Senator Obama's "Bitter" Struggle: When "Elitism" is Used to Describe Unifying Pragmatism

This is what Senator Obama said last week in his now infamous "bitter" comment (from CNN):

"When I go around and I talk to people, there is frustration, and there is anger, and there is bitterness," Obama began. "I want to make a point here."

"[Pennsylvanians are] frustrated and for good reason, because for the last twenty-five years they've seen jobs shipped overseas, they've seen their economies collapse...."

"So...they don't vote on economic issues because they don't expect anybody's going to help them..." Obama said, adding that they end up voting on issues that include gun rights, gay marriage, and faith.

--CNN's Political Ticker

It is for this comment that Senator Obama is being branded an "elitist" by both the Clinton and McCain camps. "Elite," as defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is "the choice part; a superior group." "Elitism," as defined by the same dictionary, is "leadership or rule by an elite; advocacy of such elitism."

I propose that we do an activity that in this era is well outside of the mainstream (which I suppose one could use to suggest that this posting is a product of "elitism"...), that activity being to actually look at what Senator Obama said in order to determine, in a cool and unemotional manner, whether what he said was or was not a product of "elitist" thought.

What he said is that certain areas of the United States that once featured fairly well-paying jobs (whether or not those areas were thriving or simply getting by as best as they could) have seen those jobs slip away, sometimes to elsewhere in the country, sometimes overseas, and sometimes in such a manner that they are not replaced anywhere. Portions of states such as Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania have been hit particularly hard because a lot of those lost jobs were in the manufacturing sector (hence the term "rustbelt" to describe the withering manufacturing industries in these and nearby states).

Thus, people in these areas have become more and more desperate to either hold on to their existing jobs or, increasingly, to find work of any sort once their jobs evaporate and they have little or no source of income. When they see that their pleas for help, either in rebuilding existing industries or in replacing them with more modern sources of income, fall on deaf ears decade after decade, their desperation eventually devolves into bitterness; they feel as though there is nothing to be done because industry leaders and politicians, and the like, are either powerless to do anything about this scenario or, just as bad (and perhaps worse), they don't care to do anything to help these people.

Hence, these hard-working but desperate folks, fighting a rising inner tide of bitterness, turn to other forms of belief that they feel are less transient, such as the right to bear arms, the necessity to sustain the traditional definition of marriage, and their religious faith. Eventually, some people get caught up in these and related paradigms in a manner that allows for little else in the way of political thought and discourse, and they therefore do not vote in what is ostensibly their economic interest because they don't think it will do any good. Instead, they vote based on the sycophantic pandering regarding these borderline-obsessive paradigms that is done by certain politicians. The result is a divisive sort of politics that only further isolates these people from people in other areas of the country and the world, which in turn only perpetuates the economic and cultural disparities; instead of being brought together in certain ways to deal with these problems, we find ourselves erecting more barriers, physical or (especially) emotional and intellectual.

It doesn't come across exactly like this (it's based more on insinuation), but the rather unethical political response is along the lines of: "Does your area need to redevelop economically? It's not going to happen, and everyone knows it. But if you vote for me I'll never take your guns away, and if you elect me I'll never allow gays to get married, and to hell with anyone who isn't a devout Christian...." And so forth. It's a pathetic form of sloganeering designed to highlight certain pseudo-"truths" that can be "sustained" when in other aspects of life often seem unsustainable.

Now we can fake as though this doesn't happen, but the evidence suggests otherwise, and I'm glad to see that there has been a relatively sustained backlash against the initial backlash regarding Senator Obama's comments. On CNN's political ticker (and, in some cases, on television), for instance, many people from states such as Pennsylvania have suggested, rightly, that his comments represent the difficult truth rather than "elitist" thought, and many of them also suggested, again rightly, that only when such truths are confronted can we coalesce a bit more in order to work together to find solutions to this problem.

So this brings us back to the word "elite." The astounding thing regarding the response by the Clinton and McCain camps (and, I'm sad to report, particularly the response by the Clinton camp) is that they suggest that Senator Obama is being "elitist," yet their so-called "evidence" for this is the fact that he is speaking truthfully and honestly regarding the economic, cultural, and political struggles that many blue-collar Americans are going through. This is to say that the Clinton camp in particular is calling Senator Obama an "elitist" because he is tackling head-on something that is perpetuating many of the difficulties that your average Joe and Josephine is going through, while Senator Clinton continues to fan the flames of cultural isolation by pandering to the negative emotions built up over time in these same people. She is far too smart to believe that her response will contribute positively to the situation, so she must be doing it for electoral purposes only, which is what makes her response so disappointing.

It's a strange, strange world indeed when someone is accused of being an "elitist" after spending so much time accurately describing the difficulties of blue-collar workers. But that's what happens, I suppose, when you tell the American people the truth in order to start the process of turning things around, rather than playing the "safe" game of divisive emotional politics. Far from coming across like an "elitist," after this past week Senator Obama is looking more like a man of the people.