Somehow I missed out on this recent period of time when Hillary Clinton became a working class hero and a conservative Democrat. Have I missed something over the past year? I should explain my perspective. I’m a born and raised New Yawker who in June of 2007 came to Wellington New Zealand to work on an assignment for a firm here. I have a 2 year work visa but I will be re-examining my long term plans sometime after the 2nd week of November 2008.
Since I left, there appears to have been a major disturbance in the space time continuum that has resulted in Hillary Clinton becoming the champion of blue collar, lesser educated Reagan Democrats in opposition to the liberal elitist latte drinking and arugula eating, leftist Harvard Law grad Barack Obama and his supporters. I’m using actual adjectives here that I’ve seen used on blog forums here at Times.com and elsewhere in the blogosphere to describe HRC’s opposition. I’ve already heard about her blue collar grandfather but I thought she was the daughter of an upper middle class family who attended Wellesley and Yale Law School? Please don’t take this the wrong way. My favourite American President was a man who came from a family of such established blue bloodedness that they make the Bushes to appear as if they just got off the boat at Ellis Island. Everything about his comportment and demeanour, from the way he affected an elegant cigarette holder to his unabashed Harvard accent exuded elite Waspishness. Yet the American working class never had such a friend as with this man who defied his upbringing, reached out to this constituency – back then referred to as the forgotten man, and was branded a “traitor to his class” by many of his resentful peers. Personally I wouldn’t mind a little bit of enlightened noblesse oblige right now from an FDR type after almost 8 years of the down home cowboy from Crawford (by way of Phillips Academy and Yale). I have an undergrad degree from one of the SUNY colleges. I feel that I received a good education from this school and that my four years there was not without academic rigor but I would never deride the accomplishment of someone acquiring a degree from one of the prestigious schools. I must admit though that I’ve developed as of late a little bit of scepticism about the value of the education offered by the Harvard Business School since it doesn’t seen to have informed well the decision making of George Bush and Stan O’Neal.
But what’s with all this cultural stereotype derision coming from a U.S. Senator who represents New York, one of the epicentres in the U.S. for expensive coffee and pricey organic lettuce? It used to be de rigueur for American politicians to eat the appropriate ethnic foods while campaigning out on the stump. Now it’s about proving what a regular down to earth guy or gal they can be by eating and drinking only the stuff that real salt of the earth type voters consume. We’ve had eight years of the President you can have a beer with. Now we have Clinton, the Senator with whom you can enjoy downing shots of Crown Royal whiskey. Personally I’m a regular coffee no sugar, doesn’t like lettuce and prefers Becks but will drink Budweiser if that’s all you’ve got kind of guy. I’d like to know as an Obama supporter where I fit in to the cultural landscape? I would normally expect to hear labels like “liberal elitist latte drinker” coming from the mouths of Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and Ann Coulter; aimed at Hillary Clinton, not from the Senator herself.
And when did Clinton become a “Scoop” Henry Jackson style Democrat in contrast to leftist Obama? Is that because of the whopping 1 point difference HRC has over him in the American Conservative Union’s ranking of their 2007 Senate votes? That’s 8 and 7 for HRC and BHO respectively. McCain by the way is 80 (of course I mean his ACU rating not his age!).
My fellow Americans, some enlightenment please for this expat on the tectonic shift that must have just occurred in American politics while I wasn’t looking. It would be greatly appreciated.
1 comment:
Well, like yourself, I'm watching this primaries' events from a distant shore. Obviously this run off between Clinton and Obama is unlike anything that has been seen in recent memory.
So to answer your questions, IMHO, "When did Hillary become [any of these things]?". When she needed every vote and every state she could get. I call it simple, all out pandering. Initially it was all about focusing on the big states at the beginning of the primary process. Then it was focused on the independent swing voters. And now it's down to 'win everything that you can for the last scraps of the popular vote and delegates', as well as proving that one is still a viable, credible candidate.
Focus groups will be telling campaign staffers that Hillary isn't 'folksy' enough, so she customises her campaign to suit the voters she's addressing. This is the very definition of pandering as far as I'm concerned. If one's message had been 'I am a person of the working class' all along, then I could understand. But these people just swap and chop to suit the people they're addressing. In its most desperate form, this takes on the label of flip-flopping as a candidate says one thing to latte drinking soccer moms, and then says the opposite to the out of work rust belt machine operator.
My question isn’t ‘When did Hillary become XYZ?’. My question is, is there no room in politics for an honest person?
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