4/12/08

Are The Stupid Rubes Too Stupid Too Get It?
By: Mark W Adams


At least that's what Hillary Clinton and John McCain hope happens as they tag team on Barack Obama's "cling to guns or religion" statement that has half the blogosphere up in arms..

God help me, but Dean Esmay is at least half right when he says that anyone who thinks Obama can't win because he somehow diss'd small-town America is foolish, especially if he wins the Democratic nomination.

To me, this smacks of desperation by the anti-Obama forces that can fairly be described as "Camp McClainton." Hillary's lead in PA, as well as her nearly nonexistent chances for the nomination steadily dwindle as something just plain stupid comes out of her campaign almost daily, and John McCain has been a walking self-inflicted wound for the last couple of weeks -- all the while the Obamanon has just kept rolling along.

In the area he promotes as his best argument for leadership, McCain has proven he knows zero about our most pressing foreign policy challenges in the Middle East or the tactical situation in Iraq, and offers a strategy for the region written 50 years ago for post WWII or Korea that completely ignores the dynamics of the situation in play that have made the Persian Gulf region a diplomatic and military Rubik's cube for the U.S. -- and his flip-flopping economic proposals are a joke.

Meanwhile Hillary has got caught as a serial exaggerator lately, with Bill adding fuel to the fire. She botched the single best move she could make by finally getting rid of Mark Penn, but he's not gone, not really, and everybody knows it and hates it.

But A-Ha!
We got Barack out there analyzing why folks hate Washington D.C. and identifying the hot-button issues that get them to vote against their own economic interests again and again -- dog-whistle stuff the GOP and DLC centrists like the Clintons have been exploiting for decades. The stuff strategists like Mark Penn use as appetizers for their shit-sandwich buffet. The very same stuff that make the Ralph Naders and Jesse Venturas of the world reject the two-party system as equally corrupt and interchangeable, hopelessly destined to deliver nothing to the folks Obama is talking about -- by design.

The only problem with this McClainton theory that Obama made a "Kinsleyian gaffe" is that they surmise the small town rubes are too stupid to know they've been taken for a ride by the Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush taxi-to-nowhere all these years, but smart enough to think Obama is insulting them. They have to suspend their disbelief that Obama is dumb enough not to care about small-town, gun-toting religious freaks who have been swaying elections as long as I can recall and any politician knows instinctively.

The Achilles heel of this theory is there would be few if any people insulted by Barack's analysis if Camp McClainton hadn't told them they need to be insulted. The elite in Washington are out of touch, and anyone who says there isn't bitterness throughout the United States is an old, out-ot-touch fool.
Clinton says, ‘well, I don’t think people are bitter in Pennsylvania. I think Barack’s being condescending.’ John McCain says, ‘oh, how could he say that? How could he say people are bitter. He’s obviously out of touch with people.’”
That's just insulting to us rubes. We're pissed and have been for some time.

McCain and Clinton. Just. Don't. Get. It.

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