BernieHund: The Political Watchdog

Once again Senator Hillary Clinton has won a landslide victory in the Kentucky primary, taking some 65% of the vote.  According to the reports, Clinton once again won the support of the “white working class voters.”  And, much as was reported following the West Virginia primary, the reporters and pundits have come just short of saying that the Kentucky voters who supported Clinton in the primary are poor, uneducated and ignorant.

No one dares say what they think.  On MSNBC, one reporter danced around the issue delicately saying the Clinton supporters were from “isolated areas” that still linked Obama’s middle name “Hussein” with the Hussein name related to terrorism.  Of course, the inference was that the voters were from the back woods and are ignorant… whether that was the intended implication or not.

The reference to Obama as “elitist” that Clinton brought to the campaign rhetoric has stuck in some areas.  Others have referred to him as “exotic.”  Both terms are a tricky play on what people perceive in the more rural areas of the country.  Both terms will have to be overcome in the general election by the Obama campaign.  Again, it is a matter of labels and perception.

It seems to me that Obama is anything but “elitist.”  He is educated.  He has lived the American dream, so to speak.  Growing up as the child of a single white mother, who at one time accepted food stamps to feed her family, seems anything but elitist to me.  Instead, it seems to reinforce the American dream of rising up from a lowly background to achieve success beyond expectation.  It’s a story that should resonate with the poor and uneducated, and give hope to those single parents, both black and white, who are struggling to give their children a grasp of life beyond the trailer parks.

As far as “exotic”…. I don’t even see how that applies to Obama.  But, perhaps that’s a shortcoming of my perspective.  There is little that I see as “exotic” about a man who comes from a mixed marriage, with a black father and white mother.  If the standard for “exotic” is bi-racial, there are lots of “exotic” children in our world.  If the notion that because Obama was born in Hawaii, and lived and was schooled in Indonesia makes him “exotic” I can only suggest that many of our citizens are “exotic” especially if they were born into military families.  Think of all the children born in Japan or Germany to American military families.  I don’t think of them as “exotic.”

Maybe I’ve missed the point, or more importantly, maybe Obama’s campaign has missed the point by letting these two terms, “exotic” and “elitist”, and the perceptions they bring persist. 

If this primary season ever comes to an end, Obama is going to have some work to do.  But, as amazing as it may be, it seems that once the people see the likely nominee in person and hear him speak, they realize that he is just a human with a dream for our country.  And, most often the “elite” and “exotic” Barack Obama becomes the man who has climbed the ladder and embodies the American dream.