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The Politics of Poorness

Posted by ROBERT STEIN in Economy, Politics.
Apr 28th, 2008 | Comments

Hillary Clinton and John McCain, each of whom has a hundred times the family money of Barack Obama, are out there claiming he is out of touch with the poor.

After drinking boilermakers with the boys a while back, Sen. Clinton is now telling Indiana’s blue-collar voters that “politics has become too abstract, too generalized” in Obama’s elitist world.

“Most people get a lot of meaning in their life from the work that they do,” Clinton says. “People want to be seen, they want to be appreciated, they want to be acknowledged.” And she is out there acknowledging the hell out of them with girlhood tales of helping out in her father’s fabric-printing plant and, according to the New York Times, “sounding less like a Wellesley alumna than Roseanne Barr’s old sitcom character, the den mother of her factory floor.”

Meanwhile, McCain is calling Obama insensitive to poor people by not endorsing his proposal to suspend the federal tax on gasoline this summer, a refusal “to giving low-income Americans a tax break, a little bit of relief so they can travel a little further and a little longer, and maybe have a little bit of money left over to enjoy some other things in their lives.”

McCain, who is still fielding questions about using his wife’s company jet during the primary season, and Clinton, who lent her campaign $5 million from her pin money, seem determined to educate Obama on what he failed to learn as an organizer in poverty-stricken communities.

Cross-posted from my blog. More about a common source of Clinton’s and Obama’s ideas about poverty here.

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pacatrue

While it's true that elitism is a state of mind not and not a value on one's tax return, it is amusing to have the former First Lady of the United States of America, a person married to the single most powerful person in the entire world for 8 years, talk about other people being removed from the everyday problems of Americans.

vwcat

It doesn't really matter. The press has decided this guy who just paid off his student loans and was raised by his grandparents and mother in an apartment is so elitist compared to the regular guy candidate like the 109 million dollar Hillary out of Welsley and McCain who is living off his heiress wife.
But, they are real folks and Obama is an elitist.
Besides the media is far too interested in obsessing of Rev. wright even though most people don't care. They obsess so they find excuses to pretend we really do.

Slamfu

John Stewart said it best. When did we start thinking elite was a bad thing? Who is going to want a joe sixpack in the Oval? The president should be so much better than me at just about anything and instead we are coming just short of voting for the candidate who can do the longest kegstand. No one in a position to successfully run for president should even resemble an ordinary citizen.

JSpencer

Just the usual political BS of perception vs. reality. It's understandable that Obama would be battling the GOP psy-ops, but witnessing him battle the democrats as well shows just how fubared that party has become. So just how real are the threats among their own to defect, rather than mend fences? That's the only important question dems should be asking themselves at this point. My own level of disgust with a choice between Hillary and McCain would likely drive me to a third party.

pacatrue

I had a similar thought, slamfu. Essentially, Obama's great flaws now are the same things that many parents work desperately hard to achieve for their children -- Harvard education, law school, etc.

superdestroyer

I guess that it is understandable that a group of rabid Obama supporters would not understand why he is seen as elitist.

An elitist is one who ask things of people who are is other classes that they would never ask of themselves. Senator Obama is a huge supporter of social engineering but send his own children to an elite private school where they will not be subjected to social engineering.

Senator Obama is just more open about his support for transfer payments, social engineering, top down mangmenet, and government control than the other candidates. It is hard to point out anything from the Clinton Administration that smacks of social engineering but there are many thing that black acitivist politicians have supported that are definitely social engineering.

Amanda

Obviously I don't speak for Senator Obama, but it seems to me that he'd almost have to send his daughters to private school considering how public his life is. Can you imagine the disruptions they'd cause in a public school? They probably have their own security detail, there are probably reporters trying to snap photos of them, and it's almost guaranteed that they get flak from other students because of who their father is. A private school is better able to handle these issues and can be more flexible in working with the parents and security to keep the girls safe without disrupting the rest of the school. Besides, if I recall correctly, Chelsea Clinton also attended private schools. Most children of high-level politicians do. How that equates to elitism, I don't know. It sounds like common sense to me.

superdestroyer

Amanda,

Senator Obama put his children in Chicago Lab school before he started running for president. He put them there because the public schools in Chicago are terrible. Chelsea Clinton actually attended a public magnet school in Little Rock, AR before moving to DC.

Senator Obama is an elitist because he supports things like the Louisville and Seattle School Districts in their Supreme Court cases where the school districts wanted to assign white students to majority black schools to keep the schools from being totally black. It was blatant social engineering, totally disregarded what was best for the individual students, but was overwhemingly supported by white liberal elites who send their own children to very white private schools. In the Supreme Court case, Justice Ginsberg wrote the dissenting opinion that supported racial assignment for social engineering purposes even though her own daughter and grandfather attended elite private schools in NYC (the Trinity School) that are over 90% white ans Asian.

Amanda

Well, let me ask you this. If you were wealthy enough to afford private schools for your kids, would you enroll them in public schools that have a bad reputation anyway?

I'm not an Obamatron - I only voted for the guy because the thought of a Hillary Clinton presidency scares the bejeezus outta me. It just seems superfluous to talk about where he sends his kids to school. If it's best for his daughters to go to private school and he can afford to send them, why is that an example of elitism?

I'm also no expert on the Lousiville and Seattle school districts case, but from what I've heard, the decision was made based on sound principles. Seperate but equal doesn't work, which we discovered rather painfully during the 20th century. Even if the segregation is something that gradually happened, it's still something that should be addressed. Maybe it was the wrong decision - I don't know. But again, I fail to see how supporting that decision is a sign of elitism.

And, in the grand scheme of things, I don't understand why anyone thinks being elite is a bad thing in the first place. We've just had 7 years of crappy Presidency at the hands of the guy we elected because we thought he'd be a good drinking buddy. I think the criteria for what makes a good leader should be something other than ability to do a kegstand or belch the ABC's.

superdestroyer

I am surprised that you brought up separate and equal. Senator obama has been very consistent is support separate and unequal standards for admission to secondary school magnet programs, college admission, professional school admission, government contracting, and government hiring as long as blacks benefit from the unequal standards.

It shows why Senator Obama is an elitist. He sends his own children to a private school that has an admission exam while he wants universities to disregard SAT score, GRE score, LSAT scores, GMAT score, and MCAT score because they are unfair to blacks. Senator Obama supported the state of Michigan in the Gratz lawsuit where the State of Michigan was caught violating the civil rights by having separate and unequal admission standards for black students versus white students.

Amanda

I think the difference is that he wants public universities (as in partially funded by taxpayers) to disregard those scores because a lot of the time they can be unfair to black students. Inner city schools are often predominantly black and under-funded, so it's no suprise if the students who do manage to graduate from these schools are somewhat behind their white counterparts in the suburbs. If Obama's supporting initiatives that help those kids get into college, it's hardly an example of elitism or snobbery. It's just normal liberal policy. I imagine most Democrats in office these days are in favor of some forms of Affirmative Action, yet it's only called elitism when you're talking about Obama. He's hardly unusual in his stance on this issue, or in sending his kids to the best schools he can afford.

DLS

"Who is going to want a joe sixpack in the Oval?"

It would be an improvement in Congress, though. Random selection (a kind of jury duty) would be an improvement over what we observe so often in Congress.

DLS

Obama's the natural target -- especially after what he said in San Francisco -- given that the pretty boy with the mansion and the more expensive haircuts than Obama's or anyone else's we likely know dropped out of the race long ago.

Slamfu

"It would be an improvement in Congress, though. Random selection (a kind of jury duty) would be an improvement over what we observe so often in Congress."

Nice idea but its too big a job to be left up to what amounts to unskilled labor. The adminstrative support for those offices would become the real power then and they'd certainly be in it as a career.

Slamfu

"I guess that it is understandable that a group of rabid Obama supporters would not understand why he is seen as elitist."

No I understand why he is seen that way. What I don't understand is why that is seen as something that sets him apart from any of the other candidates, or any presidential candidate ever for that matter. They are all wealthy influential people, far above the common man in terms of money, power, and connections.

Slamfu

So what if he sent his kids to private school. ALL rich people do that. My parents are middle class and they sent me to one. Doesn't mean squat except that you care for your kids and want the best for them.

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