Obama and Stupid White People: Election 2010

The White House and liberal media hacks are in panic mode.

With less than two weeks before the midterm elections, the narrative is that "non-college educated" white voters are rejecting Obama.

In short, Obama is in trouble with the bitter clingers.

Politico declares that Obama has a "white working-class problem." The root of the problem: They're stupid people.

This is serious stuff because losing support from whites translates to political disaster and defeat for Dems.

West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin is taking a political battering, thanks to his support of Barack Obama, so he’s uniquely qualified to offer counsel on what many think is the president’s central political problem - his failure to connect with white working-class voters.

His advice: Go to where they live and work. Listen. And don’t talk down to them.

...“You can’t win if you only go where you are comfortable,” added Manchin, who was speaking to POLITICO a day before Obama appeared in a place that was very much in his comfort zone - before a crowd of 35,000 admirers at Ohio State University.

...Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, arguably Obama’s most effective 2008 surrogate with working-class voters, says it’s a “tragedy” Obama hasn’t been able to convince blue-collar families he’s on their side, and her solution is the same as Manchin’s.

...“He’s just got to get out there and hear more bad news,” McCaskill added. “That event, where the woman said ‘I’m exhausted with defending you,’ was perfect. He needs a lot more of that.”

The confrontation took place at a CNBC forum, precisely the kind of semi-hostile environment McCaskill was referring to. Obama has also embarked on a series of quick trips and “backyard barbeques” in purple-red zones like St. Louis, Charlotte, Kansas City, Richmond and Columbus.

But by necessity, they have taken a back seat to Obama’s central strategy in 2010 of pumping up turnout among blacks, Latinos, urban voters, union members and educated whites.

Twice as many non-college educated whites (60 percent) now plan to vote for a Republican this year than a Democrat (31 percent). And approval of Obama’s handling of the economy has tanked by 20 percentage points among white Democrats since April, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll taken earlier this month.

...The long-term danger for Obama is that if his approval ratings among whites stay low, the revolt takes root – shredding a 2008 map that included single-digit wins in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Virginia, Michigan, Florida and all-important Ohio, which Obama won by three percentage points with the political wind at his back.

It's important to note that Obama's "problem" with white voters has nothing to do with race.

It's the economy, stupid.

According to the lib media, Obama's problem is also rooted in the stupidity of white people.

...Davis and other analysts say racism, especially among older voters, plays some role in Obama’s plummeting popularity. But even Obama’s friends concede that much of his trouble attracting working-class whites is less racial than cultural -- and some wounds have been self-inflicted.

“Here’s the gorilla in the room,” says McCaskill. “He can roll up his sleeves and he can take of his jacket and he could not wear a tie, but it is very hard for a lot of people in working-class families to imagine him next to them at the Laundromat.

“His vocabulary is beyond impressive [but] the fact that he stays visionary sometimes, slows him down” when he needs to be “granular and really nitty-gritty and saying things in a way that make people relate to him,” McCaskill says.

So working-class whites are put off by Obama's impressive vocabulary but blacks aren't. Apparently, blacks can imagine Professor Obama at the Laundromat.

That's weird given that the likes of Clarence Thomas and Michael Steele and Condoleezza Rice were ridiculed in the black community as sell-outs. The lib media marginalized them as not representative of blacks, as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel put it, blacks "who deserve an asterisk."

Obviously it's not about being educated or "sounding white." It's more of a political philosophy matter. Apparently, conservatives don't hang out at the Laundromat, but Ivy League libs do.

Here's how the Left views Obama's problem:

...He can’t bowl. He can’t pronounce Yuengling Beer. And at his worst, he sounds less “I feel your pain” than like America’s anthropologist-in-chief.

During one infamous April 2008 speech to wealthy Democrats in San Francisco, Obama explained that some Pennsylvania voters, made “bitter” by the bad economy, “cling to guns or religion.”

Despite the huge backlash against those comments, he’s strayed back into social science. At a forum for young voters last week sponsored by MTV, Obama blamed a “tribal attitude” among economically-strapped Americans for a recent rise in racial incidents.

At a recent event in Massachusetts, he declared that “fear and frustration” among “scared” voters fueled anti-Democrat sentiments.

White voters are rejecting Obama because he can't bowl?

That's nuts. Do libs realize how ridiculous such theories are?

Short answer: No.

...Obama’s shortcomings, friends say, are embedded in his strengths – a searching intellect, a Roget’s vocabulary and a lofty determination to elevate the public discourse – and not dumb down his public utterances.

Hence, McCaskill’s frustration when she learned Obama had apologized for the God-and-guns remark by blaming his own tortured “syntax.”

She got him on his cell phone, and opened up on him: “The only time I want to hear you use that word is when you’re talking about the tax people in Missouri pay on their beer!”

This is really insulting to the American people.

Obama's unpopularity among working-class whites can be explained by the fact that he is just too smart. How ridiculous! How incredibly out of touch with reality!

I'm not hearing a lot of Roget's vocabulary when Obama's talking about standing in mud and pushing a car out of a ditch while Republicans stand above sipping on a Slurpee.

This myth that Obama doesn't connect with working-class whites because he's too intellectual is baseless.

If the brilliant and lofty Obama really had a "searching intellect," then he should search out an American flag and count the stars and discover that there aren't 57 states.

Obama doesn't connect because he encourages division. He creates conflict rather than unity in the country. Most importantly, he is royally screwing up the economy.

Obama's real problem is his anti-capitalism agenda that's harming the economy, not that working-class whites are too stupid to understand him and put off by his alleged intellectual superiority.