Early on in the Bush administration I would turn off the sound every time I saw the president's lips moving on the television. It's not that I didn't know what he was saying. I could read his words in the newspaper and online if I wanted to, but I just couldn't bear listening to his silly laugh, his dishonesty, his mangling of the English language. Nothing he ever said was reliable and I started to get sick to my stomach every time I heard his voice. As president of the United States, and the man who represented the American people to the world, he was an embarrassment.
I now feel the same way about Hillary Clinton. When the ridiculously manufactured Clinton-McCain outrage hit the news, over Obama's comments that people who have been abandoned by Washington are bitter, she gave a speech in which she adopted that voice – you know the one – the voice she used in New Hampshire after Obama cleaned her clock in Iowa – the one where she gets all soft and syrupy with that fake compassion, that fake sweetness. She said that "my opponent" thinks people are bitter. "That's not my experience," she went on, saying the people of Pennsylvania are optimistic and hard working and resilient.
What a disingenuous political hack (translate: lying opportunist) she is.
First of all, you can be bitter and still be resilient. One is a feeling, the other is a personality characteristic. You can be both bitter and hard working. Again, one is a feeling, the other is a behavior. There have been many times in my life that I felt bitter but remained hard working and resilient.
However, what happens when you are a hard working American but there is no job for you to do because Hillary Clinton's husband signed a trade deal that sent your job overseas? Might you not get a little bitter? And what happens when you are a resilient person, and you try mightily to get a new job, but there are none to be had, or you have to get three low paying jobs just to make the same income you did when you had the one job that got shipped to China or Mexico or India?
She deliberately missed the whole point of Obama's words. Of course she did. She has been trying desperately to find something she could pin on him and this was as close as she could get. And it took her a week to get her hands on the poor quality audiotape of his words at a private fundraiser. And like all true narcissists, Hillary Clinton was outraged when Obama criticized her husband's administration, and included it in his litany of administrations that left the people behind. (Narcissists react with blind rage when they are criticized.)
Didn't Hillary read the New York Times' poll reporting that 81% of Americans think America is on the wrong track? That doesn't make them optimistic. It makes them pessimistic, and angry, and yes, even bitter. Doesn't she recognize that NAFTA, a program that she supported, sent the jobs of many of these Pennsylvanians overseas? And isn't it rich that this woman who is worth many millions of dollars is calling Obama an elitist?
Obama said nothing any different than what Thomas Frank said several years ago in his book "What's the Matter with Kansas?" In it he showed how the Republican Party takes the very obvious anger and bitterness of the poor and the lower middle class voters and gets them to vote against their own economic interests by appealing to their religious beliefs (anti abortion, anti gay) and their fear that the government wants to take away their guns.
Obama may not have phrased it very well, and the comments are taken completely out of context, as they always are by the sound bite media and manipulative candidates, but what Obama said was no less true.
Republicans win elections by convincing the same voters they have economically screwed, that their real enemies are the democrats who want to take away their guns, criminals (read blacks) who deal drugs and commit crimes, illegal immigrants who steal their jobs, gays who want to convert their kids to homosexuality, and liberal feminists who want to kill their unborn babies.
This is the truth, and Obama, in answering a question about whether he believed many whites would not vote for him, talked about how and why economically depressed people turn to other issues and why they do not always vote in their best interests.
And now Hillary Clinton is joining with the Republicans in trying to convince the people screwed by NAFTA that they are resilient and optimistic and hard working and not angry or bitter. She is trying to get them once again to turn against a candidate that the Republicans are portraying as "elitist" just as they painted John Kerry as "elitist" and as they would call her "elitist" should she win the nomination.
This is part of their plan. The Republicans depress the wages of the poor and middle class, give tax breaks to the wealthiest, wage wars that enrich their buddies, send jobs overseas, and when a Democrat points out that the people might be bitter about this, and cling to their religion and guns because that is what the Republicans pretend the Democrats want to take away, Republicans say he is "elitist."
I never thought I would live long enough to see an African American be a powerful candidate for the presidency, but I was wrong. The American people may not be where they ought to be in terms of racial attitudes, but they have come a long way. However, with that welcome development, I never imagined that such a candidate might be called "elitist" by a member of his own party, a fabulously wealthy former first lady. I expect the Republicans to call Obama an elitist. After all, it's their code word for uppity black. But I did not expect it from a fellow Democrat.
If Hillary Clinton becomes the president, she will be another embarrassment. She will lie and distort and manipulate as much as George W. Bush, and she will be just as vicious as Nixon. And while she will not mangle the language like Bush does, nor do that shoulder shrugging giggle, she will use that fake smarmy, syrupy voice and talk down to the people. That is why, when I see her lips moving on television, I hit the mute button.
