Obama's "Bitter" Comments

It's been fun listening to the various elitists hold forth about what has been seen as Obama's elitist tone-deafness, by linking gun culture and immigrant-bashing to economic insecurity. Hillary Clinton has a rebuttal (Yale vs. Harvard, of course), and so does John McCain (although I'm sure he, the son and grandson of admirals, knows nothing about elitism). Even William Kristol at the New York Times, the son of Irving Kristol and a complete stranger to real work, has joined in the fun.

Yup, just pork rinds and beer-swilling in fly-over country like Pennsylvania.

In any event, I'm glad we are having these nano-controversies now, rather than in the general election. By leeching the poison out now, there will be less available in October and November.

Kevin Drum opines:

Once you clear out all the meta-clutter, though, what really strikes me as odd about Obama's statement is that, on its merits, it's largely untrue, isn't it? Economic distress probably is responsible for growing anti-trade sentiment (though the Midwest has never exactly been a bastion of free trade support), and maybe for a bit of the increase in anti-immigrant sentiment too (though I think this has been more cultural than economic, and is primarily rooted in the simple fact that we have a lot more illegal immigrants today than we did 15 years ago). But does anyone really think that stagnant wages and globalization are responsible for rural gun culture? Or the rise of the Christian right? Or an increase in bigotry? This stuff just doesn't seem to be related to recent economic distress in any serious way at all. Gun culture, for example, has been around forever. It's just that it was largely unnoticed until liberals started trying to take guns away in the 60s and 70s. The rise of the Christian right has lots of causes, but it's part of a long American religious tradition that has very little to do with the ups and downs of the economy. And bigotry hasn't increased in the past 25 years, so that part doesn't even make sense on its own terms.