It's Not the Bitter; It's the Condescension

The problem with what Barack Obama said in San Francisco last week* is not so much that he was claiming the people in small town Pennsylvania, and by extension, small town America, are bitter. The problem is the condescension in what he said.

Obama has been campaigning as somebody who would talk to all Americans. He would listen to everybody. He would bring us together.

I had always been a little skeptical about whether Obama would really listen to everybody – or at least whether, even if he did listen, it would make a difference in what he decides. In the Senate, he has pretty much always come down on the side of his party; in fact, the liberal side of his party.

Unlike some candidates for President this year, Obama has never been out there opposing the majority of his party on some big issue because he thought it was right to do so. And that’s fine if that’s what he believes. It’s just something the voters need to keep in mind when they listen to him saying he will bring us together. He will bring us together all right – as long as we all agree with the liberal Democratic position.

Which brings me back to what Obama said in San Francisco. In my mind, what Obama said shows him to be just another know-it-all liberal. The kind of liberal who thinks, if somebody disagrees with them, it’s because the other person is stupid or bitter (see above) or something else. It can’t be because they honestly disagree. There has to be a reason because if they were smart, if they really understood things, they would agree with the Democrats. Because the liberal Democrats are right. And anybody who disagrees with them is stupid or bitter or selfish or maybe, as one candidate’s spouse put it in slightly different context, mean.

So, in spite of his great speeches (and Senator Obama does talk good), Barack Obama’s comments in San Francisco pretty much confirm that he is just another condescending, know-it-all liberal Democrat.

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* In case you have not seen it, here is what Barack Obama said to a group of supporters at a $1,000 a ticket fundraising event in San Francisco on April 6:

"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.

And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or antitrade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."