Gene Lyons on Obama's "bitter" comment

Gene Lyons is a writer I respect a lot. I don't agree with everything he says here. It think his characterization of Obama's now-notorious "bitter" statement as "pseudo-Marxist/academic cant" is really off-base, an echo of one of William Kristol's and Joe Lieberman's more demagogic characterizations. But here it is, from Obama’s remarks feed class resentment Arkansas Democrat-Gazette 04/16/08:

Like the poor, deluded peasants in [Jeremiah] Wright’s congregation, in short, rednecks out in the boondocks cling to superstition, bigotry and conspiracy theories because the world’s too complicated for them to understand [Lyons' characterization of Obama's remark]. Never mind that Obama’s been touring Pennsylvania touting his own religious piety and opposition to NAFTA, or that Sen. Hillary Clinton seized upon his remarks with the awkward zeal of a basset hound pouncing on a pork chop. A more perfect expression of pseudo-Marxist/ academic cant - or a greater gift to Sen. John McCain and the Republicans - would be hard to imagine.

This is what Democrats get if they choose an inexperienced faculty-lounge lizard as their presidential candidate. People tend to assume that a black candidate has a lot of street sense, but Obama increasingly comes off as a classic Ivy League brainiac too impressed by his own SAT scores to change a tire without delivering an oration on the economics of rubber tree cultivation.

Since 1968, when Richard Nixon put his famous “Southern strategy” into play, two big themes have kept the GOP in the White House most of the time: race along with class and regional resentment. In seeking to transcend the former, Obama has handed them the latter on a silver platter. Republicans won’t have to caricature him as a condescending snob who looks down on working stiffs. He’s already done it to himself. Sheltered, cosseted and treated as a wonder of nature most of his life, Obama’s never run against a tough opponent, and it’s showing.

Tags: barack obama, gene lyons