like-minded president. they need that. and it's not like the democratic alternative is the next fdr or anything. i'm not going to worry about it if they keep crowning these twits, professional veterans, geriatrics, and con men who pander to them. i'm beyond their disastrous influence and i don't really care if they get kicked around in countries they have no business in. in our reflective moments i know we reject returning the rabid hatred they express toward academia and the creative arts. if you add up the fast food, sports worship, and laughable pseudomilitary vehicles that comprise their lives- the sum isn't exactly barack obama. it's what they have; they need what they have. i don't need a president like me the way they do. change inhabits history- not politics anyway. liberals are disingenuous about that.
Interesting train of thought, WOL. There have been discussions surrounding national personality and the ability of populations to inhabit new, emerging political ideologies. Certainly, the capitalist movement in Russia and other eastern states is a much different iteration than that which exists in the US. What has resulted is an autocratic oligarchy that controls a corrupt marketplace. So, identifying the American middle class as a group that has, in recent times, voted against its own best interests, that might explain the philosophical gap that continues to grow between the Clinton and Obama camps. Obviously, the former honor and cling to a time-honored, if well-worn, style of campaigning and governance. The latter, obviously, want something different and reject the traditional methodology and belief. Your personal politics will dictate where you stand. But I've been voting for 40 years, this year, and I've never seen anything like this. In all of the vicious political infighting, I've never heard so many participants threaten to bring down the party if they don't get their way - on both sides.
Frankly, neither candidate is worth losing a chance to balance SCOTUS and stop the waste in Iraq. Neither candidate. If anybody thinks that Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama is worth more than the United States, then they are fools. And anybody here who feels that Crash would make a good president is simply stupid and not particularly well-read.
how can you belive that a black man in america is a elitist and the one that just paid back his student loans who don't have one tenth of the money mCcain and Clinton have but he is a elitist americans are not that stupid any more clinton and mCcain are the elitis for this reason to try to make people think they that dumb to belive this this is the insult and all the talking heads on this news game shows like george will pat buchanan all left over from the nixon era of lairs and never was in touch with people who rub shoulders with the elitis and put on the air to tell people things that keep them blinded by the facts so they can keep picking our pockets and laugh all the way to the bank . when these people hear the truth they start the attack dogs and put them on the stations they own to do the dirt for them and clinton i use to like but she is a lair and will go as far as to damn the party if she can't win she like the rest do not want change becuase it will bring people out of the dark and see them for who they really are its a sad day in politics.
Elitism is an attitude.
I can't imagine anyone running for president doesn't think they're better than the rest of us.
In this case, Obama is very much an elitist.
The question is, is he the kind of elitist we want?
Ramirez (Posted 11:11 PM on 04/13/2008) has it right.
yes.
I totally agree with McCain having chutzpah attacking Obama as an elitist considering he is one of the richest Senators in the Senate with a wife worth at least $100 million and probably a lot more. But that said, what's wrong with being an elitist? Wouldn't we all have preferred the elitist Gore and Kerry as President instead of a nitwit like Bush? And Bush was never anything but an elitist himself having attended private schools and Ivy League schools and benefitting from his family's wealth,. The cowboy shtick was just that including the purchase of the Crawford property shortly before the election.
The problem with attacks on elitism is they are really attacks on intellectuals and smart people with good educations by people who are basically dumb and/or poorly educated and/or ignorant and insecure. What Obama didn't say is that our country is full of these folks. All you need to do is watch Jay Leno's Jaywalking segment to realize the pervasive ignorance in our country.
So I would proudly vote for anyone who was an elitist as long as they also weren't totally out of touch with the rest of the country. Elitism should be celebrated and not berated.
RJ Crane, topplebush.com
you are a hypocrit. You bash people who have money but fail to show all sides. Pelosi in worth hundreds of millions as is Reid, Boxer, Feinstein etc...who cares. As a matter of fact, Feinsteins husband, Richard Blum, has reaped huge fortunes from the war in Iraq...with the help of Feinstein when she was on the Senate Armed Forced Appropriations Committee. Where is the outrage from that? I guess that in your half-closed eyes that this is ok?Class envy is sick and dangerous. Obama is a condescending slime ball and a liar who is showing his true colors but morons like you who are so blinded by his lies cannot see the truth for what it is. Obama is the TROJAN HORSE.
oh shut up
Pelosi is in the House not the Senate. If you can't get a basic fact like that why should anyone listen to you?
Creamer and McCain's chuzpah - what Creamer and all the Glib'ama Liberation Front footsoldiers want is to confound people on the "elitist" issue: Creamer, McCain is, possibly wealthy, but not an elitist - neither Warren Buffet or the IKEA dude on the today's opening page are. Elitism is something else, and Glib'ama is haughty and thoughtless, and his fall (i.e. the November election defeat - anticipation solid like a rock), will in certain manner be caused by his obvious aloofness and arogance. Tragic flaw or Molieresque "nuveau riche" crappy demeanor - up to the viewer. Yet, no matter how much the liberal primping crew tries to put a different spin on Glib's latest, more and more (and significantly more) voters see Glib'ama as ... exactly as he is: a slick & ambitious brat trying to reach the crown. It won't happen, it's already over - and the Dems/liberals have lost another 8-years cycle of political power in the country because they, as usually, fall for flash and gesticulation. Magpies die after swallowing glass shards - the liberals' fascination with Glib'ama has done them.
The only dog that I have in this fight is Hillary having to give a concession speech, it will be like Super Bowl Sunday coupled with winning the PowerBall lottery. Then whoever wins the Presidency will do what they do best, running for the next election.
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