Where the elite meet to eat

One day, long ago and far away, back at the end of April, beginning of May, when Hillary Clinton was still doing the despicable thing of trying to convince blue collar voters to vote for her, viciously ignoring the fact that nowdays the only Democratic voters that matter are people with Ph.D.'s, the New York Times and the Boston Globe ran twin stories, one about Hillary campaigning in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and the Globe's about Bill on the stump in small towns across North Carolina.

Both stories pushed the same theme, that there's an irony of some sort in the millionaire Clintons trying to appeal to working class and lower middle class voters.

The Globe's story began like this:

Sporting a well-tailored suit and arriving in a chauffeured black car, Bill Clinton is quietly working to win over small-town crowds with a populist message: Don't diss Wal-Mart shoppers.

The Times' story included these passages:

Mrs. Clinton has spent her whole life climbing the ladders of education, wealth and power. Now, as part of her effort to hold off Senator Barack Obama and claim the Democratic presidential nomination, she is climbing back down them, sounding less like a Wellesley alumna than Roseanne Barr’s old sitcom character, the den mother of her factory floor...

After the event in Fort Wayne, Mrs. Clinton greeted supporter after ardent supporter waiting in the chilly wind, her quilted black Chanel-style coat and subtly highlighted hairdo contrasting with the many untended dye jobs and chapped, makeup-less faces.

I don't know if the reporters were consciously doing it or if it's just become reflexive for journalists writing about politics, but both seem to have taken it for a given that millionaires can't possibly have any idea what it's like to be struggling or any real sympathy for the plight of the financially strapped and anxious.

That is, Democratic millionaires can't.

Cindy McCain's millions and the Bush family trust funds don't turn up in stories about John McCain's and George W. Bush's visits to factories and grange halls and small town high school auditoriums.  But then Republicans are always jess folks.  Democrats, as everybody knows, are nothing but a party of prissy, latte-drinking, leafy green vegetable eating elitists, even the dockworkers and steamfitters among us.

Hillary Clinton is playing a character on a sitcom when she tries to talk about jobs to people who are worried about losing theirs, and Bill Clinton is a charming fraud when he visits a small town, just as in another case of Insider Media reverse snobbery Barack Obama doesn't like beer or knows what arugula is or isn't nicknamed Bubba or something.  I never did understand the exact point of that Newsweek cover.  At any rate, the underlying message was clear.  Obama's an effete snob.

This is one of those Right Wing Noise Machine propaganda tropes that the Republicans have been pushing since Nixon was a pup and which today's Village Insiders accept as gospel and spread with the unquestioning fervor of St Paul.   It was what was driving all the stories about John Edwards' mansion and his expensive haircuts.  It's why Obama's remarks about people in small towns clinging to their guns and religion out of bitterness were blown up into such a big deal.  It's all proof of what's already "known."  Democrats are elitists out of touch with the concerns of regular Americans and everything a Democrat candidate does reveals his or her hypocrisy. 

So Barack Obama asks for an orange juice in a diner and that proves his elitism because regular people know you only drink coffee in a diner.  He bowls a 37 in a photo op he treats good-naturedly as a photo op, letting children take his turn for him, and that proves his elitism because regular people do nothing but bowl, apparently, and routinely break 200.  He "sips" his beer, or maybe he "nurses" it, whatever, when if he was a regular person he'd have what?  Downed it in a gulp.  Put his head under the tap and told the bartender, Don't stop until the keg's empty?  Because regular people are beer-guzzling drunks?

The Clintons show up before crowds of adoring Democratic voters who happen to have less than glamorous jobs that pay less than six figures but if they knew Bill's suit wasn't off the rack or that Hillary's highlights didn't come out of a Clairol bottle and her jacket was a Chanel knock-off they'd have been shocked and disillusioned?

A former President of the United States doesn't drive himself around in a Chevy Impala, a candidate for President dresses up for the people whose votes she's courting, and this is news why?

I know why the Village Insiders like to push this nitwit notion.  They hate Democrats, they hate Clintons, and they hate themselves for being latte-drinking, Whole Foods shopping pansies like the Democrats.  But it's an idea that liberals have used to beat up on the Media and on each other.  It crops up whenever Tim Russert or Chris Matthews or some celebrity gasbag tries to set himself up as a tribune of the people.  We hear about Russert's millions, about Matthews' home on Nantucket, where John Kerry has a house too, by the way,as if it's their wealth and good fortune and not their attitudes that make them elitists.  When Hillary Clinton released her tax records, pro-Obama types jumped on the fact that she and Bill are rolling in it as proof that her populist message is phony and expedient.  And the word bitter was hardly out of Obama's mouth before Clinton supporters were gleefully charging him with being as elitist as a member of the French Court just before the tumbrels began to roll.

Where did this idea come from, that a rich man or a rich woman can't know or care about what it's like for the less well-off?

Was Franklin Roosevelt never President?

Elitism is an attitude not a birth defect or a later mutation caused by gamma rays beamed at you when you accept your diploma from Harvard or your first paycheck from the law firm.

You aren't an elitist because you belong to an elite.  You're an elitist because you believe that that elite should be able to boss everyone else around.

In fact, you don't even have to be a member of an elite to be an elitist.  You just have to believe that an elite ought to be bossing everyone else (yourself excepted, usually) around.

There are blue collar elitists.

And elites aren't all defined by their incomes.  White males don't have to pay expensive dues to get in the club.

But getting back to the Democrats, particularly the ones who have played starring roles in this campaign, it's very strange that of all people, Bill and Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama could be automatically assumed to be phony populists or hypocrites when they express their concern for the poor and the working classes and advance policies and programs to help them.  It's bizarre that anyone would bring up their fancy educations and successful professional lives in order to sneer at them.

All of them are living embodiments of the American dream come true.  None of them was born to rank and privilege.  Bill's childhood and youth in Hope, Arkansas are the stuff of legend.  Hillary's family was about as middle middle class as anyone can be without living in Peoria, Illinois.  John Edwards is the son of a millworker and a postal clerk.  I don't know how to classify Barack Obama's upbringing, but privileged isn't the first word that springs to mind.

When they visit a factory or walk into a diner or sit down to have a beer with some hardhats or tour a neighborhood devastated by job loss or poverty, they aren't there as visiting royalty.  They are there as regular people who have made it.  They are there as inspirations.  Just by being who they are they are delivering a message.  If I did it, so can you.  If my parents managed it for me, you can manage it for your kids.  But then they all add, "I know how tough it is.  I know it's nearly impossible to do it without help.  I want to make sure the government gives you the help you need and deserve," and they are speaking from direct knowledge, they are remembering what it was like, and there's no reason to assume that because they're now successful and well-off they don't mean what they're saying.

What's the message John McCain delivers when he shows up?  You don't need any government help, all you need to do is what I did, get yourself born the son and grandson of admirals and then marry an heiress with lots of political muscle?  What inspiration is George W. Bush providing with his example?  You don't need any government help, all you need is a rich and forgiving daddy with a lot of friends who owe him big favors and you can become President of the United States, no sweat?

There's a political party that believes that the rich ought to run the country to their own benefit and pleasure.

There's another political party that believes that everybody ought to be given a chance and the government, which is us, is there to help give everybody a chance.

If you belong to the first party, you are an elitist.  It doesn't matter how well you bowl or how much you hate arugula. 

If you belong to the second party, you might be an elitist, but the case has to be proved by something more substantial than what you order in a diner or on your cheese steak.

Maybe I'm wrong.  Maybe this man was faking it.  Maybe he was an elitist too.

This weekend marks the 40th Anniversary of my first true political memory.

It's of Pop Mannion sitting in front of the television, the tears streaming down his face, as he watched the train bringing that coffin home.

It's of turning to the TV to see what was causing Pop to do what I'd only ever seen him do once before and seeing all those people lining the tracks the whole way, white, black, brown, an awful lot of them looking an awful lot less than rich, and none of them caring how much money he'd had, how rich his parents' had been, how privileged his upbringing had been. They didn't care what fine schools he'd attended.  They didn't care what games he'd played.  They didn't care what he'd ordered at that diner.  All they cared about was that he'd made himself one of their own.

By the way, what he's ordered there in that picture?  It's tea.

Take that, Chris Matthews.

The photograph of RFK was taken by Bill Eppridge.  It's from his book, A Time it Was: Bobby Kennedy in the Sixties and it's one of a series in an article in June's Vanity Fair, The Last Good Campaign. The text for the article is by Thurston Clarke and is excerpted from his book, The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days That Inspired America.

Comments

[ligedog]

Beautifully said!

[MikeT]

Oh, c'mon, if you look at McCain's tax returns, he's actually poorer than Obama. The fact that his wife is rich as Croesus and refuses to release her tax returns is completely irrelevant.

[Kathy]

Lanee-
Amen! You are by far the best at articulating what most of us think. I have been saying for months that where you live or how much money you make does not make you an elitist. Elitism is an attitude and it can be found in a trailer park or a McMansion.
Thank you for your voice.

[Apostate]

Love this post and love you for writing it. You are so right and you say it so beautifully. Thank you!

[Tom Hilton]

This is a great post, Lance...but for god's sake, why the snotty and disingenuous slam at Obama (and/or Obama supporters) in the first graph?

[Lance]

It was a shot at certain Media types, Tom. Certainly it wasn't a shot at Obama's supporters, many of whom are working class and small town voters, and it wasn't at Obama who's already making his own play for Clinton's blue collar and small town vote, and I don't know any Obama supporting bloggers who fell for that "she's after the uneducated hillbilly racist vote" line.

[Chris Quinones]

Lance, I hope you meant to use Democrat as an adjective in paragraph 9 ironically! And I'm with Tom Hilton about the snark in your opening, at this late date it's uncalled for, and your other posts today come from a place that's aware of this.

I think the thing with the "elitist" epithet is related in a way the concept of noblesse oblige -- Democrats by definition aren't noblesse, so how can they possibly oblige? They're just upstarts who don't know their place.

[Linkmeister]

Next time the Village speaks admiringly of McCain's background, remember that he's been on a government payroll his entire adult life.

Where does his admiration for the private sector come from? He's had no experience with it at all, other than taking its campaign contribution checks and doing its bidding.

[Linkmeister]

Perhaps more germane to the topic than my comment directly above is this quote:

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

Who might that be? J.K. Rowling, giving Harvard's commencement address earlier this week. Audio and video at the link.

[Mike the Mad Biologist]

remember that he's [McCain's] been on a government payroll his entire adult life.

Where does his admiration for the private sector come from? He's had no experience with it at all...

Probably from the fact that he's had no experience with it at all....

[velvet goldmine]

This isn't really my place to add this, but I was told that after RFK was killed, Pop Mannion gathered all of the toy guns in the house and disposed of them. That story always moved me.

[MikeT]

Not only has McCain never worked in the private sector, but he's had government-run healthcare for his entire life as well.

But I should add that he does have some experience in the private sector. The experience of being married to the daughter of a multi-millionaire business owner.

[Tom Hilton]

Fair enough, Lance. And I didn't mean to detract from the post as a whole, which is beautiful; I just was bugged by what read as anti-Obama snark.

[Allienne Goddard]

Just so we're clear: Tim Russert, Chris Matthews and celebrity gasbags can be fairly rebuked for channeling what "real Americans" think and care about, when they do so without any evidence. These people are not "real Americans" by any rational definition. They are members of an insular elite which is motivated by concerns quite foreign to the average American. Just so we are clear.

[Kathleen M]

Hear, hear, Lance! Great post, and here's hoping the whole world listens.

[Dan Leo]

Hey, I was born in North Philly, neither of my parents finished high school, and I make my living with my hands. But I can read French, every day I make myself a pot of tea, not coffee, and I'm a goddam liberal Democrat. There must be a few other people out there who don't fit neatly into a demographic.

Oh, and as someone who's not crazy about either Hillary or Barack -- and let's face it, no one is ever going to get to the point of being a serious contender for president in this country unless they're more than a wee bit compromised, unless they're more than a wee bit in the corporate pocket -- I'd cut off my right hand before I would vote for anyone but the Democratic candidate this November.

[Horselover Fat]

Could there be a similar analysis about masculinity? I am thinking Mike Dukakis in the tanker's helmet, John Kerrey windsurfing etc?

[gypsy howell]

'Not only has McCain never worked in the private sector, but he's had government-run healthcare for his entire life as well."

He's had government run everything his entire life, starting with being born on a military base, going right up through his legacy free ride through Annapolis (near bottom of his class, BTW), and up into the future when he, unlike me and millions of other Americans, has a guaranteed pension and guaranteed healthcare until he dies.

McCain has been sucking on the teat of the American taxpayer since literally the day he was born.

[Demosthenes]

I agree, but I think the answer's pretty simple.

There are two ways of approaching populism: cultural and economic. The former emphasizes popular culture over elite culture (however you define those), and the latter emphasizes things like income amount, income source, wealth, and all the rest.

Now, if you were a Republican, and/or a relatively wealthy media owner who subtly directs the nature of the commentary and stories through your hiring decisions, which would you want to emphasize? The one that seperates urban workers from suburban and rural workers, or the one that makes you look like an elite plutocrat? Especially when dividing suburban and rural workers from "urban elites" ensures that they won't listen to those "elites" criticizing the economic system that keeps you rich in the first place?

Seems fairly straightforward to me.

[noodles]

I loved your opening, Lance. Dont let em rewrite history - the Democrats who contributed to the stench in this primary campaign season need to own it.

I hear ya on the media stuff related to painting Democrats elitists, but here is the thing: everybody expects Republicans to be snobs. They dont expect Democrats to be. I never realized that so many fellow Dems were such unbelievable snobs until this campaign - and got it. No wonder so many non-rich white people left the party. I never understood that until the last few months. Who the hell wants to hang out with people who have contempt for you and your values?

[tdraicer]

>Fair enough, Lance. And I didn't mean to detract from the post as a whole, which is beautiful; I just was bugged by what read as anti-Obama snark.

Well, anti-Obama snark still works for me. A lot of people will vote for him because the alternative is McCain, but for no other reason.

[Paul Gowder]

This is a really fabulous post.