Madrick's short piece nails it, while a much longer one by David
Leonhardt waffles as he describes Obama reconciling "dueling
views." Dueling Democrats -- like the very right wing Democrats and
the pretty right wind Democrats.
The piece by David Leonhardt, due to run in next Sunday's NY Times
Magazine, available now on-line, "How Obama Reconciles Dueling Views
on Economy," also describes a set of tired and boring ideas. Yet
Leonhardt, in contrast with Madrick, seems to think the centric mix
of the best of Reagan and Clinton is what Obama and the country
need. The piece makes Obama sound out of touch with real people and
the economy, which I guess he is. The writer likes the description
of him as "A University of Chicago Democrat" -- convinced that being
free market and compassionate will save the economy. Compassionate
here apparently means spending on roads and bridges to employ those
trained to use shovels. He seems to have swallowed the story that
wages are stagnant because we all didn't master calculus. A story
so transparently nonsensical that only an economist or someone
relying on them could believe it.
If Obama gets elected and follows the course he'll have one term (at
most) before we turn to Jeb Bush to save us.
Gene
NY Times, August 21, 2008
Rural Swath of Big State Tests Obama
By MICHAEL POWELL
(clip)
Issues might seem to break toward Mr. Obama. Only 2 of 38 people
interviewed most in random door-knocking favored remaining in
Iraq. (Mr. Obama advocates a 16-month withdrawal timetable; Mr.
McCain vows to stay until the war is won but suggests that he would
have troops out by 2013.)
Few want a handout, but fewer want government to abandon them. A
simmering hurt suffuses their words, a sense that neither hard work
nor their unions could save them.
James Stanford, a retired and still heavily muscled steel worker,
stood at his door and spoke of a pension that had evaporated. "Obama
got one thing right," he said. "We are bitter here."
John Sylvester, 76, remembers when you could not find a parking space
in Beaver Falls. You danced Saturday night at the Sons of Italy Club
and drank with Dutch Town and River Rat neighborhood boys.
Mr. Sylvester labored in a steel mill for 42 years. Then the mill
owner declared bankruptcy. Now he was bent over a chipped fire
hydrant, putting down a coat of yellow paint for $7 an hour.
His blue eyes were piercing beneath a white sun visor. "I got a
little money in the end but nothing to speak of," he said.
Decades of job losses have created a youthful diaspora you can
knock on many doors without finding anyone under age 45. Declining
enrollments forced Raccoon Township to close its elementary and
middle schools. Political wisdom holds that such fractures favor the Democrats.
But Mr. Obama does not sound like a sure bet.
"Obama's very charismatic but if you listen closely, he hasn't said a
whole lot," Mr. Sylvester said.
In Raccoon, Kelly Dobbins, a middle-aged factory worker, offered the
same. "I'm like a duck in the water I float there but underneath
I'm paddling hard as I can go," Mr. Dobbins said. "What's pushing me
toward McCain is Obama. Who is he? Where does he stand?"
Such questions hint at a cultural disconnect. Mr. Obama would invest
tens of billions of dollars in retooling mills and factories to
fashion windmills and solar panels. He notes that Denmark and the
Netherlands have grown fat off the new energy economy.
But environmentalism holds little attraction in a county where
soot-covered stoops and dirty rivers were accepted as an unfortunate
trade-off of a prosperous industrial age.
"Until people see a factory transformed, they really don't put much
store by this talk," said the Rev. Henry Knapp of First Presbyterian
Church in Beaver.
Still, two-thirds of Pennsylvanians surveyed in the Franklin &
Marshall poll ranked the economy as their No. 1 concern.
Hookstown is surrounded by emerald fields near the West Virginia
border. White-haired Art Seckman stepped gingerly off his porch.
Mr. Seckman puts no faith in Mr. McCain. "He looks tired, and he's
gung-ho about war," Mr. Seckman said. "I was a Hillary guy, but Obama
sounds honest and he's young and he understands the modern economy."
He paused, and laughed, "Maybe, funny as it sounds, it's time for a
black man to fix this mess."
For a century, Aliquippa formed the primal heart of Beaver County.
There was the mill, the company store and the Italian Renaissance
library built by the daughter of the mill founder.
Ethnic communities occupied each hill. Croats, Italians, Irish and
blacks worked, fought, and drank together. Now the downtown offers
swaybacked homes and boarded storefronts, and rubble. Aliquippa is 35
percent black, the highest percentage in the county. Glenn Kimbrough,
65, with a silver-tipped goatee and a neat Afro, came out of the
mills after 37 years.
Mr. Kimbrough is an Obama supporter but he would not hazard a guess
as to how his white buddies will vote. He said economic disaster had
exacerbated racial tensions. With the mills closed, the work force is
resegregating.
Carl Davidson, a white friend and an Obama supporter, sat in Mr.
Kimbrough's living room. "My father voted for Edwards in the primary
and now he wants McCain," said Mr. Davidson, whose father and
grandfather labored in the mills. "Without realizing it, he's wrapped
up in white-identity politics."
Sorting out white-voter discomfort with Mr. Obama is tricky business.
Most speak of unease with his newness. But one in five primary voters
surveyed in the Edison/Mitofsky exit poll in Pennsylvania said race
was a factor.
Ivan Stickles, a carpenter, worked on his motorcycle in his driveway
in Hopewell. Mr. Stickles, 57, is not taking what he sees as a gamble on Obama.
"There's this e-mail that he didn't shake hands with the troops," Mr.
Stickles said of a rumor that is false. "I don't have the time to
check out if it's true, but if it is, it's very offensive."
In Hookstown, Kristine Lakovich, 48, works the counter at Kiner's
Superette. She likes Mr. Obama, a preference she keeps to herself.
"If you ask people around here, he's not exactly the right answer,"
Ms. Lakovich said. "People are split between their politics and their
prejudice."
Nationally, the Obama campaign shies from talk of race, preferring to
argue that the poor economy will dominate this election. Such
delicacy holds no purchase here. An organizer with the United
Steelworkers met with 30 workers in Beaver. He could not have been
blunter. Mr. Obama, he told them, stands for national health care,
strong unions and preserving Social Security.
"Some of you won't vote for him because he's black," the organizer
concluded. "Well, he's a Democrat. Get over it."
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