Obama and Working-Class Voters

Politics has never been a business of straight talk. Political campaigns, even by the best people, are usually permeated with lies and smoke. We are too stupid to care about this. It is only when somebody tells the truth that we get upset. Barack Obama spoke the truth, and it is causing him problems. Obama was explaining his trouble winning-over small-town, working-class voters in areas where jobs are disappearing. He said: “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.”

Hillary Clinton and her staff jumped on this statement. Voters have always pegged Hillary as an elitist, a Wellesley and Yale graduate who put on the airs of a rich, intellectual feminist. Now her African American opponent seemed to be acting more elitist than she. She appeared at a bar in Indiana and tossed-down a couple of shots of liquor like a good-old-boy. She told about how her grandfather took her out behind the barn and taught her to fire a gun. Obama made fun of Hillary’s sudden incarnation as Joe Six-Pack and Annie Oakley, saying: "Around election time, the candidates can't do enough for you. They'll promise you anything, give you a long list of proposals and even come around, with TV crews in tow, to throw back a shot and a beer."

I am disappointed at Hillary Clinton’s swooping-in like a vulture to take advantage of Obama’s statement. I am sorry that Obama felt that he had to apologize for his statement. Perhaps America would be a better place if somebody could do what Senator Obama did; tell the truth.

Small-town blue-collar workers in areas that are losing jobs have always been frustrated. When jobs are gone, they are bitter. We do not like to think about class in America, even though we are fully aware of it. We like to think that in America everybody is equal and everybody has a chance to become wealthy and powerful. The truth is, however, that most people with aspirations to better themselves will not do much better than their parents. In a land of great wealth, this causes frustration. As Senator Obama said, they are likely to cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.

Middle-class people tend to be satisfied with slight advantages over their friends and neighbors. They buy shiny new cars, televisions, or new kitchens. They write Christmas letters bragging about vacation trips. It is pathetic. But these minuscule augmentations in status seem to satisfy their need for feelings of superiority. Working-class people, however, are more likely to live lives of quiet desperation.

Because they feel that many look down on them, working-class people look for others to look down on. Perhaps Senator Obama could feel this when he visited the factory and mining towns of Pennsylvania. No matter how poor, ignorant, or idle those people may have been, they probably projected the feeling that because Obama is Black, they are better than him.

As Senator Obama says, they cling to guns, alcohol, and religion. As I have previously written, guns help boost a man’s feelings of power and self-worth. One does not find many handguns owned by wealthy people. Hedge-fund managers on Wall Street may be in grave danger of homicide from their investors, but I doubt that many of them are armed with handguns.

Another way working stiffs enhance their feelings of self-confidence is with liquor. Alcohol blunts the harsh realities of closing factories and disappearing jobs. The fastest road to this nirvana is with shots and beer. One does not go into a bar in working-class Pennsylvania and order a banana daiquiri. I knew a guy who did so once and the bartender said: “You’ll drink a shot and beer like everybody else and like it.”

Another means of overcoming the frustrations of the most marginal or underprivileged social groups is religion. People in lower economic, cultural, social, and intellectual classes need to believe that they are as good as, if not better than, others. They need to believe that they are among the elect few who practice the correct religion, and that however lucky other people may seem, those others are condemned to religious error on earth and to hell upon death. Their religion tends to be fundamentalist, evangelical, or Pentecostal. These people need to believe that somehow in the afterlife, God will level the playing field, and that they are not condemned for all eternity to being poor, backward, or ignorant.

Unfortunately for Barack Obama, he will not get many votes from those people in a general election against John McCain; but then, despite her acrobatic efforts to déclassé herself, neither will Hillary.