In a stunning about face this week, Barack Obama announced that “I’ve got an economic plan that is similar to Bill Clinton’s.” On its face, this would mean that, if elected, Barack Obama would raise taxes on all taxpayers, support NAFTA and reduce welfare, three cornerstones of the Clinton economic legacy. This would be a serious reversal of Senator Obama’s campaign promises and his stated policies.

Other than a crass attempt to hitch his fate to the Clinton star, the comment highlights the serious risk to our current economic situation that is posed by Barack Obama’s pledge to raise taxes on the producers of jobs and capital, increase welfare and abrogate our commitment to NAFTA. These policies create a serious probability of leading our economy into further economic dismay.

Barack Obama is wholly disingenuous in implying that his tax policy will have the same success as the Clinton policy when, in fact, the economic environment inherited by Bill Clinton was vastly different from today’s economy.

Obama’s assertion is similar to saying that because an aspirin cures a headache it will do the same for cancer. President Clinton benefited from an economy that grew by 4.2% in the first quarter of his Presidency, the Dow was up 5.8% for the year prior to his election, total national debt was 54% of national output and information technology was in its infancy. Tax rates inherited by Clinton had been reduced by 60% under Reagan and Bush Senior since the Carter years. When President Clinton increased taxes, he simultaneously brought our national budget into balance in sixteen months. He signed NAFTA against the will of his own party.

Yesterday, the country’s growth contracted by .3%, providing one-half of the technical verification of the recession being felt around the country and certain to be inherited by the next President. The Dow is down 32.5% for the year, our national debt is at nearly 70% of total GDP (after WWII national debt was 102% of GDP and America was at the beginning of its stunning economic success). Currently, unless investors are able to forcefully advance new energy technologies, there is no analog to the 1990’s information revolution which can give us the necessary economic stimulus for innovation and job growth.

Supporters of the Illinois Senator not only ignore the current fragile economy, but also the obvious consequences of Obama’s opposition to NAFTA and his destructive economic philosophy. In fact, Senator Obama’s policy of higher taxes and higher tariffs for our fragile economy at this time is exactly the wrong direction for the country.

One of the reasons that Barack Obama could well lose on Tuesday is because voters are beginning to realize that his policies will tank the economy and the markets. The stock market looks forward, not backward, and there is a direct correlation between the declining Dow and the increasing poll numbers for Barack Obama. According to the June Gallop Poll, by a margin of 87 to 13, Americans care more about improving the economy than they do about redistributing wealth.

According to his rhetoric, Barack Obama is helping working Americans. In fact, John McCain offers bigger tax breaks to the working class than Barack Obama. (The only reason you do not know this is because you have not looked at the fact that no one earning under $50,000 will pay any tax under John McCain and, on the famous “Obama Taxometer”, the untruthful Obama campaign does not include the $5,000 health care tax credit that John McCain in giving to every American). Moreover, almost 75% of Americans making $100,000 have some capital gains. As the value of their investments turns negative they will suffer badly, even if Barack Obama does not raise their taxes. A declining economy is bad for everyone.

It is dishonest for Senator Obama to claim he will fix this economy by taxing the top 5%. His spending increases on programs alone amount to $300 billion per year. The dishonesty is to say that this will be paid by his tax on the top 5%. It is simply not possible. As the Obama plan makes clear, the additional taxes of the “rich” have already been committed to his “refundable tax credits”. According to the Tax Policy Center, the Obama tax plan will take $70 billion from the top 5% of earners in the country and redistribute it to the 60 million Americans who pay no tax.

Senator Obama’s economic philosophy will make America neither stronger nor fairer. Today, the top 1% of earners contributes 40% of the nation’s $2.6 trillion tax intake and the bottom 50% pay 2.9% of our nation’s total needs. This is in contrast to the 17% of total tax paid by the top filers under the Carter Administration when the top marginal rate was 70%. It has been shown that reductions in tax rates increase tax revenues because incentives to private enterprise strengthen the economy and create jobs and a larger tax base.

As he exploits the current widespread economic uncertainty in the nation and blames the richest, Barack Obama not only ignites an insidious class war, but also ignores the inconvenient fact that America’s top earners have paid double in taxes since the reduction of their tax rates under George Bush. Namely, in 2003 the richest Americans paid $136 billion in taxes and after the tax cut in 2006 they paid $274 billion. Times of economic uncertainty are exactly when our government needs to cling to business and the generators of wealth and jobs, not use them as scapegoats.

Along with my Democratic “friends,” I used to make fun of Republicans by saying that they lived in an “evidence-free zone.” Well, I now see that it is the Democrats, swept away in the “narrative” and “transcendence” of Barack Obama, that are refusing to look at the facts about the likely consequences of electing Barack Obama. The same media outlets that failed to vet the Iraq War are now failing to vet Barack Obama. Unfortunately, they will never accept responsibility; it will be our country that takes the hit. For me, that is very sad.

John McCain may not be the most eloquent or sexiest candidate in this race, but he is the candidate who will best serve this nation for the next four years. He is reducing taxes for all Americans further than Barack Obama, cutting federal spending and encouraging free trade and energy independence as engines for domestic economic growth. More importantly, he and Sarah Palin actually have a record of taking on the vested interests and their own party (while working with Democrats) to make tough decisions. I have yet to be shown the same evidence of the junior Senator from Illinois.

Regrettably, the road kill of Obama’s reckless rhetoric and policies is not the rich taxpayer, but the entire American economy. The pain will be felt mostly by those who lose their jobs in the economic downturn and are the owners of 401ks and other savings who suffer at the stock market continues to decline. Barack Obama has not been held accountable for the obvious consequences of his tax and trade philosophy and policies. If elected, it will be all Americans who will suffer.

PS. Most readers have probably not read this far into the piece, but if you have, I have one more comment…..Since speaking out about this election, I have seen the Obama response is to attack me personally, particularly on the Internet. Fine, but just to let you know, eighteen months ago my husband wrote in the Financial Times that capitalism was in retreat because of the greed on Wall Street. We have subsequently invested only in tax-free government securities. So, my opinion is not driven by my economic interests. I am driven by what I said in the New York Times in June, “I love my country more than my party” … and it is ok with me if you hate me. xoxoxo

Related: Lynn Forester de Rothschild: Barack Obama’s America

I’ve always been a fan of British humor and the October 31st Times Online review of Obama’s infomercial, written by Chris Ayers is a perfect example of that dry British wit. The title and subtitle set it up perfectly:

Review: A no-holds-barred weepathon

At times during this half hour of mawkish misery you longed for the wit and wisdom of a debate featuring Sarah Palin.

I didn’t have the stomach to watch what HotAir brilliantly termed the “Transmission from Mt. Olympus.” So I am grateful for Chris Ayers’ insightful review of the “weepathon.” Here’s how America appears to him:

America’s supplies of tissues must have been exhausted during Barack Obama’s 30-minute election broadcast late on Wednesday night. It had been billed as a “closing argument” by the Democrat’s seemingly unstoppable campaign. In reality, it was an all-out, no-holds-barred weepathon with a feel-bad factor pitched somewhere between the third act of Schindler’s List and the slaughter scenes in Watership Down. I emerged from my TV room sodden-eyed and legs trembling, wishing that Iran would just drop the bomb and get it all over with.

It began, as these things so often do, with a flugelhorn. Then pictures of wind-rippled cornfields. Then footage of children and old people smiling — the tape slowed down a little, to make their happiness appear somehow tragic.

I’m not even sure what a flugelhorn sounds like, but I can certainly imagine how Amabo Productions made use of it (you know, Harpo=Oprah backwards, so why not?):

When Obama, made his entrance he was wearing a sombre black suit (pictured right) and standing in what appeared to be a log cabin. You could practically smell the coffee roasting. This was Obamaland, where everything is safe and warm, where Big Brobama loves you and keeps the evil profit-doers at bay. You, too, could go to Obamaland, went the subtext, just so long as you voted for the man with the “D” next to his name. But in case Americans didn’t realise what was at stake, Obama set out to demonstrate what a God-forsaken, economically devastated shell of a nation they now live in.

So we cut to a harried mother named Rebecca, from North Kansas City, Missouri, who complained that her husband Brian, who works at a tyre plant, has to stand up all day, even though he has a dicky knee. We were treated to a glimpse of Brian slumped on his sofa, looking fed up. He had planned to have surgery in June, said Rebecca, but because of the rising cost of living he couldn’t afford it. We then saw Rebecca rationing the food in her fridge, balancing her cheque book, and driving her humungous SUV in the moonlight.

Rebecca and Brian are clearly Obama’s shout-out to the bitter gun-totters, I suppose. And then there’s this little nugget, as if Obama actually cares one iota about a single working mother with a sick child:

From this purgatory we emerged again into the comforting fuzzy goodness of Obamaland. “We measure the strength of our country not by the number of billionaires we have,” he boomed, “but by whether a waitress who lives on tips can take the day off to look after a sick kid without being laid off.”

Coming up is the biggest insult to the working class. I’ll let Chris Ayers paint the picture:

Then we were back in the wasteland of He Who Must Not Be Named — the dark wizard Bush (whose dead half-brother, McCain, has been exhumed to carry on his dastardly work). This time we were in Sardinia, Ohio, with an elderly African-American woman named Juanita who needs 12 different medications each day for rheumatoid arthritis. Her husband Larry lost his health insurance when he retired, so he took out a loan to pay for the pills, and now, at the age of 72, he has been forced to work as a salesman at Wal-Mart. We saw him putting on his name-pin with an expression of sadness and contempt.

Larry has to work at Wal-Mart! Yuck, that is so uncool! Okay, he’s 72 and maybe wants to stop working, but come on, most people I know hope they’ll be able to work at 72 because we sure as hades won’t be able to afford to retire. But Wal-Mart! Do they even sell arugula?

Moving along to my favorite paragraph:

Then Obama brought up his dead mother. It was enough to make you pine for the wit and intelligence of a Sarah Palin debate. I had hoped for goosebumps and that swollen feeling you get in your chest when you know that something good might happen. But instead I just felt downbeat; not only because of America’s obvious problems but also because of Obama’s willingness to exploit them so mawkishly.

Exploitation is the name of the game for Obama. This Brit sees it pretty clearly.

The Obama campaign has had a deliberate strategy of calling the Clinton campaign racist and the media has allowed itself to be led along. Obama himself confessed to this strategy in the Nevada debate when shown a copy of a campaign memo directing campaign workers to use race-bating to defame Hillary Clinton.

January 27, 2008:

Please, just fuck off. Bill Clinton made exactly the right point and Obama’s defenders are playing into the worst of the Right-wing racist tropes, that there is something tainted about successful black candidates who get majority black support.

January 28, 2008:

I’ve spent a good amount of time here on this blog defending HRC against bogus claims of racism, and I’ve smacked The Golden One around for engaging in his own race-baiting, trying to milk liberal white guilt for all it is worth.

There is no person, no campaign, no victory that can justify deliberate use of racial divisions. Leave it to the Republicans to immolate themselves on the pyre of racism come November.

February 2, 2008:

Then begins the long slog towards South Carolina, with the media, the blogosphere and Obama’s campaign screaming at every turn that the Clintons are racists.

March 31, 2008:

My point here is not to promote the Clintons (though I think they deserve it), but to emphasize the way in which they are demonized by their own party. They become the embodiment of the old South, the unrepentant, segregationist South, just as northern blue collar voters who challenge the party orthodoxy are labeled Archie Bunkers.

April 5, 2008:

Here is the challenge to the Democrats – how to cease treating working class whites the eternal “Other” of the party, the roadblock to fulfilling the promise of the nation, and seriously address the ways in which the party will help all Americans live their lives with dignity.

April 28, 2008:

I have seen it put cynically (hell, I have put it cynically myself) that Obama was just promising the (mostly white) comfortable class of the party that he wouldn’t insist on looking at those nasty claims of justice if they would just elect a black dude and redeem their souls.

May 2, 2008

The assault on the Clintons has no basis in policy or political philosophy. It is an attack on uppity white trash who dares to succeed in the world without assimilating into the ruling elite, and for the added insult of being adored by the nation precisely for their common connections.

May 4, 2008:

Hannah Arendt, my favorite political theorist, has been excoriated as a racist for pointing out that integration and post-racial sociality is not such a big deal when the person being integrated is already part of your socio-economic class, remains a numerical minority within your enclave, and is no threat to your social standing or economic power.

May 6, 2008:

Obama’s campaign is certainly doing pernicious race-baiting, but mostly to initimidate critics and shame wavering white voters.

May 8, 2008:

What I’m seeing is an amplified, exaggerated perversion of the lessons, biases and attitudes I encountered in my very liberal college education, things that resonate with me in strange ways, playing on the way I learned to see the world as divided into evil whites, good whites and the oppressed Others we good whites had to free from the evil whites.

May 18, 2008:

I don’t see the Hillary campaign saying a bad word about the voters, even those who vote for her opponents. I don’t see the campaign explaining away their losses because of some flaw or failing in the voters.

May 21, 2008:

Failure to create the conditions under which vast majority of the party will have no doubts that he will serve the interests of the party and be protective of those who dissent from him will leave not just Obama but the party itself in dire straits in the months to come. Riverdaughter has a brilliant post up on The Confluence. You need to go read it all beause it is good in every regard

May 23, 2008:

I’m reading the reports on the mendacious attacks the Bogger Boyz are making on Hillary by completely perverting her comments about RFK.

Rather than weigh in on the current idiocy (which is being handled very nicely by Riverdaughter & Co. over on the Confluence. If you have not read that blog, stop, go there, read and bookmark. I’ll be here when you’re done.)

May 31, 2008:

1. I am not saying in any way shape or form that Larry Johnson is lying about the existence of some video of Michelle Obama. Please. Larry would not do that. A video of some kind exists.

2. If you read his posts closely, Larry does not claim to have seen the video in question himself. I may have missed a post where he did state this, but in the posts I have read, he does not. He was very clear that he has spoken to at least two people who do not know each other, who he trusts completely, and who have attested to the existence of a video.

September 24, 2008:

When Democratic women say “The Obama camp has run a sexist, mysogynistic campaign,” we are told we’re wrong, no such thing, there was not any sexism there, except maybe some from Tweety. When Democratic women say, “No, it’s not his race, it’s his lack of commitment to the programs that matter to us,” we are told that, no, we’re all just racist bitches, and that it’s our fault if he doesn’t win.

September 16, 2008:

The ultimate shadow of Reagan is that you don’t win by defending losers, only by securing the interests of the winners. That is the dark heart beating in the chest of the Unity Democrats. They are done with the losers.

May 2, 2008:

It is the deep guilt of the liberal upper class that we know, every last miserable one of us, that our privilege is due to centuries of white supremacy and to the informal, unspoken, but pervasive advantage our skin color and behavioral patterns gives us in this society. It is our Moby Dick, the whale we pursue obsessively through political seas, frantic to have material proof that we are innocent of the crimes of our nation.

Don’t believe me. Take a look at this sarcastic woman talk about her New Party. And who “Split us into groups” again?

Here’s Donna telling us all about her “New Party”. Check out her snide face and hear her snide voice. Good luck with that Donna. Paul Begala also warns arrogant Donna that she is going to need all the people she is insulting to win this election. Nobody can deny it. We were told to go to hell. Well we don’t plan on doing that, instead we plan to vote.

So now there’s a recent study discussing the very warning given to arrogant ass Donna Brazile, the one who was going to”Change the Demographics of her “New” Democratic Party. Now she needs us. We’ll be back when people like Donna are no longer in charge, for starters. We are going to take back our party. Again. This is not the first time elite socialist fringe snobs tried to hijack our party. It seems the one thing our party learns from history is how to repeat their mistakes over and over and over again.

The majority of this party is not interested in busting their butts at work and then “sharing” their gains with people who don’t. The majority of this party is not interested in sexism and misogyny. The majority of this party does not belong to MoveOn. The majority of this party is not interested in allowing dependent children, off-the-cliff radicals, old hippies stilll on the bong, left over cranks from the failed AmeriKKKan Socialist, Communist, Marxist and Stalinist parties pick presidents.

And the majority of the Democratic Party will NOT be staying home on November 4, Donna. Get that idea out of your head.

A study surprise! reveals that Barack Obama needs us now. Of course, the Race Card has to be played with respect to the “White Vote”. Once more, my party wants to ignore the impact of PUMA at their own peril. So be it.

But it’s pretty safe to say that playing the Race Card every five minutes hasn’t exactly endeared white people to the Obama candidacy. Threatening people and calling them racist has backfired. Refusing to recognize that there are plenty of reasons why people will never vote for Barack Obama that have little to do with his color. Like sexest piggism and socialism, for starters. His rude, threatening and savage followers would be right up there on the list too. People don’t like to feel threatened. And people don’t like to have real issues ignored and twisted into a “Race Card” discussion. It not only ticks them off, but it’s been done and overdone so much by Obama and his surrogates, that the effect is now just a lot of Eye Rolling when it’s heard again. And again. And again.

There are plenty of reasons why many Democrats aren’t interested in Barack Obama. The report mentions the “White working class”. Those are those Bitter Hicks With Guns. Does anybody really expect them to forgive Barack Obama for his tasteless, snobby, downright ignorant remark about them at a fundraiser at Billionaire’s Row in San Francisco? Really?

Does anyone really expect all Hillary Clinton supporters to forgive Barack Obama for his attempt to destroy her and his coordinated attacks on her because she is a woman? Really? Really? How arrogant can you get?

Does anyone really expect all Jews in America to rush to the polls for Obama when every Jidadist in the Middle East has endorsed him? Really?

Does anyone really expect all of us well-educated Hillary supporters to forget being constantly referred to as “Downscale” and “Low Information”? Really?

Does anyone really expect women to give him their undying support after his disgusting behaviors toward women in this campaign? Really? Really?

Does anyone really expect everyone in America to forget Reverend Wright’s disgusting remarks? Does anyone really expect every Italian-American to vote for a guy whose 20-year pastor calls them Garlic-Noses? Really? Really?

Does anyone really expect that Seniors, who have lived long enough to recognize BS when they see it, are endeared en masse by Barack Obama, whose followers have consistently insulted them as “old people”?

Has anyone heard Barack Obama say one helpful thing to Native Americans?

Does anyone really expect all Latinos in Florida to worship a man who wants to talk to Castro with no pre-conditions? Really?

Does anyone really expect all gays and lesbians to be in love with Barack Obama when he refused to have his photo taken with the Mayor of San Francisco? Really?

If all of these people happen to be white, then the real thing the report reveals is that Barack Obama, his surrogates and his followers have insulted plenty of white people in this election season. In droves. The Democrats might like to continue the “Race Card” with their studies, but the truth is, their loss among Democrats consist of the people they insulted and decided they didn’t need any longer. And that’s not going to go away.

Here’s Politico’s take on the report:

In an election year where Barack Obama pledged to change the electorate, the centrist Democratic Leadership Council has weighed into the debate with a detailed report arguing it will be difficult for Obama to earn enough African American and youth support to compensate for enduring Democratic failures with white voters.

The report, titled “Who are the swing voters,” finds that the party must make historic inroads with working class whites in order to create a sustainable presidential majority.

It’s hardly news that the Democratic Party has struggled with white voters. Democrats have not won a majority of whites since 1964. Since 1980 though, Democrats have struggled to even remain competitive among whites, particularly men, and that has allowed Republicans to dominate the last quarter century of presidential politics.

The DLC set out in its analysis, an early draft of which was provided to Politico, to investigate the most influential swing blocs for Democrats. It concluded that slight but significant gains with working class whites— who constitute four in ten voters and were defined by the DLC as white high school graduates without a four-year college degree—is the best means to enlarge the Democratic coalition.

“There has been so much emphasis on new entrants in the electorate, and this report is historic and not predictive, but history tells us it would be an unusual circumstance if we witnessed a massive shift in the electorate,” the DLC analysis reads.

The report calculates that a 10 percent increase in black voter turnout amounts to a 1-percentage point uptick in the overall electorate, assuming all other groups remain constant.

That means that if the black voting rate rises from 60 percent to 67.2, the level of whites as measured by the Census Bureau, it amounts to 1.7 million votes— less than George W. Bush’s margin of victory in 2004.

“None of this means that the 2008 election could not be decided because of a radical shift in the electorate—by a dramatically increased turnout among critical constituencies or by a sharp shift in party identification, for example,” the report reads, “But historical voting patterns say that would be an unusual occurrence.”

The DLC study looked at the exit polls of the last five presidential elections as well as the 2006 midterm election.

The report, authored by Al From and Victoria Lynch, described black voters, self-identified liberals, and “strongly pro-choice” voters as the most influential legs of the Democratic coalition.

The DLC calculated that about four in ten voters in presidential elections are part of this Democratic base. John Kerry won 80 percent of these voters, meaning Democrats only amounted to about a third of the electorate. That number will likely be higher in 2008 as Democrats enjoy a newfound party identification advantage, though one that multiple polls show lessened in late summer.

The report strongly suggests, however, that it will be difficult for the Obama campaign to win if he does not improve Democrats’ appeal to the white working class.

The report also paints two blocs of working class whites:

“A typical male voter in that category will likely be between 30 and 59 years old, live in a suburb or small town in the South or Midwest, and be married with no children living at home. He’s likely to be a Republican or independent, moderate or conservative, not a member of a labor union, pro-life, and in favor smaller government. Finally, he’s most likely to be Protestant but not a weekly churchgoer.”

Is Axelrod right? Could it be McCain has energized his base but that Obama remains ahead?

Using Electoral-Vote.com’s numbers, I created a list of red states and compared Obama’s numbers to Kerry’s percentages in 2004. All but three of the state polls are post-Palin.

This is not a comprehensive list of all red states. However, I believe it’s a fair representation of reliable Republican states. Our purpose is to see if there’s been an uptick for McCain over Obama relative to the previous presidential election.

All battleground states are out, regardless of who won in 2004. Additionally, I did not include red states which Obama is now actively fighting for, like Virginia, or historically red states like New Hampshire, which Kerry won. In most states, there’s no difference in the relative position between Kerry’s final result and Obama’s current standing; in other states Obama is actually doing better than Kerry.

Let’s take a look at Axelrod’s assertion that red states are becoming redder:

As you can see, Obama is faring no worse than John Kerry did. In fact, the current state of the race is remarkably similar to the final results in 2004. It follows, then, that state polls reflect similar numbers as 2004. Obama’s weak numbers, as I believe Axelrod is implying, are not coming from intolerant red state voters. According to Rasmussen, McCain is leading Obama by approximately 2%, and in 2004 Bush beat Kerry by 2.4%. Obama is performing in Republican states about as well as any Democrat could be expected.

Contrary to Axelrod’s statement, Obama’s decline in national polling is not due to inordinately low numbers in deep-red states. Indeed, the opposite is true: Obama is under-performing in reliably Democratic states. As Truthteller demonstrates with the spreadsheet below, Obama is under-performing in blue states such as New York (population 20 million) and New Jersey (population 9 million). These high population Democratic states will skew national numbers far more than low population red states like North Dakota (population 640,000), while Republican Texas (population 24 million), where Obama is in nearly the same spot as Kerry, is easily offset by the densely populated California and Illinois, both states where Obama is doing very well. Additionally, Obama is trending down in the swing state of Ohio:

	New York	New Jersey	Minnesota	Pennsylvania	Ohio
McCain-Palin	41	45	45	47	48
Obama-Biden	46	48	45	47	45

Because of these weak blue- and swing-state numbers, Obama now has to defend more real estate than McCain. Truthteller writes:

So now Obama must invest precious and finite resources in states such as New Jersey and New York. And instead of campaigning in Arkansas, Nevada, Florida or Louisiana, he will hold events in Minnesota, a state that should be solidly Democratic in the current political climate. He may even have to campaign in New York now that McCain is within five points of the underperforming Obama.

And Hill Buzz sees a potential map-changer in McCain:

If McCain was only leading in Utah by 5 points, we’d say this election was over, and that McCain would lose GOP strongholds.

Instead, the opposite seems to be true. SoetorObama leads in NY by only 5 points, in NJ by 3 points, and in MI and PA by just 2 points.

To us, it looks like McCain could be the one changing the electoral map this year, with traditionally blue states having a better chance of turning red instead of the other way around.

Shortly after Obama’s grandiose trip to Europe, I wrote: “I think Obama would have been wise to go somewhere he lost big, like West Virginia, leaving behind his entourage and asking working people about their concerns in the streets and cafes of small town America.” There’s nothing earth-shattering in my suggestion, but I think that’s exactly what’s so troubling about the Obama campaign. It’s not the economy, it’s the arrogance. I think Obama’s odd trip to Europe — and the arrogance of selecting Biden over Hillary — is at the heart of many of Obama’s troubles today. The American people will vote for Ivy League candidates, but only those who come to their towns to listen and not to lecture.

Obama’s arrogance is now becoming a matter of concern for Democratic strategists. The statement below by an unnamed source in the British newspaper The Sunday Telegraph should send fear into the hearts of Obama’s supporters:

A senior Democratic strategist, who has played a prominent role in two presidential campaigns, told The Sunday Telegraph: “These guys are on the verge of blowing the greatest gimme in the history of American politics. They’re the most arrogant bunch Ive ever seen. They won’t accept that they are losing and they won’t listen.”

With this mentality, it’s no wonder Axelrod is blaming Obama’s woes on red states. Ani writes:

Of course there is a bunker mentality. Obama’s campaign manager, David Axelrod, must protect his carefully sculpted media creation at all costs. Their whole strategy has been to overwhelm their way into the presidency with huge rallies and concerts, presidential emblems, soaring rhetoric and platitudes.

IF it suddenly seems like the Obama campaign doesn’t have any idea what it’s doing, maybe that’s because it doesn’t.

Barack Obama has never run a campaign against a real Republican. And his main strategist, David Axelrod, is way out of his areas of expertise.

Axelrod specializes inurban politics. He’s run a bunch of mayoral races (usually in cities with lots of blacks), plus contests in true-blue states like Massachusetts and New York.

By creating a culture war between the so-called Whole Foods Nation and working class Americans, Axerod’s tactics worked for Deval Patrick, but not for Freddy Ferrer in the 2005 New York race for mayor or for John Edwards’ primary run in 2004. Cunningham points out Axelrod’s overt class warfare tactics, which included naming sides:

New Yorkers may recall that he was on the Freddy Ferrer team - and how the class-warfare theme of “the Two New Yorks” managed to lose the 2005 mayoral race in a city that’s overwhelmingly Democratic.

Nor did the same shtick do much for Axelrod client John Edwards, who didn’t exactly score big with “the Two Americas” in the Democrats’ 2004 presidential primaries.

As to Deval “just words?” Patrick’s victory in Massachusetts, which also depended on Axelrod’s talents at divisiveness, Cunningham writes:

By the way, it’s not much of a governing philosophy: After less than a year on the job, Patrick has job-approval ratings to rival President Bush’s.

Sarah Palin, John McCain’s pick for VP, has thrown this class warfare strategy into stark contrast. The press and blogs have gone after Palin like meth-heads after a fix. Foaming at the mouth and euphoric at the opportunity to name call, the media sees Palin as the antithesis of the Moveon.org crowd, and more of the poster child for Walmart than for Whole Foods. And rather than be shamed as they think she should be, Palin is proud of that fact.

Joe Bageant, author of Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War, has a excellent article about this divide in the September 6 edition of BBC Today. Bagent writes:

During this US election cycle we are hearing a lot from the pundits and candidates about “heartland voters,” and “white working class voters.”

What they are talking about are rednecks. But in their political correctness, media types cannot bring themselves to utter the word “redneck.” So I’ll say it for them: redneck-redneck-redneck-redneck.

Bagent is being somewhat facetious in his use of the term “redneck” but not in his description of how the pundits, the politicians and the media work vigorously to attack this culture and their values. According to Bagent, “The term redneck indicates a lifestyle and culture that can be found in every state in our union.” His list of these values is relevant here:

• Belief that no law is above God’s law, not even the US Constitution.

• Hyper patriotism. A fighting defence of native land, home and heart, even when it is not actually threatened: ie, Iraq, Panama, Grenada, Somalia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Vietnam, Haiti and dozens more with righteous operations titles such as Enduring Freedom, Restore Hope, and Just Cause.

• A love of guns and tremendous respect for the warrior ideal. Along with this comes a strong sense of fealty and loyalty. Fealty to wartime leaders, whether it be FDR or George Bush.

• Self effacement, humility. We are usually the butt of our own jokes, in an effort not to appear aloof among one another.

• Belief that most things outside our own community and nation are inferior and threatening, that the world is jealous of the American lifestyle.

• Personal pride in equality. No man, however rich or powerful, is better than me.

• Perseverance and belief in hard work. If a man or a family is poor, it is because they did not work hard enough. God rewards those who work hard enough. So does the American system.

• The only free country in the world is the United States, and the only reason we ever go to war is to protect that freedom.

It’s not such a mystery that the mean machine of the Democratic primaries, which stole the nomination away from Sen. Hillary Clinton, is sputtering so badly now.

We all understand that there is a political class which dominates in America, and that Sarah Palin for damned sure is not one of them. And the more she is attacked by liberal Democratic elements (translation: elite highly-educated big city people) the more America’s working mooks will come to her defence. Her daughter had a baby out of wedlock? Big deal. What family has not? She is a Christian fundamentalist who believes God spat on his beefy paws and made the world in seven days? So do at least 150 million other Americans. She snowmobiles and fishes and she is a looker to boot. She’s a redneck.

I’ve been thinking about Liz Phair’s response to the rockin’ but boorish Rolling Stones after reading Jacob Weisberg’s If Obama Loses: Racism is the Only Reason McCain Might Beat Him in Slate. Unlike Phair, I won’t attempt a point-by-point rebuttal; Weisberg’s piece is so riddled with distortions and hyperbole that a laundry list argument cannot summarize my feelings.

Weisberg’s article is so bad on so many levels that it’s amazing it was published at all, but it does fit with the media’s love affair with Obama. It’s a deceptive piece of writing and it relies on faulty logic, which I show below. But of course that is not an accident. A strident media partisan like Weisberg cannot rely on facts. So let’s start from the beginning:

John McCain, a sub-par Republican nominee with a list of liabilities longer than a Joe Biden monologue. Obama has built a crack political operation, raised record sums, and inspired millions with his eloquence and vision. McCain has struggled with a fractious campaign team, lacks clarity and discipline, and remains a stranger to charisma. Yet at the moment, the two of them appear to be tied. What gives?

Weisberg overstates the effectiveness of Obama’s operation. The trip to Europe, the faux presidential seal, his many policy reversals, and his disastrous debate performance at Saddleback are not mentioned.

Now notice how Hillary’s name is not mentioned. Nor the fact that 18 million voters chose her, approximately 200,000 more than chose Obama. Obama did not win a decisive victory. He was pulled over the finish line by Reid and Pelosi.

In fact, Obama as a brand has actually been declining — if you look at primary results and polls — since March. McCain, on the other hand, has actually run a surprisingly nimble operation, releasing ads which deflate the self-important Obama.

He continues:

If you break the numbers down, the reason Obama isn’t ahead right now is that he trails badly among one group, older white voters. He does so for a simple reason: the color of his skin.

This would be a shocking conclusion if it were true. Older white voters, Weisberg is telling us, are racists. What’s his evidence?

Five percent of white voters acknowledge that they, personally, would not vote for a black candidate.

Five percent? Repeat. Five percent. Is Weisberg innumerate or does he think we’re stupid? That means 95 percent will not take race into consideration. Does this satisfy Weisberg? Of course not.

Five percent surely understates the reality. In the Pennsylvania primary, one in six white voters told exit pollsters race was a factor in his or her decision. Seventy-five percent of those people voted for Clinton. You can do the math: 12 percent of the Pennsylvania primary electorate acknowledged that it didn’t vote for Barack Obama in part because he is African-American.

Here he assures us that the number he just cited is wrong. Why did he cite the five percent to then just swat it down? Because it doesn’t serve the necessary condition of his argument; in fact, it refutes his thesis. Weisberg’s logic is not just twisted, it’s fabricated. Furthermore, just because Pennsylvania voters said race was a factor does not mean they view it as a problem. Indeed, the language of the polling is so vague that the race factor may have been Pennsylvanians voting for Obama because of his race. Does Weisberg mention Obama’s victory in lily-white Iowa ?, a state which is less diverse than Pennsylvania. No. Nor does he mention any of the deep-red and very white caucus states where Obama won. Because, as he says with a bit of sarcasm, “Obama may be too handsome, brilliant, and cool to be elected.” You see, Obama is really so wonderful that it must be racism.

Not once does Weisberg mention the sexism and misogyny directed at Hillary. Not once does he mention Hillary’s decidedly blue-collar appeal, her populist economic message, and the older, white female voters who fell hard for her. No, these ladies (and men) must be racists.

Except for health care, Weisberg does not consider issues important to older white voters:

You may or may not agree with Obama’s policy prescriptions, but they are, by and large, serious attempts to deal with the biggest issues we face: a failing health care system, oil dependency, income stagnation, and climate change.

He is silent on national security and terrorism, international relations, the solvency of Social Security and Medicare, job creation, and fuel prices. Weisberg’s litany, like Obama’s, is a distinctly Whole Foods Nation brand of liberalism, and it fails to address the economic insecurities of the poor and middle class. The blogger Anglachel writes:

Where has Obama lost ground among Democratic voters? In the populations most endangered by the faltering economy and the long term erosion of socio-economic standing. He did not address what mattered most to them, which was their increasing vulnerability to the ordinary dangers of life - insurance, health care, retirement, wages, job security, housing. To fail to do this was what makes Obama come across as elitist.

McCain is talking about drilling to reduce gas prices, and charging Obama with wanting to raise taxes. This message is gaining traction with many working Americans. As Anglachel puts it:

The [Obama] wing is all too enamored of its own moral superiority on race, too contemptuous of the Bubbas and the Bunkers, to make the slightest move to win back and thus defend this constituency.

Weisberg utterly fails to prove that the race is tied because of racism.

So let’s talk about what a vote for Obama actually signals: voting for Obama is condoning a culture that hates women (Keith Olbermann’s idea for Beating Hillary: Literally Beating Hillary). It’s a tacit acceptance for the media and the Democratic establishment giving preference to a far less qualified man over a much more qualified woman. It’s telegraphing to our daughters — to all women — that a man is rightfully at the front of the line, regardless if he lost nearly every important state and the popular vote. It’s telling our daughters — and all women — that violent imagery against a female candidate is acceptable if it benefits the male candidate. It is the familiar salt-in-the-wound for millions of women, the majority of the Democratic Party, that bullying and force — by the media, the liberal blogs, by the Democratic Party — is the way to crush a woman who tries to achieve too much.

Voting for Obama is to support a candidate who listens to and publicly references music which celebrates the degradation and abuse of women.

Voting for Obama is condoning race-baiting, like Weisberg’s. It’s accusing Hillary of suggesting that she was waiting for Obama to be assassinated because she mentioned RFK’s assassination in reference to the length of past campaigns when the media was trying to force her out; it’s having your surrogates imply that President Clinton’s remarks about Obama’s Iraq statements was racist (even producing a memo describing the plan), and it’s using coded language like “bamboozled” to mostly African Americans audiences in order to dislodge their support from the Clintons.

Voting for Obama is to embrace using race as a divisive strategy in a Democratic campaign.

Voting for Obama is being party to a rigged election. It condones voter intimidation, caucus fraud, and gaming your opponent’s states. It’s voting for outright bias by Party leaders like Dean, Pelosi, and Brazile. It’s an intentional violation of the one person, one vote ideal.

Voting for Obama is embracing intentional voter disenfranchisement.

Weisberg insists that Obama has a progressive agenda. But there’s nothing in the way Obama conducts his campaigns that would give us that idea. Many of us, Hillary supporters like myself, will vote for McCain because Obama’s treatment of Hillary goes against everything we believe in. And I want the Democratic Party to repudiate his tactics, and their own. Obama’s supporters must, some day, listen carefully to the very real reasons of why we’re angry, and they need to examine their consciences over their silence on the sexism towards Hillary and Obama’s race-baiting strategy.

Weisberg is wrong: Obama may lose because he conducted a despicable primary campaign, and he failed to offer a compelling economic message during the General Election.

Why Obama picked Zanesville in the first place is not clear to me. It would seem it isn’t all that clear to Ms. Fowler, either:

After spending the better part of a day talking to people there — at seven downtown churches, another over the Muskingum River, and at Eastside itself — I find little interest in Obama’s plan. Indeed, the lack of enthusiasm for the plan among these churchgoers matches the lack of enthusiasm it has generated among secular Democrats.

Why the nonchalance?

“We don’t want any strings attached to help from Washington,” says Scott Johnston, the pastor of Market Street Baptist Church, founded “as a statement against slavery” in 1837.

Now, see, that makes sense to me.

If you are getting federal monies, you will have a set of parameters on how the money can be used, and how that use has to be reported. And while the so-called Faith Initiatives are supposed to be used for Social Services, it seems to me that is a line easily blurred. Which is part of the problem when government and religion try to mix in the first place.

So, Obama was coming to Zanesville to deliver his big ol’ “Come to Jesus though the Federal Government” meeting, and Rev. Johnston was one of the people to meet him. His impression?

“Very nice, very personable, very much a politician. His body language–he knows how to lean into a person when listening–he has been to school! He makes good eye contact! Very much a politician.”

Very much a politician? Obama?? I thought he ran on a platform of being the anti-politician?! Hmmm. Apparently, Rev. Johnston didn’t get the memo. But I digress.

Rev. Johnston was not the only one who met with Obama:

I ask him what the four representatives of Zanesville told Obama. “We are a community that takes care of our own,” the United Way lady told him. The old guy didn’t say much, the mayor talked money and Johnston pressed for more help for the elderly — specifically, a change in the privacy laws so that outsiders can act as advocates for old people who don’t have any family.

But Johnston is dubious about Obama’s plans and about the man himself. “There are more strings attached under his program than under Bush’s. You can hire a person who agrees with your theology, under Bush. With Obama, you’re getting more government involvement — we don’t need that.”

Right. So, not only has Obama embraced a BAD Bush policy, but he has found a way to make it even more insidious. I guess you have to give it to him on THAT score, but why would he take an already bad idea, and make it worse? WHO is behind this expansion anyway? Now, that’s a question to which I would sure like an answer…

Mayhill Fowler also interviewed a volunteer, Mary White, who works with one of the local ministries, Eastside Ministries. She seemed to have some nice things to say about Obama in the,”If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all” vein. Ms. Fowler got the definite impression that Ms. White did not support Mr. Obama, but wasn’t going to say anything bad about him personally. But, when asked about this program specifically, Ms. Fowler wrote:

White is less sanguine about Obama’s proposal for federal funding of faith-based ministries like Eastside. “Every aspect of us has some aspect of faith built into it,” she says. She gestures towards the second floor. “Our youth program has a Bible Club.” She points out the food pantry. “Each order of food has a prayer in it.” She goes further. “People come to us to pray with them. You see we have a chapel there. In emergency situations, and we are often helping people in emergencies, people want prayer. So we have to be very careful in the money we take. It’s very important to us, it’s very important to the individuals who fund us, that we be able to minister with faith.”

Interestingly, the ministry for which Ms. White volunteers prefers to maintain the separation between Church and State. It’s not the only one:

Eastside, the site of Senator Obama’s proposal to fund faith-based ministries, has no intention of applying for or accepting tax-payer dollars. Eastside is not even tied to any one particular branch of the Christian faith. For the most part, Zanesville’s downtown churches share ecumenical Eastside’s disposition. (the) secretary Judy explains that Grace United Methodist Church has no need for government funds. Grace United used to give food to the pantry at Eastside but winter weather had proved problematic, and so they had quit. Next door Jane, the secretary at St. James Episcopal, is equally emphatic that her church is not interested in federal monies. The diocese gives them the wherewithal for the free dinner they host the last Saturday of every month. Everything else the church members raise themselves and give to Eastside.

With one exception, it seemed that most of the folks in Zanesville were none-too-thrilled with this whole program. Ms. Fowler discovered:

In fact, faith-based social programs in Zanesville are a closed loop. The mainstream churches give their money to Eastside and rely on Eastside to do the work; Eastside eschews federal funding. Moreover, none of the churches with whose members I speak are interested in expanding into the kind of ambitious social programs, in education for example, that Senator Obama mentioned in his speech.

The one exception to this general feeling of unease regarding Obama’s plan was at the Central Presbyterian church:

Mary Perone, director of outreach, tells me that “if he [Obama] can do it, it would be fantastic.” She’s all in favor of federal grant money for her faith-based outreach. She’d like to start a parish nurse program and do more with adult literacy. But the first thing she says, when we each take a folding chair at a long dining table in the low-ceilinged basement, is critical of Obama’s visit to Zanesville. “He really didn’t get to meet the people,” this Perone says. “The people he got to meet were on his level — not the common people — he didn’t touch base with them.” She is disapproving. “They’re really hurting, and they don’t think people listen.”

I would have to agree with her on that last point - Obama does NOT listen to the people, to the common person. Why he is not advocating for the abandonment of a horrible Bush policy move, one that clearly conflicts with the Separation of Church and State but seeks to EMBRACE it, and EXPAND it, even, is beyond me. Besides the obvious pandering to the Religious Right, that is. To do so has far less to do with what the person on the street cares about most, and far more to do with Obama’s own political aspirations. He cares about getting votes, not about the wise stewardship of tax payers money. He cares more about appearance, going to a small town in OH, a state he lost, to speak in front of the exact same kind of people he denigrated just a few months ago at a San Francisco fundraiser to tout a program a vast majority of Progressives, myself included, find to be a complete affront to the Constitution. He calls himself a Constitutional Scholar, yet seems to be completely unaware of the contents of the Constitution! I know I have said it before, I just cannot quite get over it. And in this case, it is a very big deal indeed. Not only is it a direct assault on an incredibly important distinction in our country, one with tremendous history behind it, but it uses money from the people. The bottom line is that people are taxed and have their money go to support religious organizations they may not support, to forms of Christianity or other religious traditions that are anathema to them. Heck, one can see that even Obama recognizes that there is not one way of thinking or believing when he said in 2006,

“Even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools?” Obama said. “Would we go with James Dobson’s or Al Sharpton’s?”

LINK
So, at some point he got it. But he has since lost it. This whole notion was dangerous when Bush proposed it, and it is even more dangerous now, when a so-called Democrat, a so-called Constitutional scholar, attempts tho tear down the Separation of Church and State.

And this is just another excellent reason that he should not be the Democratic nominee. Bush was bad enough. A Bush Lite may be even worse…

In 2001, Gene Lyons and Joe Conason, both respected journalists of the center-left, co-authored The Hunting of the President, a frightening look at the Right’s conspiracy to destroy the Clintons. However, it is more frightening still to realize that the neo-liberals are putting to use the same tactics to destroy Hillary. The RFK assassination “issue” comes to mind as a particularly ugly example.

Ironically, Lyons and Conason exemplify the split within the Democratic Party. Conason suggests that Hillary Clinton is channeling George Wallace (an analogy used here first but accurately applied to Obama), and he “worries” about this harming Hillary’s reputation. On the other hand, Lyons chronicles how Obama encourages the press corps’ anti-Hillary biases, and he warns of a split in the Democratic coalition.

In their book, Lyons and Conason show how the Washington press corps were accomplices in the Right’s plan to destroy the Clintons. Perhaps having learned from that analysis, now Conason uses the same straw man techniques to question Hillary’s motives. For example, when Hillary stated that Obama is having trouble winning the votes of blue-collar whites, Conason interprets her comments with this broadside:

What she should not ignore, however, is the damage that her increasingly reckless behavior is inflicting on her reputation and that of her husband — especially when she starts to sound like a reincarnation of the late George Wallace.

What Conason doesn’t address is that Obama does have a problem winning the votes of blue-collar whites. Conason is using the same rhetorical trick as Keith Olbermann and Markos Moulitsas, the trick where accusations of racism are treated the same as real racism.

However, as the Times pointed out the day after Hillary trounced Obama in West Virginia, she beat him because of her economic message, not because of racism:

Nearly two-thirds of West Virginia voters said that the economy was the most important issue facing the country, and they backed Mrs. Clinton by a margin of 2 to 1. About 9 in 10 voters say they were affected by the current economic slowdown, including nearly half who said they were affected a great deal. Mrs. Clinton was supported by about three-quarters of those most affected.

Obama bloggers screamed “racism” at the incredible rejection of Obama by West Virginia voters. However, as Paul Lukasiak shows, Obama once lead Hillary among white men by 4.6% but now trails her by 12.9%. It’s not Obama’s skin color which matters; that hasn’t changed. What has changed is the information the public has received about Obama, his associates, and the way he has conducted his campaign. For instance, the Obama campaign’s suggestion that Hillary is waiting for something unthinkable to happen to Obama.

Avoiding the pathos invoked by Conason, Lyons writes that low-income whites are attracted to Hillary because of her populist, patriotic message:

Every available poll shows that economics, health care and national security motivate such voters, not bigotry. Academic leftists have daydreamed about a winning coalition of African Americans and latte-sipping idealists since forever, but it’s never worked before, and there’s no reason to believe it can work [now].

Conason continues his rhetorical tricks of smearing the Clintons by praising the Clintons’ past stands on racial issues, and then bemoaning that:

the Clintons probably understand the essential evil of racism better than most white politicians. They have certainly done more than most of today’s white politicians to combat that evil. That is why, as they contemplate the conclusion of this campaign, they deserve better from themselves than to encourage doubt about their decency and character.

Juxtaposed to Conason’s straw man argument, Lyons calls out the media for their obvious bias:

But it’s not merely patronizing for the Washington media to have taken sides, it’s dangerous. By declaring an extremely close contest over, and by repeatedly questioning the motives, even the sanity, of Clinton and her supporters, they’ve led Democrats to ignore a big chunk of political reality.

The reality of which Lyons writes is the divisions which have arisen in this primary that constitute a culture war. During the rise of the evangelical movement, the culture wars involved the strictures of Christian Right versus the secular mainstream. Similar to that culture war, the one that is dividing the Democratic Party is based on differing values: the race-baiting ideology of the neo-liberals, including accusing the Clintons of racism against all contrary evidence, accompanied by sweeping allegations of racism directed at anyone not supporting Obama, versus the more progressive positions proposed by Hillary such as advocating solutions for our economic woes, universal health care, a livable wage, and being strong on national security issues.

To put it differently, in order to promote their far-left (but less progressive) agenda, Obama and his operatives participate in willful misinterpretation for the sake of accusation and slander, tools employed by the far Right and the media in the 1990s. They employ an intentional knee-jerk reaction to find fault and blame Hillary Clinton not because she’s wrong but in order to further their own agenda, primarily the acquisition of power and the expelling of blue-collar whites from the Party. Contrast this with Hillary’s supporters’ ongoing questions about Obama: we want to know who he is, what he has accomplished, and why someone would vote for him.

This is especially important because Obama has received fewer votes than Hillary and he is the weaker Democratic candidate, yet it appears that he is being forced onto Democrats even though they have soured to his candidacy. Anglachel describes the culture war in this campaign in these terms:

The actual political battle being fought this electoral year is whether or not the Democratic Party is willing to abandon its elitist politics of resentment against its own working class core and take that part of the population back from the Republicans…

If the anti-Clinton wing persists in the politics of demonization to the detriment of the party, they will be the ones left at the station as the Republicans drive off with the majority of the voters.

Conason and Lyons, once coauthors and now on opposite sides in this new culture war, epitomize this distinction: one fishes for blame and the other hunts for answers

Dorothea LANGE, “Migrant Mother,” 1936

A friend paraphrases a famous story to illustrate why she may vote Republican for the first time in 40 years: in the late 1960s, when the feminist movement was still thought of as a novelty, a boorish male reporter asked the heterosexual Gloria Steinem if she was a lesbian. Steinem responded, “I am if you’re the alternative.”

There is a growing consensus at No Quarter and elsewhere that Obama’s tactics have made him an unacceptable alternative to Hillary, and many of us will be voting for McCain, writing in Hillary, or staying home.

As Hillary continues to increase her popular vote lead and absolutely crush Obama in critical states, many are looking at a potential Obama nomination as a coup d’état similar to Florida in 2000, facilitated by the neo-liberal-Dean wing of the Party, African American power brokers, and the Clinton-hating media. Regarding Florida and Michigan, Anglachel writes:

Lack of legitimacy means relying on force to win. If you have to bully people to make them be quiet, you have lost legitimacy. If you have to remove votes from the contest in order to win, you have lost legitimacy. The objection Hillary supporters have to “teh Rulz” to exclude Michigan and Florida is how nakedly they are used to force the numbers themselves into submission.

A commentator agrees with Anglachel and points out that:

The FL/MI debacle not only robbed Clinton of delegates, but it robbed her of momentum that would have affected later contests. It robbed her of frontrunner status. In fact, with those 2 states and Super Tuesday, she probably would have been close to winning.

An Obama nomination — after the selective but intentional disenfranchisement of Michigan and Florida, the relentless race-baiting by Obama and his surrogates, and the venom from his supporters — is repugnant to many of us who, to use Arthur Schlesinger’s phrase, are unrepentant and unreconstructed liberals and New Dealers.

What we are witnessing is nothing short of the breakup of the historic Democratic coalition. Chris Bowers, Obama supporter and writer at Open Left, dreams of a cultural change in an Obama Democratic Party which is almost a parody of the brie and Chardonnay stereotype:

There should be a major cultural shift in the party, where the southern Dems and Liebercrat elite will be largely replaced by rising creative class types. Obama has all the markers of a creative class background, from his community organizing, to his Unitarianism, to being an academic, to living in Hyde Park to shopping at Whole Foods and drinking PBR. These will be the type of people running the Democratic Party now, and it will be a big cultural shift from the white working class focus of earlier decades.

Further illustrating their break with traditional liberalism, Markos Moulitsas has declared himself a libertarian Democrat, in other words: a politically correct Republican. These neo-liberals are really proposing a Party run by those who have little need for government and instead focus on identity politics, environmentalism, post-partisan government, and the rejection of American exceptionalism. The neo-liberals demonize the traditional Democratic base of poor white voters precisely because these voters rely on government and expect their leadership to fight partisan battles on their behalf. They are also deeply patriotic and weary of the moral relativism put forward by the likes of Jeremiah Wright.

Because of Obama’s anemic performances in West Virginia and Kentucky, the campaign and its supporters imagine a new Party. Sean Wilentz writes

the Barack Obama campaign and its sympathizers have begun to articulate much more clearly what they mean by their vague slogan of “change” - nothing less than usurping the historic Democratic Party, dating back to the age of Andrew Jackson, by rejecting its historic electoral core: white workers and rural dwellers in the Middle Atlantic and border states.

It remains to be seen whether the breakup of the Democratic Party more resembles (A) the McGovern disaster of 1972 and 20 years in the wilderness, or (B) a dismantling of the current coalition more akin to the Republicans replacing the Whigs in 1856.

In whatever form our Party takes, the perpetrators of this breakup are the Obama campaign and the neo-liberals. It’s their demonization of low-income white Americans which is largely the cause of our coalition’s breakup. Wilentz continues:

Without a majority of those voters, the Democrats have, since the party’s inception in the 1820s, been incapable of winning the presidency. The Obama advocates declare, though, that we have entered an entirely new political era. It is not only possible but also desirable, they say, for Democrats to win by turning away from those whom “progressive” pundits and bloggers disdain variously as “Nascar man,” “uneducated,” “low information” whites, “rubes, fools, and hate-mongers” who live in the nation’s “shitholes.”

Hillary’s ability to keep this race so close, with virtually no African American support, shows Obama’s incredible weakness as a candidate. This is not because of race, as the neo-liberal race-baiters would have you believe, but because Obama does not articulate an economic message which appeals to low-income whites. According to Wilentz:

Every poll shows that economics, health care, and national security are the leading issues for white working class voters - and for Latino working class voters as well. These constituencies have cast positive ballots for Hillary Clinton not because she is white, but because they regard her as better on these issues. Obama’s campaign and its passionate supporters refuse to acknowledge that these voters consider him weaker — and that Clinton’s positions, different from his, as well as her experience actually attract support. Instead they impute racism to working class Democrats who, the polls also show, happen to be liberal on every leading issue. The effort to taint anyone who does not support Obama as motivated by racism has now become a major factor in alienating core Democrats from Obama’s campaign.

The class warfare now raging in the Democratic Party, while both sides ostensibly are on the Left, is actually the classic struggle between the proletariat workers (blue-collar whites and Latinos) and the petite bourgeoisie (neo-liberals). African Americans have mostly gone to Obama because of the historic nature of his candidacy; many, however, were pushed to Obama by the race-baiting wedge utilized by Obama and the neo-liberals, a tactic identical in form and result as that used by Lee Atwater and other Republican operatives. Obama’s hostility towards the white working class, as seen with his bitter-gate remarks, is the exact framework from which many of the neo-liberals view this struggle:

Obama’s dismissal of white working people represents a sea-change in the Democrats’ basic identity as the workingman’s party - one that has been coming since the late 1960s, when large portions of the Left began regarding white workers as hopeless and hateful reactionaries.

Arthur Schlesinger, eminent historian and New Frontiersman, foresaw the dangers of identity politics as a substitute for progressive policy. He believed in an activist government which should be used “to improve opportunities and to enlarge freedoms for ordinary people.” The Obama campaign’s desire to win the nomination, regardless of its illegitimacy, and their hostility towards poor white Americans is a movement which is tearing the Democratic Party apart. Many of us believe that the best way to fight for working Americans — regardless of color — is to make sure this movement is defeated.