How Obama outsmarts his critics -- on the left and on the right.

[eridani]

6. It's the snotty beltway people and their apologists who are the elitists

They just don't give a rat's ass about my neighbors, who are mostly in that 48% of the population with no discretionary income who are being devastated by the "new normal." They're all doing fine, and could care less that we are on track for 20 years of no net job growth.

They're the ones who offerd up Medicare and Social Security in the "Grand Bargain." They're the ones who keep mewling about deficits, austerity and "shared sacrifice."

In 2008, I made sure that that one irregular voter was able to vote for Obama. She's white, late middle age and low income. Her records had inconsistencies, and she had gotten notices that she was not registered. She didn't have a computer, so I got online, found that she was listed, and asked someone from the elections department to get back to her. She said she had not voted since voting for Clinton in 1992, but that this year was really, really important.

What was apparently not very important to her after 1992 was voting in 1994, and I'm sure you all remember what happened that year. There is a widely shared mythology that the 90s were some sort of apex in prosperity, but that is not the case. The tech bubble disguised a lot of the harm caused by outsourcing and welfare "reform," even though Clinton managed to blunt some of the worst Republican excesses. The real value of the minimum wage rose, but came nowhere near its peak in the late 60s. http://www.epi.org/issueguides/minwage/figure1.pdf

She and people like her have not seen any motion toward improvement in our economy. She can't afford to get sick, and people like her in Massachusetts had their budgets destroyed by mandatory insurance to the point where they can't afford to pay for a doctor visit. Where are the policies that will help her?

http://www.counterpunch.org/bageant09092004.html

The truth is that Dottie would vote for any candidate, black, white, crippled blind or crazy, that she thought would actually help her. I know because I have asked her if she would vote for a president who wanted a nationalized health care program?" "Vote for him? I'd go down on him!" Voter approval doesn't get much stronger than that.

Quite a few of the Dotties of all colors came out for Obama in 2008. If Democrats don't start acting like they care about the lives of those people, they'll stay home in 2012. In the absence of economic improvement that is visible in their lives, this part of the electorate is likely to go back to apathy, continuing a very ominous and self-reinforcing trend.

They don't give a shit about pissy little laundry lists or bikini graphs. They want to know whether or not Democrats are on their side.

Or you and your well-off pals can just keep thinking that cuts in Medicare and Social Security, and the elimination of milions of public sector jobs don't matter. Thanks ever so much for ushering us all into a new dark age. Not.