Redstate

Posted at 7:19pm on Apr. 23, 2008 Obama Strategist: The Forgotten Man Is A Republican Now, Anyway

FDR Would Be So Proud

By Dan McLaughlin

So, Barack Obama has this little problem: he can't seem to win working-class white voters. With rare exception (Iowa, Missouri), he basically only wins states - and in particular only wins primaries - where all the working-class white voters are already Republicans, leaving the Democrats a stripped-down shell of African-Americans and college towns. Obama's biggest victory in the past two months was in Mississippi. But if Obama wants to win a national election, he's going to have to win the states where the Democrats are in better shape than they are in Mississippi.

Time was, working-class whites were the backbone, the very reason for the existence of the Democratic Party, FDR's "forgotten man." What Obama is running on instead is, essentially, the McGovern coalition. But even in its headiest days, most of the old McGovernites realized that it wasn't such a great idea to just kick FDR's old stalwarts to the curb.

The smart play for Obama at this point is to run out the clock, squeeze out the delegate margin he needs, say nothing bad about these folks for supporting Hillary, and try like heck to win them back in November. As we saw with the now-infamous San Francisco fundraiser, Obama forgot that lesson when he thought nobody was listening, and Pennsylvania voters were understandably, er, bitter about that. But this is a new one even for the Obama campaign: his chief strategist now says that Obama doesn't need those people because, nationally, FDR's old Forgotten Man is a Republican anyway:

"The white working class has gone to the Republican nominee for many elections, going back even to the Clinton years. This is not new that Democratic candidates don't rely solely on those votes"

(Audio here). As the Politico's Ben Smith notes, this ignores the fact that "[t]he whites getting surveyed in exit polls are people who voted in a Democratic Primary." In any event, it's nice for white working class voters to know where they stand with Obama's campaign. Not to worry, though: the GOP is happy to have your votes. And we're perfectly happy to see the national Democratic Party achieve the success it has had in, say, Utah or Wyoming or Mississippi.

Posted in 2008 | David Axelrod | Obamafiles | Rube-gate — Comments (18)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 10:29am on Apr. 17, 2008 Justice Stevens, Senator Obama, and the Principle of One Justice, One Vote

Tying Together Wednesday Morning's Opinions and Wednesday Evening's Debate

By Dan McLaughlin

If you want to understand precisely why Barack Obama's sneering condescension towards the beliefs and culture of ordinary voters - and willingness to treat them as irrational prejudices - is a concern in presidential politics, you really need look no further than what happens when such attitudes are brought to the Supreme Court, whose Justices Senator Obama wants to pick. Check out the conclusion of Justice Scalia's brief but masterful concurring opinion yesterday Baze v. Rees, taking Justice Stevens to task for his separate opinion urging that the death penalty be held unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment (a position the Court had taken once before, only to be reversed by Justices then including Stevens himself), despite the many state and federal legislatures that have repeatedly endorsed it, the many juries that have imposed it, the studies supporting its effects, and the fact that the Constitution itself makes explicit references to the death penalty:

Read On...

Posted in 2008 | Democratic Debate | Justice Scalia | Justice Stevens | Obamafiles | Rube-gate — Comments (4)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 1:27pm on Apr. 14, 2008 Watch For The Bait and Switch

Watch His Every Move...

By Dan McLaughlin

One of the things I have been watching carefully in Barack Obama's pushback at the "Rubegate" controversy over his remarks at that San Francisco fundraiser is his attempt to change the subject of what the controversy is about. With Obama, always watch for the bait-and-switch:

Read On...

Posted in 2008 | Obamafiles | Rube-gate — Comments (15)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 12:51pm on Apr. 14, 2008 My Beliefs, Your Prejudices

By Dan McLaughlin

Mickey Kaus absolutely nails what's so condescending about guys like Obama:

He doesn't patronize everyone equally. Specifically, he regards the views of these Pennsylvanians as epiphenomena--byproducts of economic stagnation--in a way he doesn't regard, say, his own views as epiphenomena.** Once the Pennsylvanians get some jobs back, they'll change and become as enlightened as Obama [and] the San Franciscans to whom he was talking. That's the clear logic of his argument. Superiority of this sort -- not crediting the authenticity and standing of your subject's views -- is a violation of social equality, which is a more important value for Americans than money equality. Liberals tend to lose elections when they forget that.

Posted in 2008 | Mickey Kaus | Obamafiles | Rube-gate — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Read More »