Boiled down, the new Obama message to Americans is:
you're too stupid to overcome your fears. To be fair,
it's not entirely new. During the 2008 campaign, Obama
was caught on tape at a San Francisco fund-raiser saying
it was not surprising that voters facing economic
hardship "get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or
antipathy to people who aren't like them".
At a fund-raiser in Massachusetts this month, Obama
spoke of Democrats having "facts and science and
argument" on their side. As opposed, presumably, to the
lies, superstition and prejudice that Republicans rely
on.
This year, Democrats have embraced with gusto the
notion that Republicans, and by extension anyone
thinking of voting for them, are dimwits. Their mirth
over the likes of Tea Party figures like Christine
O'Donnell, the former anti-masturbation activist who
once she had "dabbled" in witchcraft and is now a
no-hoper Senate candidate in Delaware, seems to know no
bounds.
The most chortling of all about the populist Tea Party
and its anti-tax, anti-government uprising against the
Republican establishment can be found on the shows of
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, the edgy liberal
satirists on Comedy Central. Mocking Republican
candidates last week, Stewart declared the midterm
elections as "the best chance ever for a bowl of fresh
fruit" to be elected.
Three days before the elections, Stewart will hold a
"Rally to Restore Sanity" in Washington on the same day
as Colbert, who adopts the character of a Right-wing
talk show host, leads a "March to Keep Fear Alive". The
thinly-disguised message: Republicans are crazies who
trade on fear.
In choosing California and Massachusetts, two of the
most liberal states in the union, to demean ordinary
Americans during election campaigns, Obama did not
display a whole lot of his much-vaunted intelligence.
But Obama's decision to plug Stewart's rally approvingly
and appear on his show three days beforehand is even
more foolish.
In the 1990s, Democrats managed to get away from their
image as "eggheads" in the 1950s or "pointy-headed
liberals" in the 1970s. Bill Clinton spoke like a Good
Ol' Boy from the Deep South, ate junk food and enjoyed
trashy women. He was clever, but he did not look down on
people.
Obama, by contrast, has become a parody of the Ivy
League liberal smugly content with his own intellectual
superiority and pitying the poor idiots who disagree
with him. It is an approach that shares much with the
default anti-Americanism of British and European elites,
who love to mock the United States as a country full of
gun-toting, bible-clutching morons.
David Cameron has made nods to this sniffy
condescension, speaking of the Sarah Palin phenomenon as
being "hard for us to understand" (how about giving it a
go, Dave?) and describing American conservatism,
inaccurately, as moving in a "very culture war
direction". This might be part of the reason why he
seems to have hit it off with Obama.
The problem for Obama and the Democrats is that
belittling the Tea Party movement, which is taking hold
of much of Middle America, merely fuels the popular
sense that the party in power is out of touch. It also
highlights the reluctance of Obama and the Democrats to
discuss the Wall Street bail-out, economic stimulus and
health care bills because they know they are not vote
winners.
Joining the Europeans in mocking ordinary Americans for
their supposed idiocy may play well at big-dollar
fund-raisers. In adopting this as a political strategy,
however, the Democrats could be the ones who end up
looking stupid.
