Obama and the white working class

I've been thinking today about Obama's speech, and reading the blog commentary. As you know, I think Obama gave a terrific speech, judged in terms of rhetoric. It probably alleviated the concerns of a number of middle-class people. But I still think that Rev. Wright's sermons have cost Obama the white working class, and he's never going to get them back.

I'm thinking of my brother-in-law in Iraq now under arms with his National Guard unit. Most, and maybe all, of the guys in his unit are working class whites. My brother in law is a firefighter in civilian life. I have no idea what his opinion of Obama is, or who he's planning to vote for in November. But I imagined him and his Guard buddies watching clips of Wright's sermons, and then listening to Obama's intellectually nuanced speech today, and I thought: Obama's toast with them. After that Wright stuff, Obama could speak with the eloquence of angels, and he'll never get them back.

I think The New Republic's Mike Crowley, who is sympathetic to Obama and who liked the speech a lot, is right when he explains why the address is not likely to win over white working class voters, even though (in Crowley's view) it's in their economic interest to vote for him.

I also think that the section of Obama's speech where he expressed understanding of white resentments against black crime, affirmative action and so forth will not be taken seriously. Don't get me wrong, I think it was a very smart thing for Obama to have said, and I even believe that he believes it. But what is he prepared to do about it? He supports affirmative action fully, for example. I don't see that in terms of policy, he's offering the white working class anything other than therapeutic rhetoric.

Finally, I was thinking about Obama's moving words in describing his relationship to his pastor and his church. Yes, he said, they can be extreme in their views, but they represent the totality of the black community, the good and the bad. To be asked to turn on them because of some deeply objectionable things they believe in and say is to demand too much. They're his family.

It's hard for any white Southerner of a certain generation to dismiss that. I grew up in a place where some older folks dear to me believed wicked things about black people. I can't say that I ever saw anyone treat black people even with as much as discourtesy. But I knew what was in the hearts of some because I heard it come out of their mouths from time to time. It's not the same thing as hearing your pastor speak this kind of garbage, but on reflection, I'm willing to cut Obama some slack on this point.

Still, I'm thinking of a point my DMN colleague Mark Davis, a conservative talk radio host, makes in his column tomorrow (which I've seen on page proofs): black leaders and liberals have driven whites who have made racially insensitive remarks from their jobs. He brings up Trent Lott and Don Imus. It's more than a little rich to insist on context and understanding for someone like Wright and his followers, when the same grace is not extended to whites.

I know this won't seem fair to liberals, and Obama explained why we should be more tolerant of Rev. Wright, whose generation really did suffer. But still, the double standard is there. Grace and understanding for old black bigots like Jeremiah Wright, but not the slightest hint of same for old white bigots, even if they, unlike Wright, express sorrow for what they said, and seek forgiveness.

Finally, I think Stanley Kurtz nails it when he identifies the Wright problem as something Obama can't easily explain away. Nobody believes Obama shares Wright's radicalism, but he doesn't have to share it to be unnerving:

Obama is persuasive because he’s sincere. You wonder how he could have sat for twenty years in Wright’s congregation listening to his minister’s shocking radicalism without leaving. Obama explains it here. He sees some exaggeration and excessive pessimism in Wright’s stance, yet he also sees the authentic voice of African-American pain. And this led Obama to tolerate, excuse, and dismiss for decades what ought not to have been tolerated, excused, or dismissed. This, unfortunately, is exactly how elite liberals come to countenance the sort of anti-American radicalism they ought to stand up and fight instead.

Remember when we were hearing about the need to purge Michael Moore and the MoveOn crowd from the Democratic Party? Obama is the polar opposite of all that–and in a devilishly clever way. Rather than move the Democrats away from the Michael Moores or Jeremiah Wrights, Obama buys absolution for them from the rest of the country. No, Obama does not fully agree with Jeremiah Wright, but the Democratic Party under Obama will be complacent about its Michael Moore wing. That’s why the MoveOn types are so excited about Obama. There will be plenty of the most left-leaning appointees staffing the federal bureaucracy and set into judgeships under Obama, and all of it will be smoothed over by speeches about national healing and understanding pain. Under Obama, the Michael Moore-MoveOn wing, far from being purged, will be in the catbird seat, and all because they’ve found the perfect spokesman.

Obama says he’s too close, and too personally indebted to Wright, to break with him. But how did he get close to Wright to begin with? Wright could not have taken up so huge a space in Obama’s life unless Obama had let Wright in. And Obama let Wright in because of Wright’s sermons, not in spite of them.

Following Stanley's line of thinking, it's interesting to reflect that Obama was not raised with this kind of enraged black radicalism, but chose as an adult to become part of its milieu. Why? That is a question left unanswered by Obama's speech today.