UPDATE: Here is some more background on how this story came about.
And here is where Arianna was when she was trying to decide what to do with the story. 454 foot yachts are not the best place to consider the thoughts of small town working class voters.
Arianna Huffington shows her elitist blind spot in this hysterical piece about Obama’s “bitterness” gaffe. In it she uses the usual angry slurs at Republicans as she tries to defend Obama.
On the foreign policy front, we’ve been fed a steady diet of her RNC-patented attacks: No Democrat can be trusted with national security — except her.
Her, of course, being Hillary.
Then she really gets into her explanatory mode.
It has been an article of faith in the Democratic Party over the last twenty years that when small town, working class whites vote for Republicans they’re voting against their economic self-interest. And why do they do that? Because every four years the Republican Party comes into those small towns and, to distract folks from the worsening economic situation, trots out a bunch of divisive, hot button social issues: “Let’s not talk about why you don’t have a job, can’t afford health care, or can’t send your kids to college; let’s talk about gay marriage, school prayer, illegal immigration, and flag burning amendments.
So, Obama was right about all those bitter small town white working class dopes.
I see. That will be a big help. For more explanation, see above (the picture of the yacht of Obama supporter David Geffen).
Here’s a better explanation of his problem than any I’ve seen so far.
Mickey Kaus has a pretty good take on it too.
Tags: arianna huffington, gary hart, Obama, pennsylvania
I see this as “urban elitism”. Urban life gets a concentration of money and political power that lets them trump rural interests, when the two clash. So we get a kind of “colonization” effect, where urbanites build their narrative to include spreading their values to the rubes in the countryside.
But, by many measurements, rural, small town life is superior to urban life. In measurements of civic and community involvement, sports achievement, life achievement, reported satisfaction with life, non-urban trumps urban. That urban elites, like Obama, continue to proselytize speaks to the allure of political power that comes from urban concentration.
Anthropologists puzzle about the seeming bad deal people got when shifting from hunter-gatherer to agriculture: life span decreased, time spent providing increased. Resulting urban centers were unsustainable: until public health improved, cities had a negative growth rate, and were sustained by immigration from the countryside. One explanation is that the resulting power of urbanization gave the elites added power, so their efforts went into maintaining the structure.
Well, there were some other advantages such as not having to carry small children from place to place. Hunter-gatherer women had lactational amenorhea as they did not ovulate until they finished nursing the last child. The birth rate went up with agriculture as the family stayed put. You’re right about disease. Infectious diseases are a consequence of agriculture.
You’ve been reading my book.