Everyday I like her less and less

The latest Hillary demagoguery, in which Obama is tagged as an elitist for noticing a certain bitterness among the white working class, is coming painfully close to being the last straw for me -- I am really beginning to wonder if I can actually vote for her if she is the nominee.  Now understand, despite my strong leftist leanings, I have been endlessly realistic and pragmatic in voting behavior since -- well since the first time I ever voted -- for Carter in 1980.  While silly people threw their votes away on John Anderson, I held my nose and voted for Carter, a guy I never much liked.  And that pretty much sums up my political life.

I dare say that I have spent a lot more time with working class whites than Hillary over the last 25 years (almost none of whom, in my experience, serve on the Wal-Mart Board of Directors or were partners at the Rose Law Firm or speculated in real estate or commodities with her or belong to the DLC or made $109 million in the last eight years -- well I could go on forever), and, indeed, come from a white working class family -- and I have to say, I have noticed the bitterness that Obama commented on as well.  I am even unfashionable enough to call it by the old fashioned name of false consciousness -- Obama best not -- it would truly be the death knell of his campaign I would guess.  To pretend that it doesn't exist -- and to use comments about it as evidence of an out of touch elitism -- is pretty disingenuous, cynical, and ultimately, a bit Republican.  At the start of this campaign I used to say that I could enthusiastically back Edwards or Obama or Hillary as the nominee.  That is quite simply no longer the case for me now -- if I had to vote for her it would only be with the most painful nose holding I can imagine enduring.   

I pray that she gets her head handed to her in Pennsylvania.      

Comments

[Crissa]

I do too.

...But I sure hope that Obama's work will match his words. He's been telling the truth. He needs to do something about that... And watching his words isn't what I'm hoping for. I want him to be the progressive he aspires to be.

But he's not there yet. His defense on this issue is the important bit.

[weboy]

Honestly Charles - and really, I only say it because I care - but I'm not sure how it's possible to like her less than you've been claiming to all along.

I tend to think "like" is an odd standard, anyway, and I'm guessing it's more word choice, but words have meaning and I think too often in America we use "like" for a candidate when we mean something else.

It's not that I "like" either Clinton or Obama. I'm sure they're both nice people, kind to animals, all the rest. But I think one would make a good President, and the other one... well, a fine President, too, if it came to that.

This goes back, to some degree to the whole "want to have a beer with" question; as a standard for selection I don't like it not because it's superficial, but because it's the strangest criteria to me. I don't look for camaraderie in Presidents. I look for positions on issues, leadership on the hard stuff... that sort of thing.

As I said, I suspect what you mean is you favor the notion of Hillary Clinton for President less than you have in the past. But as I also asked at the beginning, is it really possible... since, from what I can tell, you haven't been in favor of her all along? Just asking. Or really, is it not liking her? Cause that, I think, is something you might want to try and work out with her personally. Or something.

[Stentor]

I'm sure they're both nice people, kind to animals, all the rest.

I find this amusing because when I went on the AP site this afternoon to get a photo of Obama, the first ones that came up were of him serving this big plate of thick greasy hamburgers to people at a fundraiser.

[KathyF]

Seems to me Obama was merely saying what all the Democrats I know have been saying for years now. To disagree with him is to put yourself outside the mainstream of Democratic thought.

Is that really where Hillary wants to be?

[low-tech cyclist]

weboy says: I don't look for camaraderie in Presidents. I look for positions on issues, leadership on the hard stuff... that sort of thing.

While unsuccessfully trying to find that quote that Nick wanted, I tripped across this over at Dorf on Law:

It is not that the Clintons shrink from a fight. It's just that they are generally much more willing to fight against liberals than conservatives. NAFTA, the death penalty (AEDPA), and many other issues in Bill Clinton's administration brought forth fierce fights between Clinton and liberals. Hillary Clinton's health care fiasco started by ruling out any progressive option and ended with a proposal to create a bureaucratic nightmare designed to please entrenched health care interests....

If Krugman is right that Clinton's policy proposals are slightly more to my liking than Obama's, why do I support Obama? For that matter, why do I not only support Obama but also find Clinton so unacceptable as the possible Democratic presidential nominee? Krugman provides the clue: "Do these comparisons [of the candidates' policy proposals] really tell us what each candidate would be like as president? Not necessarily -- but they're the best guide we have." Krugman is wrong. We have more than Clinton's policy proposals to guide us. We have her pattern of behavior. Actions speak louder than words, and I have learned not to believe Hillary Clinton's words.

I think the poster (a guy named Neil Buchanan, who I've never heard of before) has it right. The next time Hillary takes on the corporate power structure will be the first. She may use the threat of the DFHs getting out of control when she's negotiating with them in the backroom, and get a few scraps for us in the bargain.

But I really expect her to be something of a Bismarckian figure in office, co-opting the left more than leading it. I think that, if elected, she would be able to have a fair amount of success with that game.

I'm not sure what to expect of Obama. But I don't think he'd be good at co-opting us, even if it's what he really wants to do. I think that, in the face of a rising progressive movement, Obama will be faced with the choice of whether to lead, follow, or get out of the way. And he's smart enough to want to lead.

[low-tech cyclist]

Let me add that even if he doesn't choose to lead, my expectation that he'd not be nearly as good at co-opting as Hillary leads me to believe he'd be less of an obstacle to a revitalized progressive movement than Hillary would be.

[Sir Charles]

Weboy,

Not to expose myself as the shallow man that I am, I was referencing the song "Every Day I Love You Less and Less" by the Kaiser Chiefs, which had stuck in my head at some point. I am not one who subscribes too much to the "who would you like to have a beer wih" school of politics -- it would be nice to like your candidate, but I'm generally more intersted in policy positions, leadership skills, etc.

Although I have never been a huge Hillary fan, I've long felt that she was smart, well prepared, attentive to detail, and shared enough policy positions with me to find her, more or less, an acceptable nominee. However, I have really disliked the campaign she has run and feel that both she and Bill have evidenced a commtment to personal ambition over what is good for the country and the party.

As Kathy F. points out, most of us on the left feel that Obama's description of what has gone on in white working class America is apt -- to attack him for it in a totally phony, Republican inspired way is really unsavory.

And l-t c is right, as always, that the Clintons save their real zest for the fight when it comes to taking on those on the left; again, not a quality I find endearing.

[Crissa]

Well, that's why I didn't support Clinton to begin with.

But Obama hasn't actually done anything but talk pretty. It's really frustrating. I know he's a junior Senator, but geez, he could have chosen to vote differently than Clinton on a few things - to take Biden or Dodd's lead or something.

And really what I find annoying about this is how disingenuous the whole thing is. How can you claim these people as not bitter? What? Racists aren't bitter? They don't exist? WTF, man, are you denying that towns have gotten the sack? What, exactly, is the counter-point to Obama's admission?

[Beverly Hill]

I have read and reread, listened and listened again, and for the life of me I can't uderstand how ANYone can get "elitist and out of touch" from the comments made by Obama. It sounds to me like a drowning wo(man) reaching for a straw.

[low-tech cyclist]

"While silly people threw their votes away on John Anderson..."

True, but I really, really,, REALLY didn't want to vote for Reagan. I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

There were surely some Democrats who voted for Anderson rather than hold their noses and vote for Carter. But for a whole bunch of us who were moderate Republicans (the kind who'd been old-style (balanced-budget) fiscal conservatives and social moderates) at the time, Anderson was our road out of the GOP; we left the party along with him.

I don't think either group hugely outnumbered the other. And in a 51-42-7 election, it really didn't matter anyway.

[Sir Charles]

l-t c,

I was being a little bit flip about the Anderson vote --my wife and one of my close friends were both Anderson voters (all of us first time voters) and I always tease them about having thrown away their votes. Although it was not outcome determinative, it sure would have been nice if Carter had received those votes and deprived Reagan of the landslide -- then again, in the end I am not sure if it mattered much.

I am more and more appalled about what Hillary is doing here though. Again, she and Bill both seem to care only about their own narrow interests and not those of the party and its constituents at all.

[Delicious Pundit]

1. I'm P.O.'d at Hillary too, but I am confident that, after an entire autumn of John McCain, wild horses wouldn't be able to stop me from voting.

2. There is something a little 30,000-feet-ish about Obama from time to time. It doesn't really bug me that much -- that's where the President's supposed to be, after all, and I think the idea behind the campaign is we're going for transformation, not just adjustments in the EITC -- but it's definitely there (at least for me). Even the Philadelphia speech, great as it was, got a little too complicated syntactically for my taste here and there. He needs a few more "And the war came"-length sentences.

[Sir Charles]

D.P.

It's good to see you back -- and you are probably right.

But boy am I pissed off at Hillary right now.