Judging from the over-the-top reactions to Wednesday’s debate in Philadelphia, those Obama cheerleaders seem to be the bitter bunch - to casual observers at least. In some quarters vitriol is free-flowing, not the least because Obama’s now notorious “bitter” comments were revisited by ABC moderators.
Some at the Guardian even went so far as to take to task the blogger who broke the news, calling for “new rules”. As uberblogger Jeff Jarvis put it, “[n]ews is what happens and what people witness and what they can now share, with or without journalists.”
But those who decry the blogger and debate moderators would do no worse than examine their own thinking lest they’re guilty to the charge of double standards and worse yet, hypocrisy. Just a few months ago, when questions of media fairness were raised, some Guardian reporter superciliously dismissed it as non-issue, saying media is something each campaign “has to deal with it”.
Fair enough, and it’s high time the Obama devotees shedded their chrysalis of entitlement. If anything, Dems should have known their Achilles’ heel, having lost two elections in a row. As New Yorker’s George Parker points out, “Republicans couldn’t have dominated Presidential elections for nearly half a century if there were nothing to their charges” of elitism against the Dems, who have blithely dismissed them as right-wing populism.
For people who are not from rural, small town America, “[c]ultural fears and resentments” are something as alien as could be conjured up. The knee-jerk defense of “bitterness” of rednecks betrays the Chablis-and-brie crowd’s disdain, if not contempt, for traditional values. In this context John Edwards’s failed campaign platform of two-America reflects more the economic reality facing the country in the 21st century than the soaring rhetoric of hope and change.
However, if Dems willingly blind themselves to their weakness, they’ll have nobody but themselves to blame for electoral defeat. Yesterday’s Colbert Report hit the nail on the head when it declared, in its usual bombastic style, that white males will be the pivotal force in “Indecision 2008″.