How sad to see Obama attacked by the effete intellectual snobs of the media….
You know, I’m not a rural voter, but I’m bitter. About 80% of America is pretty bitter about politicians right now. Why should anyone deny it? And why should anyone deny that the Republicans have run on God, guns and gays for the last however many years, scaring them into voting against their best interests on a continuing basis over things that nobody is actually threatening them about? Nobody is going to take away their guns, or ruin their marriage in any way they can’t do themselves, or tell them not to worship whatever God they choose. These are non-issues. Get over it already.
Obama wants to talk about the issues that matter to people. Instead Clinton and McCain and the media turn this into yet ANOTHER attack. Voters are “bitter” because we never hear about what matters, these asshats just keep going after each other about stupid things they say. C’mon, cut us all a break and let’s talk about how to un-screw-up our country already. Honestly, without the idiocy.
More from Robert Reich:
I was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, 61 years ago. My father sold $1.98 cotton blouses to blue-collar women and women whose husbands worked in factories. Years later, I was secretary of labor of the United States, and I tried the best I could – which wasn’t nearly good enough – to help reverse one of the most troublesome trends America has faced: The stagnation of middle-class wages and the expansion of povety. Male hourly wages began to drop in the early 1970s, adjusted for inflation. The average man in his 30s is earning less than his father did thirty years ago. Yet America is far richer. Where did the money go? To the top.
Are Americans who have been left behind frustrated? Of course. And their frustrations, their anger and, yes, sometimes their bitterness, have been used since then — by demagogues, by nationalists and xenophobes, by radical conservatives, by political nuts and fanatical fruitcakes – to blame immigrants and foreign traders, to blame blacks and the poor, to blame “liberal elites,” to blame anyone and anything.
Rather than counter all this, the American media have wallowed in it. Some, like Fox News and talk radio, have given the haters and blamers their very own megaphones. The rest have merely “reported on” it. Instead of focusing on how to get Americans good jobs again; instead of admitting too many of our schools are failing and our kids are falling behind their contemporaries in Europe, Japan, and even China; instead of showing why we need a more progressive tax system to finance better schools and access to health care, and green technologies that might create new manufacturing jobs, our national discussion has been mired in the old politics.
And from Mark Thoma at Economist’s View:
The working class has been largely ignored by this administration, save a few tokens when elections are near, and that’s what the questions ought to be about. What do each of the candidates plan to do to change the conditions that led to Americans being “more pessimistic about their situation than they have been for more than a quarter century”? How many times has McCain flip-flopped on economic policy? Does he have any plans at all to address these problems (beyond wishful thinking), or will he follow in this administration’s footsteps on (the lack of) domestic policy? But no, instead, we get this drivel. The public has not been well served by a press that seems, as I watch CNN, to spend more time picking out their clothes than they do preparing to talk about issues, and they aren’t even the worst offenders. I shouldn’t be surprised, it happens every four years, but I hoped for better. I’m afraid old politics still works.
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