Eh. I watched a few Sunday morning news analysis shows (like Tim Russert), and the liberals were saying the same thing-- it was a stupid thing to say, and it’s not true. People in “small towns” have been into guns and religion for generations. It has nothing to do with current economic conditions.
Obama’s statement was about why they vote the way they do, not a declaration tht people get into guns and religion vecause they get laid off. He was saying that people “cling” to those things as voting issues. That’s something that gets lost when the the question is not quoted or explained.
Doesn’t matter. Guns and religion are nothing new in “small towns”. One needn’t invoke current economic conditions to explain that voting behavior.
The difference I saw between how most liberals and conservatives analyzed this is that the conservatives thought it would hurt him big time and liberals said no big deal. (That’s an oversimplification, of course, but I think you get the point.)
He didn’t say they were new as cultural artifacts, and he didn’t say the votingwas caused by the economic conditions but by the feeling that politicians don’t care about the economic positions.
Well, I know the reason for my staunch defense of gun rights isn’t because I philosophically believe in an armed populace, practically believe that guns generally do more good than harm, and am an ardent supporter of the Constitution.
No, I cling to guns because I’m a simple minded fuck whose shitty economic situation has made me prioritize unimportant things because I’m just too dumb to know what’s good for me. Fortunately, Obama knows what’s good for me, and he’ll force it on me and eventually I’ll thank him for it, because I am a petulant child who doesn’t know what’s best for me and he’s a sage-like parent who will use the government to make everything right.
I’m generally pro-Obama, and he may have a valid point in that since people expect politicians to always screw them on certain issues, they focus on other issues where they feel they have control - but the way he said it does indeed strike me as insulting and elitist. Especially lumping in gun rights advocacy with racism and xenophobia.
There’s an awful lot of overlap between those things and gun culture, though. Why do you think they sell Nazi paraphernalia at gun shows?
There’s probably a lot of overlap between the people who tie gays to trucks and who advocate a strong military. I guess anyone who believes in a big defense budget should be lumped in with gay bashers.
Edit: Gun rights advocates and gun owners (of which those who attend gun shows are a small subset) are actually two groups that don’t have quite the overlap you think.
I don’t think I ever saw Nazi paraphernalia at a gun show but then I haven’t been to one since Clinton was in office. I did see all sorts of other crazy stuff like the Turner Diaries and the John Birch Society. I also found some particularly misogynist bumper stickers that included one saying “I don’t trust anything that bleeds for seven days and doesn’t die”. I found it odd that a group of people who wanted to be seen as “normal” would have that kind of crap at their show.
I don’t doubt you, Diogenes. It’s just that it wasn’t something that I ever saw.
Marc
You’re a disingenuous fuckstick.
Go back and read what you quoted in your OP. He’s explaining voting patterns over the last 25 years. Bush/Clinton have caused these people to “cling” to guns and religion and xenophobia. It’s simply not true, and it was a really stupid, insulting thing to say.
Yes, the “clinging to guns” thing is bullshit and proof that Obama doesn’t understand guns or the people who own them.
I would be surprised if he has ever fired a gun in his life.
He was asked by a couple who were headed to Pennsylvania to canvas for him, what to expect to hear and how to respond. What will resonate with the voters there? Here’s his entire answer.
I just love the irony of the Clintons, a couple who’ve earned $100 million in the past few years (Bill earned $1 million this month for speeches) and who’ve had round the clock secret service for almost 20 years, are calling anyone elitist. Yeah, cause they’re just plain folks from Arkansas and Chicago y’know- they put their britches on one leg at a time just like folks in Pennsylvania worrying about layoffs and foreclosures do before going off to $800,000 speaking engagements. (It’s not that I mind the Clintons or anyone else being rich, mind, and I know Obama’s no pauper, but it’s just the jaw dropping nerve of a woman who probably hasn’t made a bed or dialed a telephone and brags of how many heads of state she’s met and countries she’s been too complaining about elitism when you know damned good and well she agrees with every word he said.)
Read the entirety of what Shayna quoted (finally. I’ve been trying to google fotr it without success). He was talking about how cynicism drives them to cling to guns, religion and illegal immigration as voting isues, rather than voting in their own economic interests.
What does firearms expertise have to do with anything?
You had to know the origin of it; an Obama hater who snuck a tape recorder into the event with the intent of getting a “gotcha ya” on tape to use against him (and succeeded in her quest). I posted the commentary from another attendee who was there and heard the tone and tenor of how it was spoken, here. And if you have the patience for it, you can listen to the entire nearly-hour-long event, here.
It implies that those issues are minor and people are misguided to place importance on them. People have their own value systems and it’s insulting to imply that the values that are important to them really aren’t.
I think he has a valid point in saying that people have moved away from caring about issues on which politicians have always screwed them into issues where they feel they have more control over. That’s an issue worth discussing. But the way he chose to do it was insulting, and may indicate the way he feels about people who don’t share the same values with them, and hence, may be elitist.
I haven’t been to one since Clinton either, but I went to a couple in North Dakota in the 90’s that had swastika flags, Hitler T-shirts (one t-shirt had a map of Nazi occupied countries during WWII and the words “HITLER WORLD TOUR” written on them, as well as the Turner Diaries. Maybe things have changed now, but I had a brother-in-law (who has since passed away) who was pretty huge gun nut (a single issue voter on it) and who had all kinds of literature internet stuff which crossed over the gun culture stuff with white nationalist stuff very casually. And yes, my BiL (my wife’s brother) was openly racist. He used the N word and everything. That was part and parcel of the subculture he was drawn into initially just by his interest in guns. I was around enough of the gun culture up there to see how much crossover there was with white supremacist bullshit (my BiL actually called himself a “white separatist” and seemed to believe it was a meaningful distinction).
Maybe things have changed in the last few years, but what I saw of that culture, and the way things were politicized, the way I was recruited and harrangued when all I wanted to do was go out and shoot targets in the country colored my perception of the culture pretty negatively. I’m still pro-gun rights and I wish the Dems would drop it as an issue, but I found the subculture quite distasteful, embittered and angry.
Because people who have never had any experience with guns tend to totally misunderstand them and the people who own them. I don’t think that someone who has had experience with guns would ever talk about people “clinging to guns.” People don’t “cling to guns” because their city’s economy is doing poorly. It doesn’t make any sense.
I’m reminded of Carolyn McCarthy’s attempt to reinstate the ban on “assault weapons”:
People who are in a position to make laws about guns should know what the fuck they’re talking about. Someone referring to people “clinging to guns” makes me doubt that.
I don’t know how people can quarrel with the bit about anti-immigration, anti-foreign, and anti-trade attitudes. If you look over the history of immigration/globalization in the US, waves of new immigration during times of economic downturn bring nativist sentiment. It is truism of history. When the Chinese were first coming to America, we were hunky-dory with 'em while they were building the railroads. But as soon as they started competing with whites for other jobs in cities, it was Chinese Exclusion Acts and racial feuds. That story has played out over and over again in America.
I see the objections to the inclusion of gun issues, but I think there’s still a lot of truth in what he said. There is such thing as gun culture. Gun ownership isn’t the same thing as vacuum ownership. And while there may be no inherent relationship between that culture and socioeconomic issues, I think there clearly is one for parts of it. I grew up in a smallish town, and I definitely think that a parts of gun culture have nothing to do with responsible gun ownership or defense of liberty or hunting, etc.
ETA: And I agree with DtC that the point here is that these people become culture war voters because of distrust in government’s ability to affect anything else. I don’t see what’s controversial about that at all.