One of us...?

First, the appetizer: You may recall my offer of $100 to Fahrad Manjoo if he could name three major topics on which Barack Obama had neither lied nor switched positions. (Fahrad had previously written a piece claiming that McCain lies more than Obama does.) I did not propose a two-way contest: I did not ask any money from him. I told him that his readers, Slate readers, MSNBC readers, could judge the matter. But MooJuice would not take the offer. Either he doesn't need the money or can't name three topics on which Obama has been honest.

Oddly enough, neither could my pro-Obama readers. They send me daily insults. But they could not name the three topics.

On to the main dish: Let me add my voice to the chorus praising Anglachel's latest.

The erudite denizens of Whole Foods Nation are angry at the ungrateful wretches who won’t bow to the superiority of the creative class, and they have no interest in even trying to appeal to the Clinton Democrats. Gauging from the rhetoric of this season, from Donna Brazile down to the trolls in my comments, the Democratic Party is determined to rid itself of those constituencies they see as traitors to the cause.

Obama’s campaign is not about social goods and resources, but about cultural markers of class inclusion, such as your level of education, where you shop, whether you live in urban or rural environments, etc. He has difficulty addressing the failures of an economic system contiguous with his own class and which is deeply invested in his candidacy, and I don’t just mean the campaign contributions. He is the exemplar of a mode of life that, while not as unreachable as that of Bush’s base, is still out of reach of those who do not have the education, acculturation and business contacts to climb up that economic ladder.

The ultimate shadow of Reagan is that you don’t win by defending losers, only by securing the interests of the winners. That is the dark heart beating in the chest of the Unity Democrats. They are done with the losers.

The war within the party is here correctly framed as a class war. Riverdaughter continues this theme:

...a Clinton Democrat is one of the most reviled creatures on earth to the Unity Democrats. We’ve all experienced this irrational hatred towards us. For example, I can now spot an Obama troll from a mile away by noting the condescension dripping off the page. They assume that we are just barely literate even though many of us have advanced degrees or no degree but are self-taught BS detectors.

Let me add this.

Part of Obama's appeal is that he can frame his story as an "up from rags" success tale, even though he has always felt at home with the brie-and-chablis crowd. One factor, and one only, allows him to manage that trick: The color of his skin. His Whole Foods Nation acolytes believe that race grants him working class hero status, even though nothing else in the man's history reeks of the despised proletariat.

Consider the remarkable origins of Dreams From My Father, Obama's first autobiography. From Wikipedia:

The publicity from his election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review led to a publishing contract and advance for a book about race relations. In an effort to recruit him to their faculty, the University of Chicago Law School provided Obama with a fellowship and an office to work on his book. He originally planned to finish the book in one year, but it took much longer as the book evolved into a personal memoir. In order to work without interruptions, Obama and his wife, Michelle, traveled to Bali where he wrote for several months. The manuscript was finally published in mid-1995 as Dreams from My Father.

Barack Obama became the president of the Harvard Law Review in 1989. Throughout his time in that office he did not write a damned thing, even though few other students in that position would have squandered the opportunity. When he got the Dreams contract, he was unknown and unpublished.

"Fellowships," as too few people know, are a racket. What kind of advance did his publishers give him? Enough to live on, apparently. Enough to open an office.

Not only that: He traveled to Bali, in order to work without interruptions.

Bali? Freaking Bali? Are you kidding me?

Doesn't sound very prole to me. If were paranoid, I'd suggest that the "book" thing was a cover.

Seriously, I've never heard of a tyro author receiving such an arrangement, and I've worked for a few publishers. Obama had a thin resume and a thinner sense of discipline. His book did not stand much chance of selling more than a few thousand copies. (At the time, who knew that he would run for president?) And yet, for some reason, he received the luxury treatment. One gets the impression that, had he asked, his publishers would have hired a flunky to pop his zits.

There is a clubhouse, my friends. And someone handed young Barack Obama the key.

Before Harvard, Obama had opted to attend Occidental College in Los Angeles -- a decision which tells us much. Oxy is (or was) a private college populated by rich whelps who lack the GPA for the more highly regarded University of Southern California. Obama's grades were not stellar. Why didn't he stay within his home state of Hawaii? By his own account, he went to Los Angeles to chase after a girl he knew, who lived in the upscale enclave of Brentwood. Apparently, his affluent grandmother did not mind paying for this adventure.

I'm not much older than Obama. At roughly the same time, my widowed mom worked as a waitress -- in Brentwood, as it happens. (She was a single mother who raised two kids, just like Ann Dunham. Unlike Ann, she couldn't hand her kids over to Grandma in order to travel the world on a journey of self-discovery.) Even though Mom earned pretty good tips, what do you think her reaction would have been if I had told her that I wanted plane fare to go to Hawaii in order to chase a girl?

Barack Obama has lived a life of privilege. Perhaps not Bush-level affluence, but nevertheless: Privilege.

Not that there's anything wrong with that: The same could be said of JFK. But JFK never pretended to be other than what he was. He never framed his personal story as an "up from rags" tale. He never told fibs about living on food stamps. His surrogates never accused his political opponents of operating out of a sense of entitlement. Had his surrogates tried to make that case against LBJ, the public would have laughed its collective head off.

Barack Obama reminds me of an angry black student I ran into while visiting the University of Southern California campus in order to hear a talk by Orson Welles. For some reason, that student hated me on sight, even though my only sin was to try to start a conversation about The Trial. He made crystal clear that he loathed me as a child of privilege, even though he was the one attending U-freaking-SC while I went to lowly CSUN. Meeting a white kid from a state school filled that guy with a strange mix of underclass resentment and elitist disdain.

Obama's followers -- especially his black supporters -- also remind me of that kid. They insist on framing their hero's story in terms of Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen.

What trouble, exactly, has Obama ever seen? Even his admirers, when pressed, will admit that Obama is filled with simmering resentments which sometimes bubble into visibility. You can see the bubbles in his books. But what justifies those resentments? What trouble has he seen?

He ain't one of us.

I speak in terms of class, not race. Progressives will pretend that I am talking about race, because they think that accusing Obama's opponents of bigotry will put their man into power. Sorry, but that trick won't work any more.

Yes, I understand that John McCain -- son of an admiral, and wedded to wealth -- ain't one of us either. Far from it: He hails from a far more rarified level of privilege. McCain is like JFK in this regard (and only in this regard): He does not pretend to be other than what he is.

Obama does.

That's why I've never regretted my vote for Jesse Jackson in 1988: I may have grown up poor, but he rose up from destitution, from a form of poverty that makes me feel both ashamed of and grateful for all that I had. When Jackson said "Nobody knows the trouble we've seen" at the '84 Democratic National Convention, the words carried a shattering authenticity. Yes, he was talking about race -- but not, I think, just about race. He was telling us about his experience. Jackson could claim a level of experience which neither Obama nor McCain will ever know. One day, I would like another chance to vote for someone with that kind of experience, for someone who truly knows what it means to be poor -- and I really don't give a damn about the color of his skin.