“We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people.” Snow asked: “Anybody making over $250,000…” Biden responded: “Is gonna pay more.” Snow: “Is going to pay more.” Biden: “You got it. It’s time to be patriotic, Kate. Time to jump in. Time to be part of the deal. Time to help get America out of the rut.”

Conservatives predictably went ballistic with their calls of “class warfare”; Obama’s fans thought it brilliant economics.

For those of us who are Democrats, or former Democrats, Joe Biden’s statement was offensive on a different level. Although many of us agree with progressive taxation, Biden’s formulation is deeply offensive. According to Biden, greater taxation equals greater patriotism. This concept fits perfectly with the self-congratulatory world of Whole Foods Nation. Anglachel describes Biden’s target audience as the new elites:

The focus of the [Obama] Democrats is on the winners of the economic realignment, those who managed to win a place in the white collar upper-middle class … [Obama] is the exemplar of a mode of life that, while not as unreachable as that of Bush’s base, is still out of reach of those who do not have the education, acculturation and business contacts to climb up that economic ladder.

Some will argue that Biden is simply practicing liberal class warfare; he is targeting the wealthy and not the “bitter” gun owners of greater Appalachia. I disagree. By using the framework of patriotism, Biden is challenging — to use Anglachel’s parlance — the “Bubbas” and the Archie Bunkers — to ownership of American patriotism.

Biden is telegraphing to Whole Foods Nation that it’s equally patriotic to live in Boulder, Colorado and pay on a 33% tax bracket income as it is to serve in Iraq, like Governor Palin’s son. Or, as a friend in this income bracket told me recently, she “sacrifices” by voting Democratic.

The primary campaign showed that Obama fared well with affluent voters and African Americans. Clinton crushed Obama with middle- and low-income voters. The Pennsylvania primary was a perfect example of Obama’s inability to connect with low-income voters:

The Pennsylvania Democratic primary shared many of the same vote characteristics of other primary states this season - with Clinton winning her core base of union members, less educated and lower income voters and rural voters, and Obama winning voters with more education and income, and black voters.

The attack on blue-collar voters by Obama is what precipitated the civil war now raging in the Democratic party, and Obama’s race-baiting of blue-collar whites has been one of the more depressing episodes in our history as a Party.

Low-income white Democrats are the least likely group to vote Republican, and the assault on this vulnerable group has all the markings of racial and class warfare used for electoral gain. African Americans are all too familiar with politicians playing on prejudices for electoral gain and there is nothing different in this case except for the color of the victims’ skin.

The dishwasher, the waitress at Denny’s, the auto mechanic, the grocery clerk, the nursing assistant, the soldier — all low income Americans — are equally patriotic to anyone living in San Francisco or Hyde Park or the East Village, regardless of the amount they pay in taxes.

I’ve been thinking about Biden’s notion of patriotism for several days. Last night I found a video which captures patriotism in a way still held by much of the country. It’s an old fashioned form of patriotism which is now considered uncouth and looked down upon by the liberal elites. But it’s a type of patriotism once honored by Democrats; it’s a part of what made Democrats the governing party for most of the first half of the last century.

The video is from Ken Burns’ brilliant 1990 documentary The Civil War. I think Sullivan Ballou’s love for his wife Sarah is only matched by his love of country.

Listen to Sullivan Ballou’s words carefully and think about everything he is sacrificing. You won’t hear politicians — except perhaps for John McCain — speak of our beloved country with such a degree selflessness and honor.

Sullivan Ballou wrote to his wife that he was “willing—perfectly willing—to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this Government.” Ballou’s patriotism is echoed by Sarah Palin’s willingness to give her child to the service of our country: “Today is the day that I send my first born, my son, my teenage son overseas…to fight for our country, for democracy for our freedoms.”

Whole Foods Nation hates Sarah Palin for the class she represents. She threatens the self-perception of their own moral superiority on race and their economic “sacrifices.” Giving her son to our nation is not enough to silence the voices of hate.

During the primary campaign, on TPM, billysumday suggested that Bill Clinton was a racist because of his bumpkin origins, totally ignoring that the President was educated at Georgetown, Yale, and Oxford:

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.

Don’t worry about those angry Hillary supporters who say they’ll vote for McCain or stay home in November. History proves they’ll vote for Obama.

The article shows a photo of a Hillary’s supporter, a woman of course, crying and being comforted by another. But this melodramatic display of emotion, Shapiro suggests, is just bluffing. First, to continue the theme of a domestic spat, he compares us to nagging parents. Perhaps because that insult is too banal, he then compares us to George Bush:

As an empty threat, it ranks right up there with “Eat your spinach now or your mother and I won’t pay for college” or even George W. Bush’s taunting promise to get Osama bin Laden “dead or alive.” During the post-primary news lull, ardent Hillary Clinton supporters have managed to linger in the spotlight with their over-hyped warnings that they intend to sit on their hands or even bolt to John McCain if they are not wooed and won over by Barack Obama.

Yes, the sexism is there: we’re waiting to be wooed. And of course Clinton supporters are holding out because some people, women specifically, are fanning the flames of “feminist grievances. ” Here Shapiro perpetuates the Obama campaign’s sexist stereotyping of Hillary’s supporters by focusing on women, when in fact there are many men actively protesting Obama’s stolen nomination. But when the “Barack-and-Hillary show” goes on air, and the pundits wonder:

Was the joint appearance enough to win over the hardcore Hillary holdouts? The answer is an obvious “yes”…

Shapiro makes the same mistake as others outside the circle of Just Say No Deal PUMAs. He thinks that during the primary there was no “overriding issue…absolutely no ideological reason — beyond ruffled feelings” to keep Clinton supporters from voting for Obama. In fact, he says that the polling done today will not stand up in November:

For example, an ABC News/Washington Post Poll last week found that 24 percent of the Democrats who backed Clinton prefer McCain over Obama. But these numbers will certainly decline as base Democrats gravitate to their party’s nominee with increasing enthusiasm.

Citing studies that indicate that voters come back to the party even though their favorite candidate lost the nomination,” Shapiro seems to think that we will be convinced that Obama WON the nomination. We know that he did not win. This is no longer about Hillary, this is about the corruption of the Democratic leaders. Shapiro joins the ranks of Dean, Pelosi, Brazile, and the Obama-loving media who think we are simple-minded vacuous creatures who will ultimately follow them like sheep to the slaughter. He says:

A common theory is that disgruntled voters, troubled by the direction of their party, end up staying home in November. But with a record-smashing 36 million Democrats voting in the presidential primaries, this is not shaping up as a political year in which anyone will neglect to vote because, say, Whole Foods was having a sale on organic olive oil that day.

Again resorting to sexist stereotyping, Shapiro suggests that “the hardcore Hillary-types” will vote for Obama instead of shopping for olive oil. The media, and the Obama campaign, which of course includes the DNC, since they are now one and the same, are expecting us to develop collective amnesia.

We are going to forget all about Barky stealing the nomination, and insulting Hillary and her supporters. We’re going to forget the farce of the primary, that the decision to put Barky in place came before the first caucus cheating ever happened. We’re going to get over the misogyny and the sexism and the accusations of racism, and the elitism. We’re going to forget that many of us have received death threats from Barky’s insane followers, that our families have been threatened, and that we blog in full knowledge that we could be outed and viciously attacked at any time. We’re going to get over the fact that Barack Obama is an inexperienced, unqualified, two-faced, and a potentially dangerous politician with roots deep within the corrupt Chicago Machine.

Shapiro is certain that we’ll come around, though, even if we don’t know it yet. Well, maybe not those bitter, gun-toting, religious nuts–the blue-collar Dems, but those us who are “errant voters,” we will. In an analogy that is surely a Freudian slip, Shapiro claims that we will be guided by the lights of a roadside hotel, where cheap tricks are scored and whores are on the make, that is, the hijacked Democratic Party:

Party unity is never total — and there certainly are blue-collar Democrats who opted for Clinton in the primaries because she was a placeholder for their qualms about Obama. But for over-the-hill-with Hillary voters, passionate about the notion of a woman president or beguiled by all things Clinton, there will be no dramatic renunciation scene in their political future. Virtually all of them will be voting for Obama, whether they know it now or not. For a political party is a bit like Motel Six, where there is always a light on to guide errant voters home in the dark.

Talk about being in the dark….