Liberal Condescension

The Republicans have one hope in the next election: The Democrats’ Achilles heel. Namely, that liberals are SO condescending to typical, normal Americans. That does not wear well for typical, normal voters. Consider what Barack Obama says, as recorded here:

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them…And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.

And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

So THAT’S why we small town yokels are religious. And THAT’S why we “cling to guns” and have problems with illegal immigration. Nothing about beliefs or principles. We are economically depressed and so are in need of Obama’s government programs. Then we wouldn’t have to be religious or like guns anymore.

Obama is saying now he didn’t mean to come across that way. But what is more worrisome is the glimpse of a worldview that the statement reveals. It reflects that old leftist ideology that Obama has up till now done such a good job of trying to transcend, the Marxist and neo-Marxist notion that accounts for beliefs, institutions, and habits of mind as nothing more than covers for economic oppression.