So, you got several people vying to be the most powerful single person in known space. We are to be surprised that such people are egotistical? Tend to regard themselves as part of an elite? Gasp! But what’s worse, a liberal elite, that seeks to express its superiority by caring for and guiding a people, in direct contradiction to the noble and accepted norm, of expressing your superiority by grabbing everything you can get your hands on.
Maybe Obama (and Hillary) are as egotisitical and elitist as say, Donald Trump. (OK, we’re playing fast and loose here…) Even so, they’re a damn sight better human beings.
I said that most politicians are that way. Obama gains support on his campaign of not being a typical politician. If he has the same attitudes of condescending arrogance towards the people he plans to govern, then some of that support is misplaced.
I’m not saying that is the case, by the way, merely that it’s an issue worth exploring.
Radical Islam must be tearing its collective beard out. “Excuse me? What is this, the 1950s? Wasn’t I supposed to be the ultimate bogeyman of the 21st century? Remember me? Kaboom? Buildings fall down? You’re supposed to be afraid of the guy because of his name! Obama! O-b-AMA! Hello? Goddamn it.”
I didn’t mean to convey that message. People like me and most of them know that people like Dio will sometimes group us with white nationalist types, and so we’re especially sensitive to being thought of that way.
I can’t completely infer the inner workings of most of the people there, but there was very little of any sort of racism and what little I saw (I can only remember vaguely one incident involving a racist joke) was admoninished. So I doubt many of them were racists. Maybe some secretly were, who knows. But the only incident of racism I recall was quickly ostracized.
I think you may be trying to infer a distinction that wasn’t there and wasn’t meaningful, but that may be my fault in the way I told it.
Yeah, I know. It just seems so strange the way things have flipped. She was the one making fun of cookie-baking housewives 16 years ago, and now she’s gun-totin’ Hill, woman of the people.
The second sentence in the quote there brings to light another misconception that urbanites have about people in small towns. Guns aren’t a conservative/liberal issue here. For the most part, the Democrats in Montana hunt (and own guns, natch) in Montana just like the Republicans do.
Well, whose fault is that? Maybe the Dems could pick up more of those “small town” votes if they made it a Democratic issue, too (protecting gun rights, that is). Isn’t that why Kerry had those pictures of him goose hunting and Hillary is now bragging about how she once shot a duck-- an attempt to change that image?
You assume that they would gain more votes than they would lose. I’m not so sure. The NAACP, which represents parts of the core Democratic constituencies, is firmly in favor of gun control (because they believe it leads to marginally less inner-city violence). Many liberals feel the same way. Only a tiny fraction of Americans wants less strict gun control than we have now, and a plurality want more strict control. That’s not a good way to determine people’s rights, but it is a good way to get their votes.
Perhaps not as many of them are single-issue voters are NRA people are. But there is little doubt that it is a divisive issue on which Democrats drive people out of the party either way. A pro-gun stance might get more votes in Ohio and Virginia, but lose them in Florida and Oregon.
It seems like the Dems should do with guns what the Republicans allegedly want to do with the gays- become all “Federalist” on guns.
Attitudes about guns are very different from region to region, as is the utility of owning a gun. I’m trying to imagine not having several guns in an environment in which I am responsible for a lot of land (for example) and I just can’t do it. So let’s leave it to the localities, the municipalities, and the states. Then folks can essentially vote with their feet once the issue is settled locally.
This seems like a tenable position for a Democrat to have on gun control that does not threaten them in their base urban environments.
Again, you need to get out of the city once in a while. In our last election here in Montana, every Democrat running for Congress (and the Democratic Gubernatorial candidate) had at least one picture circulating of them carrying a gun, either hunting or target. Democrats here are not anti-gun, and gun owners are not viewed as “clinging to the issue because they’re depressed and bitter over losing their jobs 20 years ago.” Having a gun in this area is like having a tractor or a snowblower or a weedeater. It’s a tool.
What makes you think I haven’t been out of the city? I know plenty about small towns. My wife is from a small town (she’s from the town in that “Jesus Camp” movie, so that shows you how conservative it is) and I’ve been going there multiple times a year for almost two decades. I sometimes go out on my wife’s parents farm and shoot targets.
Obama wasn’t saying people cling to guns because of economic depression, he was saying they gravitate to social issues in the voting booth, because they don’t believe Democrats really want to help them. Obama’s full remarks have been almost univerally truncated to remove that critical point. He was being critical of his own party and saying he understood why people would be skeptical of his message. He wasn’t saying people turn to guns and religion because they’re bitter, but that their bitterness and skepticism makes them turn a deaf dear to promises of economic change and that they vote on social issues instead because they think they acn have more of an influence on those things.
I happen to agree with you on his meaning, but still I can see how it would be honestly interpreted as a slight. In any event, it’s a valuable conversation to have if your goal is really to change how things work and upset what politicians take for granted.
It may have been a mistake to say it, but I think we’ll be glad that we’re talking about it in the end.
I think that, presuming that Obama survives this, and I’m pretty sure that he will, Obama is demonstrating that it is possible to challenge the conventional framework of acceptable “discussion” when it comes to political campaigns. If he continues to pull this off, I will become very optimistic about the possibility of real substantive change coming about in our country.
