How About 'Pissed Off' Workers

Truckers Protest Fuel Costs
on PA Turnpike, Interstates

Of Bitterness
and Boilermakers

By Barbara Ehrenreich

I spent an hour yesterday trying to persuade Tom Frank, author of 'What's the Matter with Kansas?' and the apparent intellectual source of Obama's remark on white working class "bitterness," to weigh in with an op-ed somewhere. Unfortunately, he'd already had 20 calls before mine on the same theme, so our conversation moved on quickly to the Disney Princess Cult and its pernicious influence on 3-year-olds. Although all this was off the record, I do not think I am betraying a confidence by revealing that Frank judged Bittergate to be "silly."

Because, of course, a lot of people, and not only in the white working class, are bitter, though "pissed off" might have been a better choice of words. Real wages have been stagnant or falling for years; fuel and now food prices are going through the roof; the repo guy is picking at the locks. Sticking to that most exotic of all demographics?white working-class men?and drawing entirely on my own circle of relatives and friends, I can confirm Obama's observation.



There's my old friend Trice, for example, a flight attendant who's bitter that his company's top executives are about to pamper themselves with fresh bonuses while he's taken a 30 percent pay cut in recent years. There's my nephew Shannon, a former delivery-truck driver who's bitter because he's discovered that his recently acquired college education in computer networking gets him only low-paid, short-term, contract work. And then there are the owner-operator truck drivers I've just gotten to know in the course of interviewing them about their nationwide slowdowns to protest $4-a-gallon diesel oil. Actually, they're not "bitter" so much as righteously up in arms because they, and so many other people, can no longer make ends meet.

Where both Obama and Clinton have gone wrong is in their stereotypes of white working class men-involving guns, religion, and now, in Clinton's case, boilermakers. There is no known correlation between the size of one's arsenal and the degree of one's bitterness; and the same goes for religiosity. It should be noted, in fact, that both the Christian Right and the sport of hunting are in precipitous decline. For what it's worth, the most heavily armed white guy I know is a vegan and animal-rights crusader who's always on my case about cheeseburgers.

As for boilermakers: The drink apparently originated among the copper miners of my native city of Butte, Mont., and it is by no means universal, as I discovered when I ordered one a couple of years ago in a Holiday Inn lounge in rural Ohio. I did not order it for purposes of pandering to the construction workers at the bar, but because I'd had a long, hard day at the podium. It turned out that my bar-mates found my choice of beverage so fascinating that I could not drink in peace. They'd never heard of the drink, so I had to explain, with increasing clarity as the drink went down, that where I come from, boilermakers are a comfort food.

When they either pander to or attempt to analyze white working-class men, the candidates risk tripping over some nasty stereotypes?as in, hard-drinking, white-bread-eating, gun-bearing bigots. When I blogged about the truck drivers' protests last week, I got comments complaining about my sympathy for "rednecks." This is class prejudice, and it is just as ugly as misogyny or racism.

The only thing you can say for sure about the white?or black or brown?working class is that it is being driven ever further down into poverty. Other than that, no generalizations, please?either from the $10-million-a-year Clinton or from the merely upper-middle-class Obama.

[Barbara Ehrenreich is an activist and writer, author of Nickel and Dimed, For Her Own Good: 200 Years of the Experts? Advice to Women (with Deirdre English), The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment, Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class, Kipper?s Game (a science fiction novel), and Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War.]

http://progressivesforobama.blogspot.com

Read The Full Article:
http://progressivesforobama.blogspot.com/2008/04/how-about-pissed-off-workers.htm
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Springsteen Defends & Endorses Obama

Music legend Bruce Springsteen has endorsed Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee for President. And he has also defended Obama for what many in the media and Hillary Clinton had described as elitist comments made last week by Obama.

Springsteen said that Obama "...has the depth, the reflectiveness, and the resilience to be our next president. He speaks to the America I've envisioned in my music for the past 35 years, a generous nation with a citizenry willing to tackle nuanced and complex problems, a country that's interested in its collective destiny and in the potential of its gathered spirit."

In defending Obama, The Boss said that "Critics have tried to diminish Senator Obama through the exaggeration of certain of his comments and relationships. While these matters are worthy of some discussion, they have been ripped out of the context and fabric of the man's life and vision, often in order to distract us from discussing the real issues: war and peace, the fight for economic and racial justice, reaffirming our Constitution, and the protection and enhancement of our environment."

Springsteen campaigned with John Kerry in 2004, playing to crowds of up to 100,000.

Read The Full Article:
http://2008obama.blogspot.com/2008/04/springsteen-defends-and-endorses-obama.html

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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette endorses Obama

Here is the full text of the endorsement:

On Tuesday, Pennsylvanians will have the unusual luxury of voting in a Democratic presidential primary that promises to be truly relevant. Like two opposing armies marching to a new Gettysburg, the forces of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton come to this latest battlefield symbolizing two views of America -- one of the past, one of the future. Pennsylvania Democrats need to rise to the historic moment.

For us it is the candidates' vision and character that loom as the decisive factors in this race. For as dissimilar as they are, the two share much in common. It starts with their mold-breaking candidacies. Whoever wins the nomination will vie for a special place in U.S. history -- to be either the first African-American or the first female commander in chief.

?

Although their backgrounds are different, they have come to the same conclusion, one now shared by many Americans, that the Bush administration has taken the nation on a profoundly wrong course both at home and abroad. The excitement that has animated this primary season -- the surge of new voters, the change of party registrations -- is an expression of the nation's hunger for change.

For as hard as they have run against each other, both candidates are united in running vehemently against President Bush and all his works -- another common theme that came out in their visits to the Post-Gazette editorial board on successive days this week. Sen. Clinton was the more explicit in her disdain: George W. Bush "is one of the worst, if not the worst, president we have ever had."

Not surprisingly, the policies they advocate have much in common and are generally the polar opposites of those espoused by the current administration.

On the domestic front, the prescriptions they offer on issues such as health care, the environment and education declare that government must be an agent of change to benefit the lives of ordinary Americans, not a power that shrinks from regulating or directing for fear of offending a core ideology.

In their expansive plans, Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton do have their own emphases and differences -- Sen. Clinton's health-care plan, for example, would cover more Americans than Sen. Obama's, but both would be a vast improvement on the status quo that leaves 47 million Americans uninsured and continues to soar in expense.

On foreign policy, both are united in their desire to bring the troops home from Iraq while improving the strategic situation in Afghanistan, the place of unfinished business where the al-Qaida spiders first spun their deadly web for 9/11 and are coming back thanks to the Iraq diversion.

On Iraq, for those inclined to remember, Sen. Clinton carries more baggage, for she voted to approve the war in the first place. For those inclined to forgive, she would seek to repair relations with allies strained by the Iraq misadventure, as Sen. Obama also would.

There is one last common ground for these candidates: They are both uncommonly smart, thoughtful and very well-versed in the issues. They care about people and they care about the workings of government. They are prepared.

Their strengths promise, in short, the one thing that the Bush administration has so shockingly lacked: competency. There will be no intellectually lazy president in the White House if either succeeded to it, no outsourced thinking to the vice president or the secretary of defense, no cheerfully shallow praise for unqualified political appointments, no enduring cause for embarrassment by the American people.

So forget all the primary skirmishing. Sen. Obama is every bit as prepared to answer the ring of the 3 a.m. phone as Sen. Clinton. Forget this idea that Sen. Obama is all inspiration and no substance. He has detailed positions on the major issues. When the occasion demands it, he can marshal eloquence in the service of making challenging arguments, which he did to great effect in his now-famous speech putting his pastor's remarks in the greater context of race relations in America.

Nor is he any sort of elitist. As he said yesterday in effectively refuting this ridiculous charge in a meeting with Post-Gazette editors, "my life's work has been to get everybody a fair shake."

This editorial began by observing that one candidate is of the past and one of the future. The litany of criticisms heaped on Sen. Obama by the Clinton camp, simultaneously doing the work of the Republicans, is as illustrative as anything of which one is which. These are the cynical responses of the old politics to the new.

Sen. Obama has captured much of the nation's imagination for a reason. He offers real change, a vision of an America that can move past not only racial tensions but also the political partisanship that has so bedeviled it.

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To be sure, Sen. Clinton carries the aspirations of women in particular, but even in this she is something of a throwback, a woman whose identity and public position are indelibly linked to her husband, her own considerable talents notwithstanding. It does not help that the Clinton brand is seen by many in the country as suspect and shifty, bearing the grimy stamp of political calculation counting as much as principle.

Pennsylvania -- this encrusted, change-averse commonwealth where a state liquor monopoly holds on against all reason and where municipal fiefdoms shrink from sensible consolidation -- needs to take a strong look at the new face and the new hope in this race. Because political business-as-usual is more likely to bring the usual disappointment for the Democrats this fall, the Post-Gazette endorses the nomination of Barack Obama, who has brought an excitement and an electricity to American politics not seen since the days of John F. Kennedy.

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Springsteen Endorses Obama

The Boss
Recommends
A New Boss




By Bruce Springsteen

Dear Friends and Fans:

LIke most of you, I've been following the campaign and I have now seen and heard enough to know where I stand. Senator Obama, in my view, is head and shoulders above the rest.

He has the depth, the reflectiveness, and the resilience to be our next President. He speaks to the America I've envisioned in my music for the past 35 years, a generous nation with a citizenry willing to tackle nuanced and complex problems, a country that's interested in its collective destiny and in the potential of its gathered spirit. A place where "...nobody crowds you, and nobody goes it alone."




At the moment, critics have tried to diminish Senator Obama through the exaggeration of certain of his comments and relationships. While these matters are worthy of some discussion, they have been ripped out of the context and fabric of the man's life and vision, so well described in his excellent book, Dreams of My Father, often in order to distract us from discussing the real issues: war and peace, the fight for economic and racial justice, reaffirming our Constitution, and the protection and enhancement of our environment.

After the terrible damage done over the past eight years, a great American reclamation project needs to be undertaken. I believe that Senator Obama is the best candidate to lead that project and to lead us into the 21st Century with a renewed sense of moral purpose and of ourselves as Americans.

Over here on E Street, we're proud to support Obama for President.



http://progressivesforobama.blogspot.com

Read The Full Article:
http://progressivesforobama.blogspot.com/2008/04/springsteen-endorses-obama.html

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The Hope-bug. . .

So, I haven't posted on this blog for months. I am pretty intimidated by it. I don't really write in a manner that I deem appropriate for a blog of this nature, and I am certainly not as eloquent as Cindy or Angie. I posted something over at Ain't That Sherific today that I thought I would share here. . .

Anyhoo, I've been out of touch. I decided to open the laptop today and check out some regular reads . . . what I saw was a few tabs open from the hubby. He had been following a string of comments over at a blog that I sometimes frequent. I was curious and I got sucked in. The argument was from a Clinton supporter and was uber-bashing Obama.

When I woke this morning at 4:00 it was playing on my mind. Robert and I had talked about it last night. Certain things in her argument had rubbed me the wrong way. I would link to the post and talk about my arguments, but that's not what this post is about. . . so hold on. I told Robert that I couldn't really grasp her argument because I felt it was totally and completely bitter and arrogant. She was playing cards that I really didn't agree with. Had we been playing euchre, I would've asked for anther partner. He said that it was nearly the same argument that he found all over the pro-Clinton blogs. . .

I laid in bed for an hour or so this morning (I cherish my sleep, usually I squeeze every last minute I can out of he alarm clock) turning it over and over in my head. Then I decided to come downstairs and check it out. Sure enough, most of what I deemed malarky that she was spewing was on each and every site I visited. It was as though this was a talking-points memo from the HRC campaign. Bitterness ensued everywhere I went. Anger spewed.

My point? Oh yeah, I need to have one of those. . . My point is that in my little sweep of the blog-o-sphere confirmed for me what I was pondering in bed. Obama supporters that I have met in real life and on this infernal machine have one thing that Hillary supporters don't. Hope. I know, I know some of the blogs I read sarcastically call Senator Obama "Mr. Hope" and mock him, but that IS what he inspires. It is exactly the opposite from the HRC (Hillary Rodham Clinton) supporters that I have read this morning. (I know not everyone so don't get your panties in a bunch, but I will say MAJORITY) They are content to bash Obama and sound bitter and ugly and arrogant. They seem angry. They seem, dare I say it . . . bitchy.

It really is a pretty striking difference if you look. It is not ALL that way. There are some hopeful and positive HRC supporters and some angry, bitter Obama supporters, but the majority of what I found, did support my argument this morning. It seemed pretty telling to me.
I was one of those people that saw Obama's speech to the Convention in 2004 and said, "He will be our first black president." He inspired. He has hope. He thinks it is possible to lift America back to where it once was before Bush got a hold of it. I am pessimistic by nature. I'm not certain it can be done. I think maybe the damage done to our country and our reputation is far too much. Maybe we are in a downward spiral that cannot be reversed. Having a presidential nominee say that "we can do it" isn't new. But when Barack Obama says it I can believe it. Why? Because you can see that HE believes it. That, my friends, is inspirational. Maybe that's why I haven't seen the same extent of Hillary bashing on Obama sites as I have Obama bashing on Hillary ones. We have hope. We have positive vibes for change. We have what our candidate has, apparently it is catchy. . .

Read The Full Article:
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