Nothing's The Matter With PA, OK?

(At least, nothing that would interfere with people, for the most part, voting intelligently…)

I came across this post by George Packer of The New Yorker, and even though I got a bit agitated by it, I suppose I should thank him for rehashing some idiotic talking points over the Obama “bitter,” “cling” nonsense that deserves to be utterly destroyed.

Aside from Packer’s scurrilous declaration that Obama “equated guns and religion with racism” (patently untrue), I’d like to note the following excerpt in particular…

If Obama had left out “antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment” (which is what sympathetic pundits and bloggers have done in attempting to explain his comments away), he might not now be sinking in the latest polls from Pennsylvania and Indiana.

How does “antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment” translate to racism anyway? I can assure you that even the most hardheaded among us in this commonwealth aren’t going after illegal immigrants with dogs or water cannons, nor is a Bull Connor or Sherriff Clark knockoff strutting ominously in their presence, threatening to attack them with a billy club or a cattle prod.

(Update: At least, not since former mayor Frank "nightstick in the cummerbund" Rizzo prowled these parts, though at least he evolved politically over time more than either Clark or Connor.)

And I didn’t leave the quote out of anything I said about Obama; I didn’t apologize for him for the simple reason that there is nothing to apologize for. And as far as “sinking in the latest polls” is concerned…well, maybe I’m not smart enough to write for The New Yorker like Packer, but the numbers from here look pretty competitive to me.

Also…

As Democratic political analysis, what he said is hardly new. Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” is a book-length exposition of Obama’s one sentence.

At this point, I believe the following well-reasoned and articulate response is required…

AAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

(Sorry – needed to vent.)

I am ALREADY SO TIRED of reading and listening to pundits discussing the tendency of rural voters in this state to side with the Republicans and more urban voters to do the opposite as symptomatic of what is described in Thomas Frank’s book.

I don’t know how many times Packer has actually set foot in this state to do reporting, but I’d like to point something out (I haven’t set foot in Kansas either, though I’ve flown over it a time or two, for what that’s worth).

This post from Media Matters explains (among other things) that, except for the northeast, conservative columnists dominate in terms of circulation throughout the rest of the country. And as a result of that utterly depressing fact, voters in these areas are subjected to a steady drone from the usual suspects about how Democrats/liberals/progressives are totally immoral libertines hopelessly out of touch on the “values” issues that REALLY are important as opposed to, y’know, silly stuff like trying to figure out some way of conducting the Iraq war that makes sense while starting to draw down our forces, making sure our jobs don’t disappear, providing health insurance for those who can’t afford it, the climate crisis, sensible immigration policy, and on and on.

(You can also consider the fact that, while many young adults consider Bill Clinton as their "coming of age" President, if you will, many more consider The Sainted Ronnie R to be theirs, so growing up with the "government is bad" propaganda is second nature to them and makes them inherently receptive to the conservative mantra.)

In short, the people of Kansas (among other places) received some really crappy “information” upon which to base their political decisions, though like all voters who don’t do their homework, they must personally shoulder part of the blame also. As a result, they felt an affinity to characters like Sam Brownback, though we’re guilty in this state of sending Little Ricky to the Senate along with him a couple of times. But another barometer to use is voting in presidential elections; in ’00 and ’04, Kansans voted for Dubya big time, while we in PA voted for Gore and Kerry (and sending Santorum packing in favor of Bob Casey was definitely part of a trend, and the voters of Kansas can thank Dem governor Kathleen Sebelius for the progressive turnaround currently underway in their state).

And as the “Real Time” clip from the prior post showed, the voters interviewed by Jeremy Scahill cared less about “wedge issues” (well, maybe not the guy with the loaded Sig Sauer pistol), to the point where some of them were going to vote for Obama after voting for Dubya not once, but twice primarily because of the pitiful state of our economy.

Two other points: it’s funny to read Packer call Kristol mess a propagandist (I mean, he is, but Packer is taking a page from Kristol’s book here as far as I’m concerned), and also, though I suppose you could call me an Obama “devotee,” I’ve never said the man was perfect and corrected him a time or two, agreeing with Paul Krugman who said it was wrong for Obama to lump the economic records of Clinton and Dubya together in that now-infamous statement from San Francisco. If there was anything Obama said that was truly objectionable, that was it, and ONLY that.

But the best part about this is that this whole primary freak show will leave our state tomorrow. God, I’m so sick of the robocalls primarily from the Clinton side, but not exclusively.

And if we vote for Obama, we can effectively end this primary and concentrate on utterly shredding McCain (the numbers haven’t been good for Hillary for some time). If you had told me, say, last October that I’d feel such utter contempt for the way the Clintons have run their campaign, I never would have believed you. But there you are.

Update 4/22/08: Speaking of Sebelius, I was glad to see this.