I alluded to this earlier tonight, but now that Obama has responded himself this subject deserves its own post. Because in case you needed yet another reason to believe that Obama is going to be incredibly difficult to beat, here it is.
At an event in SF, Obama said the following:
But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.
So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
As Ambinder reports, everyone immediately assumed this could be used to create controversy. First the RNC responded, then Clinton, and eventually even McCain. When only Obama's people responded for him, I was briefly worried. Unless he did something to clarify his remarks, this was going to turn into another big framing debate
But then, this:
"When I go around and I talk to people there is frustration and there is anger and there is bitterness. And what's worse is when people are expressing their anger then politicians try to say what are you angry about? This just happened - I want to make a point here today.
"I was in San Francisco talking to a group at a fundraiser and somebody asked how're you going to get votes in Pennsylvania? What's going on there? We hear that's its hard for some working class people to get behind you're campaign. I said, "Well look, they're frustrated and for good reason. Because for the last 25 years they've seen jobs shipped overseas. They've seen their economies collapse. They have lost their jobs. They have lost their pensions. They have lost their healthcare."And for 25, 30 years Democrats and Republicans have come before them and said we're going to make your community better. We're going to make it right and nothing ever happens. And of course they're bitter. Of course they're frustrated. You would be too. In fact many of you are. Because the same thing has happened here in Indiana. The same thing happened across the border in Decatur. The same thing has happened all across the country. Nobody is looking out for you. Nobody is thinking about you. And so people end up- they don't vote on economic issues because they don't expect anybody's going to help them. So people end up, you know, voting on issues like guns, and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. And they take refuge in their faith and their community and their families and things they can count on. But they don't believe they can count on Washington. So I made this statement-- so, here's what rich. Senator Clinton says 'No, I don't think that people are bitter in Pennsylvania. You know, I think Barack's being condescending.' John McCain says, 'Oh, how could he say that? How could he say people are bitter? You know, he's obviously out of touch with people.'
"Out of touch? Out of touch? I mean, John McCain--it took him three tries to finally figure out that the home foreclosure crisis was a problem and to come up with a plan for it, and he's saying I'm out of touch? Senator Clinton voted for a credit card-sponsored bankruptcy bill that made it harder for people to get out of debt after taking money from the financial services companies, and she says I'm out of touch? No, I'm in touch. I know exactly what's going on. I know what's going on in Pennsylvania. I know what's going on in Indiana. I know what's going on in Illinois. People are fed-up. They're angry and they're frustrated and they're bitter. And they want to see a change in Washington and that's why I'm running for President of the United States of America."
If Clinton and McCain were smart, they would drop this one immediately. But they clearly think they have a winner, so they won't. And that is a huge mistake. They have just handed Obama the one thing his campaign up until now had been missing: a way to tie his rhetoric of hope to the very real anger that exists in the country today. Attaching those two things was never going to be easy, because they aren't themes that always naturally connect. In this campaign, they haven't been themes that Obama has really ever been able to connect. Until now.
People are angry. 81% think the country is headed in the wrong way. Consumer confidence is at its lowest point in 26 years. The anger is real, and it is growing quickly. That may be inconvenient for those trying to defend the status quo, but it is true. And the first person who can find a way to tap into it will be able to define the frames for the rest of the campaign.
And here again we have echoes of the 1980 race. For Carter, the dominant theme in the early part of the campaign was fear: fear of the future, fear of failure, fear of new limitations on American economic and military strength. And although Reagan is today remember as a candidate of sunny optimism and hope, in 1980 he was something more. Hope and anger dominated his rhetoric that year. He, like his fellow citizens, felt anger at Carter's failures, anger at our seemingly unending economic troubles, and anger at a government that was seen as out of control. Reagan found a way to take that anger and tie it to a message of optimism and hope, a message that carried him to victory and set the stage for a full-scale realignment in 1984.
Mark this weekend on your calendar. This will be the pivot. Obama just found a way to marry his message of hope with the anger that Americans of all parties are persuasions feel. Mark it down. This is the turn.
UPDATE: For a much more pessimistic perspective, see Chotiner. For a mixed interpretation, see Ambinder. For support, see John Hodgman!
Subscribe to this blog's feed
