And that's probably as true for this latest gaffe as for all the others.
The point that Obama's (incredibly) loyal defenders seem to be missing is that it is courageous to speak your truth if you are a novelist or a minister or a filmmaker or a singer of folk reality. But Senator Obama is supposed to be winning the voters, not alienating them. He's not a prophet, he's a politician - and that carries a different set of requirements. So maybe it's time (past time) to lay off the 'but Obama deserves to be understood properly' thing, okay?
We the voters deserve to be understood properly. That's his job. Not vice versa. It isn't supposed to be all about him. It isn't an Obamacentric world, where non-Obama has just got to understand Obama's deep truths. In politics, the politician isn't the one who gets to be the center of the universe, with the moral right to demand that everyone else look at reality through his eyes. Especially when that vision comes with a gobsmacking dose of "like it or not".
The campaign trail is not the place to educate. It is the place to reap the harvest of what was already sown. Elsewhere.
Let him live with the same rules he's willing to dole out to others for awhile. Maybe that'll teach him something he just doesn't seem able to grasp otherwise.
Every other candidate has to simply go with what they said - not with "you have to understand what he really meant (as we will explain it to you)" or "you have to understand the context (as we wish to define it)".
It's really frustrating and it's really annoying, how the explanations just keep coming - what he really meant by "typical white person", what he really meant about his grandmother's bigotry, what he really meant about those bitter Midwesterners with their...no. No, this won't do.
No more explaining that what he said wasn't really what he said. Face it: this guy is not ready to be President. He is too openly contemptuous of too many Americans. And, yes, it shows. And, yes, that's a problem. He fails to comprehend why it comes across as hypocritical to judge others in ways he himself does not wish to be judged.
He doesn't understand white working class voters. He hasn't done the work required to get to know them. So he should shut up with his sweeping generalizations, and he should stop claiming for himself the right to be the guy who knows everything about everyone.
What's upsetting is how it reeks of manipulation. Media coverage should not be what determines which candidate wins. The media should have smacked Obama down months ago, but instead they keep trying to excuse and justify him. People argue over motives, why the media behaves the way it does, but there is this appearance that the manipulation is there, it is deliberate, and it is interfering with the processes of democracy. Free markets depend upon accurate information, and so do free and fair elections.
Obama's fans are in denial - have been since Wright: there is no way this guy could win the general election. They think issues like Wright and Grandma have been conquered, we should just move on. They cannot see that the Republicans are saving up Obama's big stupid mouth for that moment in the general election when it can do the most damage (not only to him, but to the whole party).
He's just too out of touch. So are his supporters. They genuinely don't understand that their point of view is not only not universal, but actually a very small slice of America. This point of view is waaaay overrepresented in the media (you'd never know there was such a thing as a centrist Democrat - let alone that there are so many). This over-representation makes their point of view seem much more mainstream than it really is.
But really - that's not a good thing for the Democratic party.
Republicans aren't offering much that is real, policy-wise. Dems ought to be winning, but they aren't. This is why the Dems lose - because the party has a fatal, election-killing flaw that desperately needs to be fixed.
Because you'd think (and people do think) that most Dem voters are like what we all see in the media - it is natural to think this is representative. But it isn't representative, and, in fact, a huge percentage (I'd wager the majority) of Dem voters aren't really like the media that claims to represent its voice. This is especially true on domestic issues and "values" issues - the issues that elites see as "oh those dumb voters fall for Republican distraction tactics, and fail to vote their own interests". If the elites weren't so hung up on their need to demonstrate and justify their own obvious superiority, they'd see that more is at work than cheap distractions. We're talking about real and significant policy differences that aren't being addressed, because the Democratic leadership is unforgivably judgmental about those they fail to comprehend.
In other words, the real problem is that the elites have no desire to learn what it must really be like to walk a mile in the average man's shoes - not the other way 'round.
When the party's leadership and power is a more accurate reflection of the actual party membership, that is when we'll start seeing victories to go along with actual policies.
Because what the Dems don't seem to get is, small-town America is a legitimate part of America, and the people there do vote. And that's okay. They're allowed to.
Maybe they are the way they are, not because they're stupid, but because they're smart. Maybe they can see things the elites can't see - like how it is that all those ideas and theories that sound so good in a college classroom and look so good on paper are actually horrible in the real world.
Maybe if the Dems want to win in places like Pennsylvania (and Ohio and even red states like Indiana), perhaps it's the leaders and not the followers who need to suck it up and say, "maybe I was wrong - maybe I am the one who needs to change."
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