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Democrats Add A Dose Of Bitters To Their Campaign

[NOTE: This post has been UPDATed Twice]

According to an entry in Wikipedia,

A bitters is a preparation of herbs and citrus dissolved in alcohol or glycerine with a bitter or bittersweet flavor. The various brands of bitters, once numerous, were formerly manufactured as patent medicines....

Angostura Bitters was first compounded in Venezuela in 1824 by a German physician, who intended it as a remedy for stomach maladies. It was exported to England and to Trinidad, where it came to be used in a number of cocktails following its medicinal use by the British Navy in Pink Gin. Angostura and similar gentian bitters preparations are still of some value to settle a mild case of nausea, and is used to stimulate the appetite, either for food or cocktails. It is used in both apéritifs and digestifs, and will settle one?s stomach before a meal, or before undertaking a night of drinking....

It?s too soon to say for sure, but it seems to me that the current dose of ?bitter? that Barack has added to the Democratic cocktail is causing rather than curing stomach maladies and nausea.

By focusing on the ?bitter,? however, the mainstream press and the Clinton campaign have missed the point.

Clinton?s campaign has launched a widespread effort on this issue. At a rally former president Clinton held in rural North Carolina yesterday, aides handed out ?We?re not bitter? stickers to voters.

This, I think, is an enormous tactical blunder, which is exactly what we?ve come to expect from the Clinton campaign. As I argued yesterday (here),

no one took offense because he said the small towners are ?frustrated? by ?economic distress.? He offended them ? and many others ? because he said that they ?cling? to religion and guns and nativism and opposition to affirmative action and gay marriage, etc., etc., because of their frustration. People without those frustrations, presumably people who had been well taken care of by a benevolent Washington, wouldn?t ?cling? to such benighted views. In ObamaLand, which is just a province of LiberalLand, people do not oppose race preferences, illegal immigration, etc., if they are not angry and frustrated because of economic distress.

Mickey Kaus nails this point today. If I paraphrased what he said I?d dilute it; if I plagiarized it I?d get caught (and besides, as Nixon famously said, that would be wrong), so I?ll just quote:

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 [&] 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....

**--You might argue that this was the same ?it-will-go-away? attitude Obama had toward the anger of parishioners of Rev. Wrights?s church ? which would reinforce the ?he condescends to everyone? theory of Obama. But the parallel isn?t there. Obama describes ongoing black anger about racism as an artifact of racism ? it?s an epiphenomenon only in the sense that it will eventually disappear when its legitimate cause disappears. Obama describes white anger ? indeed white anger, white racism, white religiosity, white NRA membership and white opposition to comprehensive immigration reform ? as an artifact of something unrelated, namely the loss of good industrial jobs. It?s fundamentally inauthentic, Obama suggests, because (unlike black anger) it isn?t caused by what those who express it say it is caused by.

And Obama never describes his own views as the products of anything except an accurate perception of reality. Come to think of it, has he ever expressed any doubt about ? let alone apologized for ? his views? He certainly didn?t apologize in his ?race? speech. He presents himself as near ominscient, the Archimedian point from which everyone else?s beliefs and behavior can be assessed and explained, and to which almost everyone?s beliefs will revert after the revolution. ... sorry, I mean after President Obama has restored hope!

I wish I?d written that. Since I didn?t, I did the next best thing.

So, this is where I think we are now on the Obama Express:

? The biracial, post-racial candidate who promises to bridge the bitter racial gap and bring us all together refuses to abandon his association with a Farrakhanian mentor who spews hate-filled, anti-white, anti-American rhetoric. And as if this weren?t enough, he implies that demands that he abandon those who hold these views is implicitly racist because these views are so pervasive in the black community that he would be abandoning blacks altogether if he did so. Why, I wonder, was it regarded as racist for Bill Clinton to compare Obama to Jesse Jackson? Jackson, at least, has never argued that blacks and whites have such fundamentally opposed views of the value of their country.

? The calm, cool, collected candidate who says we should ignore his lack of experience because of his more important qualities of judgment and leadership exerted no leadership in his own congregation, where he no doubt could have had a great deal of influence. His passivity allowed defamatory slander against his own country, such as that it invented AIDS to commit genocide against blacks, to go unanswered. He promises ?change,? but he?s changed nothing where he could have. Where he had a literal opportunity to ?reach across the aisle,? he did not.

? The candidate of ?change? appears most interested in changing the values of people who disagree with him. Once he is installed in Washington, misguided small-town souls will shed their bitterness, and along with it their opposition to race preferences, gay marriage, zenophobia, racism, guns, and clinging to religion that were produced by that now abandoned bitterness.

A number of pundits and talking heads have begun comparing ?Bitter? Obama with Dukakis?s tank appearance or John Kerry?s voting for the $87 billion before voting against it, but I don?t think these comparisons do Obama justice. What he has accomplished, so far, is a remarkable and impressive synthesis of Adlai Stevenson?s common man folksiness, George McGovern?s political moderation, and Jimmy Carter?s humility and total lack of whiny moralism. They said he couldn?t do that, but Yes He Can!

I doubt that the Obama Express can be derailed. But it?s surely going to have a rough ride after it leaves Denver.

UPDATE

At least one far outpost of the mainstream media understands the difference between what Obama said and what he?s subsequently been saying he said. As Jake Tapper notes on his ABCNews blog, ?Obama allies are trying to focus on the ?bitter? part alone.?

UPDATE II

After Obama?s race speech, Kaus suggested that we may need to recognize ?a second kind of Kinsley Gaffe.? A Kinsley Gaffe, you all recall, is

when a politican says what he or she actually thinks (whether or not it?s the truth)

Kaus, others, and I have argued that Obama?s ?cling? to religion et. al. put-down of small-towners is a classic Kinsley Gaffe, but now I?m not so sure. He did, to be sure, make the mistake of saying what he really thinks, but can doing that really be called a ?gaffe? when a large swath of one?s own party, especially its political and intellectual leaders, think the same thing?

In Obama?s case, we've already seen (in my post below) that he was merely recycling the argument of Thomas Frank?s book, What?s The Matter With Kansas?, a book that was very popular in Democratic circles.

And even now, in the midst of a bitter ongoing debate over ?bitter? and ?cling,? one doesn?t have to look far to find agreement with the offensive core of Obama?s condescending assertions. Time magazine, for example, has collected a couple for us.

?Obama used the word ?bitter? when he should have said ?frustrated,?? said Donna Brazile, an undecided Super Delegate who ran Al Gore?s presidential campaign in 2000. ?Clearly Obama?s comments were ?unartful,? but not inaccurate....?

And Thomas Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, agrees.

I thought his response in Indiana, in which he reemphasized the point he was making rather than apologize or ?clarify? it, was sensible and refreshing.

Here?s how Obama ?reemphasized? his view of small-towners in Indiana, as reported in the Time article linked above:

?I didn?t say it as well as I could have,? Obama told a crowd in Muncie, Indiana, Saturday. Later that same day he told a North Carolina newspaper: ?Obviously, if I worded things in a way that made people offended, I deeply regret that.? At the same time, Obama refused to repudiate his words, seeking instead to clarify them. ?People end up ? they don?t vote on economic issues because they don?t expect anybody?s going to help them,? Obama said. ?So people end up, you know, voting on issues like guns, and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. And they take refuge in their faith and their community and their families and things they can count on. But they don?t believe they can count on Washington.?

In short, the rubes cling, and will continue to cling, to God, guns, disliking people who are not like them, etc., until there?s someone in Washington they can believe in. Faith in Washington eliminates or diminishes the salience of faith in other centers of power, as well as changing views on a whole host of issues having nothing to do with Washington?s caring or competence.

What warmed over Marxist rubbish.

Full post as published by Discriminations on April 14, 2008 (boomark / email).