William A. Jacobson:
Sorry, this cannot wait for the Saturday Night Card Game.
Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine, leading liberal blogspheric/journalistic light, has figure out why Obama’s “you didn’t build that” speech isn’t going over that well (h/t Crawdad Hole).
It’s because OBAMA SUPPOSEDLY SPOKE LIKE JONATHAN CHAIT THINKS CONSERVATIVE WHITES THINK BLACKS TALK (after three and one-half years of blogging, I finally go all caps):
The key thing is that Obama is angry, and he’s talking not in his normal voice but in a “black dialect.” This strikes at the core of Obama’s entire political identity: a soft-spoken, reasonable African-American with a Kansas accent. From the moment he stepped onto the national stage, Obama’s deepest political fear was being seen as a “traditional” black politician, one who was demanding redistribution from white America on behalf of his fellow African-Americans….
This is why Obama is suddenly pivoting to positive ads, with him talking to the camera. It is the soft-spoken Obama of old, with a gentle musical background….
What concepts is Obama associating himself with here? Hard work, middle class. It’s people getting out of bed early, tossing bales of hay into trucks, wearing business attire in office settings. Not lazy-welfare-underclass.
The entire key to the rise of the Republican Party from the mid-sixties through the nineties was that white Americans came to see the Democrats as taking money from the hard-working white middle class and giving it to a lazy black underclass. Reactivating that frame is still the most mortal threat to the Democrats and to Obama. That is why Obama is reacting so urgently to reestablish himself.
Hey, Mitt can talk the talk.
Is it the Obama of old, the soft-spoken Marxist?
The Obama of old that was schooled and befriended by Communists and so dearly loved by the Left.
@Greg: BOHICAman, welcome to the discourse. I wait with bated breath for your pearls of socialist, Marxist wisdom.
The reason Obama’s “you didn’t build that” speech isn’t going over well is because of it’s disingenuous idea. That is, that someone else made your success happen.
One of the primary arguments liberal/progressives favor in “explaining” away Obama’s speech is the part immediately preceding it, something about roads and bridges built which allowed a person, or persons, to have success.
Of course, this is where logic fails. Those roads and bridges are available to everyone. The “infrastructure” Obama is using as his reasoning point behind a person’s success, was also available, equally, to those not having success.
And those roads and bridges have been unequally paid for by those who did have success.
If “infrastructure” was so instrumental in a person’s success, then we wouldn’t see a restaurant with people lining up out the door right next to a restaurant barely getting by. We wouldn’t see a strip mall where every other store has people going in and out constantly all day long, while the other stores sit virtually vacant.
“Infrastructure” is more of a constant in everyone’s lives, not the difference maker between success and failure. To suggest that it is, is pure ignorance. The only question is, is that ignorance due to innocence, or is it a purposeful mislead intended to foment more class-envy. I think most of us know the answer.
Wow. So thinking deeper along those lines, Obama was in effect saying to every successful black entrepreneur in that crowd (and this nation,) every one of them who’d worked hard to give their children a better life: Hey! “You didn’t build that!” That has to have been a chilling “come to Jesus moment,” for Obama to turn around and tell every single one of those local black community leaders that ‘they didn’t build that! Uncle Sam did!’ Very interesting! I never even contemplated that particular narrative. That would also be denigrating them further, in implying that without “Uncle Sugar Daddy,” without affirmative action, without Momma government suckling them for all those years, why, they never could have done it!
Man, that’s just cold!
make him mad, and you will see the real person shouting to the people you’ll see the smurf on his face,,
was he drunk when he talk to the PEOPLE, OR DID HE USE HIS FAVORITE ENHANCER,
HE LOOK LIKE IT HAD SOME EFFECT, IT SHOW THE GREED AND ENVY FOR THOSE HE ALWAYS PICK ON, THEY ARE ALSO THE SUCCESS OF AMERICA, WHO DEMOLISH THE THEORY OF COMMUNIST
IN AMERICA, AND HE CAN’T STAND THE BLOCK THEY CREATE FOR HIS AGENDA OF
ALL MUST BE EQUAL ON A SAME RANK EXCEPT THE LEADER AND HIS SELF CREATED LADDER,
BUT BUT HE CAMPAIGN A LOT FOR MONEY TO COME TO HIM BY THOSE HE CANNOT BARE TO LOOK IN THE FACE.
black dialect? Heck then I must speak in black dialect too because I understood every word he said. I am going to bet they aren’t going to let barry off the teleprompter any more. It was a good thing though because it really showed the world what he thinks of us as an American people. Read about obama sr – he didn’t think there was anything wrong with the government taking 100%!! of your salary. I don’t know how much influence he had from sr. but his mother was about as red as they come along with everyone she associated .
I don’t agree with everything Romney states nor should I EVER believe that I would agree with him 100%, but there is one thing I know and that he loves his country and wants her to succeed and become the country she was before barry got his hammer and cycle into her. ABO