Is He One of Us?
by Patrick J. Buchanan
[Subscribe online to Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. Click here for details].
As one looks at the polls, the issues and the candidates, the election of 2008 resembles what poker players call a “lay-down hand.”
Two-thirds of the nation believes the Iraq war a blunder. Sixty-nine percent disapproves of President Bush. Eighty-one percent thinks America is on the wrong course.
Inflation is at 4 percent and rising. Unemployment is 5 percent and rising. Gasoline, heating oil and food prices are soaring. The dollar has lost half its values against the euro. Homes are being foreclosed upon at Depression rates. The stock market is in a swoon. And 3.5 million manufacturing jobs have vanished under Bush.
Hillary and Obama have both raised far more than John McCain.
Democratic turnout in the primaries and caucuses is two and three times what it was for the GOP. The youth, energy and enthusiasm are on the Democratic side. Voter registration is rising dramatically, and the new registrants are almost all Democrats or independents.
Thirty Republican House members are retiring. In the Senate, the big question is whether Democrats will achieve a 60-40 margin to enable them to kill Republican filibusters.
By all odds, Republican retention of the White House should be as imperiled as it was in 1932, when the hapless Herbert Hoover faced FDR.
Yet John McCain, who presides over a disconsolate party many of whose leading lights not only do not love him, they do not like him, is even money to be the next president of the United States.
What explains this?
Answer: Barack Obama, the probable nominee of the Democratic Party—his cool and pleasant demeanor aside, and his oratorical skills notwithstanding—is being steadily pushed by his own mistakes, and rivals Hillary Clinton and McCain, outside the social, cultural and ideological mainstream of American politics.
Hillary’s victory in Pennsylvania confirmed what Texas, Ohio and Florida hinted at. Barack has not closed the sale with Middle America. Moreover, he may never close the sale.
What is Barack’s problem?
Though he has stitched together the McGovern wing of the party—the anti-war crowd, the cause people, the professoriat—with the Jesse Jackson wing—90 percent of the African-American vote—he is being systematically pushed out of the heartland of the party, the white working and middle class. And reinforcing the impression in Middle America that Barack is “not one of us” is the core of both the Clinton and Republican strategies. And they are working.
In Ohio and Pennsylvania, resistance to the probable nominee hardened and calcified among Catholics, ethnics, union and blue-collar voters, even as Barack outspent Hillary two and three to one.
Racism is the reason, wail the pundits. But this is not a reason, it is an excuse. Barack, after all, ran up record totals in virtually all-white Iowa and is favored to win in virtually all-white Oregon.
Moreover, all politics are tribal. There was resistance in rural Pennsylvania to voting for an African-American, but there was also wild enthusiasm for voting for an African-American in Philly, where Hillary—spouse of “our first black president”—was getting about the same share of the black vote as Barry Goldwater.
On balance, as Joe Biden undiplomatically blurted out, the fact that Obama is a black man is an extraordinary asset in 2008. It is the reason a junior senator, three years out of the Illinois legislature, is running first for the nomination, and has become the favorite of a national media intoxicated with the idea of a black president.
Barack’s problem is social, cultural and ideological.
Increasingly, he is seen not as a man of the middle, but as radical chic, a man of the liberal and leftist elite who confides to closed-door meetings in San Francisco that folks in Pennsylvania cling to guns, Bibles and bigotries as crutches, because they cannot cope in the Global Economy and government has failed them.
He is seen as a man comfortable with friends still proud of the radical role they played planting bombs in the 1960s, a man who feels relaxed about sending his daughters on Sunday to hear the racist rants of an anti-American berserker.
And if your wife, beneficiary of a Princeton-Harvard Law education denied to 99.9 percent of the people, says she cannot recall ever being proud of America before now, folks are naturally going to be suspicious about why you dumped the American flag pin.
On the big issues of 2008—amnesty, the hemorrhaging of American jobs, Iraq—McCain is on the same side as George Bush, whose approval rating is 28 percent. McCain can be defeated on those issues.
But if, with a little help from Hillary, McCain can paint Barack indelibly as a man of the trendy and radical left, he can win. America will have nowhere else to go.
Journalists disagree on whether immigration, Iraq or the economy will be the major issue in 2008. The real issue may be—and this is what is causing heart palpitations among Democrats—is Barack Obama one of us, or is he one of them?
COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
[Subscribe online to Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. Click here for details].
1 Comment by Bob on 24 April 2008:
Pat assumes that of the three choices — twiddle dee, twiddle dum, or twiddle dee-dum, a majority of Americans must identify with at least one. Why ? It may be that American presidential elections have reached the stage ( and who can deny it ?) where power simply belongs to those appointed to seek it and the few who bestow it. Heck, if the only choices for Americans are Clinton II or Bush IV, how can Pat question part of the crowd for clamoring –”give us Barackas !”
2 Comment by james on 25 April 2008:
Its Americas own fault if they have bad choices. All free candidates have aligned themselves with the most extreme establishment personalities who have always been at the forefront of US/globalist policies. All three say the same things at a different spectrum.
1) Dont discuss immagration reform.
2) Dont discuss the Fedral Reserve or Central Banking in the US.
3) Dont discuss how Israeli firsters dominate key position in US government.
4) Dont have a serious investigation into 9/11.
5) And whatever you do dont discuss Jewish power in the US with there influence and domination in media, academia, civil rights foundations and government and how this effects US foreign and domestic policies.
3 Comment by Derek Leaberry on 25 April 2008:
The disasterous Bush presidency has led the Republican Party to the abyss and the party morale is low. Fundraising for the National Senate Republican Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee is terrible while the Democratic equivilent organizations are scooping in the money. Although the Republican National Committee has trounced the Howard Dean-led Democratic National Committee in fundraising, John McCain selfishly plans on milking the RNC dry and leaving the rest of the party with little more than paper clips and staplers.
Worse has been seen in recent elections. The Democratic vote in the early presidential primaries was double that of the Republicans even in states where there is a rough parity between the parties. Dennis Hastert’s suburban, Chicago collar-county House seat was won by a neophyte Democrat. Just this past week, in a special election to replace ex-Representative and now Senator Roger Wicker(who was named to the Senate after Trent Lott retired to become a lobbyist) in a strongly Republican seat in northern Mississippi that contains much of the conservative Memphis suburbs, the Democrat came out on top 49.7 percent to 46.6 percent for the Republican. Luckily, there will be a run-off because the Democrat did not receive fifty percent of the vote so the Republican might rally. In Louisiana, in another special election to a Republican seat, the momentum is with the Democrat. Democrats are surging; Republicans are in retreat.
Although Pat Buchanan is correct in pointing out the folly of the Democratic Party nominating a man, Barack Obama, who may be the only Democrat that Republican John McCain can defeat, a McCain victory will be a lonely one. McCain will have conservatives right where he wants them, impotent and subservient and under the power of a resurgent Democratic majority in Congress. This is the worst scenario for conservatives. Better that McCain loses, the Republicans take their lumps, disavow the stupidity of the Bush war in Iraq, and re-tool for another day with a governing philosophy that is genuinely conservative and not the half-baked swill that has been offered by Bush, Cheney, Rove, the neo-conservatives and the other losers that have led the Republican Party these last eight years.
4 Comment by D Simmons on 25 April 2008:
Whatever “racism” means I’m still sure this commentary was to rouse the woeful such as the preceeding post. If McCain wins over Obama think of what it will bring. McCain will represent perhaps the last of the white male authority figures that Old America could possibly elect, and he will be surrounded by the undisciplined dogs of liberalism snapping at his legs. Call Michael Hill tell him to start printing out the “McCain for president” bumper stickers. The age of liberalism and ideology are coming to a close and not even the GOP or McCain will be able to save them.
5 Comment by Appalachian American on 25 April 2008:
As if there is a such thing as an “American Conservative”. The term is oxymoronic. Once one buys into the idea of “America”, they cease being “conservative”. That is why there has never, and will never be, a “conservative” President (read “Emperor”) of the United State of America. So forget any differences there may be between John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama; all Presidential Elections are these days is a census of the voting population. We see that the Democrat Party is split between Hispanics, Blacks, White urban professionals, and Northern rural and small town working class folks, whereas the Republic Party is split between White suburbanites, and Southern rural and small town working class people.
It is obvious that a candidate that could appeal to both Southern and Northern rural and small town working class people would easily win any and all national elections; see: Ronald Reagan, circa 1984.
The question becomes: what separates the Southern rural and small town working class people from their Northern counterparts? Race. Rural and small town Northern Whites do not have the specter of seemingly uncaring Black underclass staring them in the face every day. The Northerner sees his fellow poor Whites suffering and wishes to provide for them various government programs, through the Federal government, of course. On the other hand, the White Southerner sees the predominance of Blacks in abject poverty, and considers them worthless, and not worth saving, especially not with their tax dollars via the Federal government. There are many a Northern Democrat from a rural or small town in the North that become die-hard Republicans when they move down South.
With all of that being said, you can see this “play out”, in a different kind of way with Barack Obama. The Northern rural and small town voter isn’t a racist, he just sees nothing of any substance in Barack Obama; Mr Obama is more concerned with poverty programs in more urban areas, or at least that what it seems like, considering, as informed voters, the rural and small town voters see so much of his support coming from the Blacks of urban America. There was once an informal coalition of rural Whites of North Georgia with the urban Blacks of metro Atlanta; that coalition wasn’t one man. It was a coalition of many many individuals. Mr Obama would need to create that coalition with only himself as it’s representative. Impossible. Neither group is willing to give all of that political power to one person, a figurehead of that coalition. Unless, of course, that person is FDR, with 25% unemployment and then a tremendous war to unite the three groups (Southern rural and small town, Northern rural and small town, urban Blacks both North and South).
Where does that leave the West? The West doesn’t matter. The battles are fought in Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida, etc. The Democrat’s West Coast is off-set by the Republican’s Deep South (Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina).
If the Democrats wanted to win come November, they would have nominated a White Southerner (John Edwards). But, the Democrats don’t particularly care to “win”. Winning to them is nominating either a White woman or a Black man to run for President. They are focusing on playing divisive identity politics, instead of trying to unite their party’s base. The Republican’s base is much less fracturous, thus is able to withstand a somewhat unpopular candidate such as John McCain without nearing collapse. The Democrats are not quite that strong. I wouldn’t be surprised to see identity politics absolutely destroy them in the very near future. Remember, there was once an “Evil Empire” called the Soviet Union. It collapsed entirely in a few short years; don’t be surprised if the Democrat Party collapses in a few short moments after their convention.
6 Comment by CM Collins on 25 April 2008:
“The youth, energy and enthusiasm are on the Democratic side.”
Except for Ron Paul.
7 Comment by Jim Fellows on 25 April 2008:
He bowls a 37. Knowing that, perhaps Hillary would like to bowl him for the nomination? Hillary’s fall-back position is she can lie about the result if she loses – long as it’s not filmed. Her recollection: “I tell you bombs were bursting in air and yet I continued to bowl, while Barack hid; and I won fair and square. ‘Oh say” (or is it today Jose) “does that star spangled banana yet wave…o’re the land of the once free, and the home of the knave.’ Yes, vote for me and Bill. Remember stand by your MOM, she’ll give the love you lean on…”
Deja vu again? Is She one of us? Bush is el’Presidente of Israel and the wars they crave in behalf of absolute global supremacy, since they already have hegemony. When I once pointed out, that for something to be rational it must also contain the appropriate amount of the irrational as well since that exists too as a part of the human factor, the operative word was *appropriate amount, for *approximate balance. Everything is out of wack today (profoundly imbalanced) and the seas are full of non-biodegradable plastic.
We got ahead of ourselves everywhere due to an understandable enthusiasm over the immense results of modern technology. It’s not to blame (itself.) It’s just that its essence or totality is neither something we’re completely aware of (still mysterious) never mind perfected if it ever can be? Here, we make plastic the one thing that lasts forever in this world, and do we make it for a rare but needed useage…no for instant gratification in throw-away items that inevitably end up in the sea – 2/3rds of the planet. That’s just an obvious example of how sloppily we ALL yet think and how therefore immature we still are. One might indicate it is precisely this intoxication with our technology that is extremely irrational. The big question remains are they going to have to nuke us here at home to justify our nuking others? Perhaps we all intuit, we should just vote for McWar and give them carte blanche so they don’t have to hold our own feet to the radiation in yet another false flag? Go Navy, go! Of course it is just my opinion, all of these events are false flags. But what would even Church Lady say: “ohhhhh how convenient, Mr.” Remember her/him? … Out of the mouths of babes -
8 Comment by robert reavis on 25 April 2008:
Dear Pat,
“When offered a choice between two politically intolerable alternatives, it is important to choose neither. And when that choice is presented in rival arguments and debates that exclude from public consideration any other set of possibilities, it becomes a duty to withdraw from those arguments and debates, so as to resist the imposition of this false choice by those who have arrogated to themselves the power of framing the alternatives. These are propositions which in the abstract may seem to invite easy agreement. But, when they find application to the coming presidential election, they are likely to be rejected out of hand. For it has become an ingrained piece of received wisdom that voting is one mark of a good citizen, not voting a sign of irresponsibility. … Why should we reject both? Not primarily because they give us wrong answers, but because they answer the wrong questions.” — Alisdair MacIntyre
9 Comment by Jim Fellows on 25 April 2008:
Read mine #7 and of course I won’t as I promised post on the Apostolic board until I learn more – but I like St. Paul a former JEW (who hunted christians) since I like Jews who when not myopically obsessed with their own supremacy which is natural, can be real. I like Paul or the ‘Pauline’ since he wanted to make religion real and was in essence (or the totality) an anchcor to the kite, as it were. We’re ALL there now *approximately (which is as good as it gets in the imperfect world) – it’s no dishonor to be Jewish, as ‘ethnic’ like Greek, Roman or now Italian etc., etc. like everyone – & to join the actual human race, while yet ‘becoming’ whole (attempting to like all of us), in my opinion, and letting go of supremacy. Let’s not, if possible be stupid. ? … We’re THERE. Let’s not do overkill since the big MO has us going, understandably, that way…No stats reveal that is really necessary, now. No? As a matter of Fact let’s *join and improve when [if] appropriate *tikkun olam (universally.) That’s my experience growing up Catholic, which means universal to a much larger extent than being sectarian/tribal. That’s what I have to contribute – shouldn’t I? It seems so, since that’s what whatever seems to have me doing…and sadly I don’t ‘get’ anything really tangible out of it except more release of my endorphins to get through my day. ? I’m unconcealed. I’m down and dirty, too (to survive.) It ain’t too shabby. Way it is, sadly & happily. That’s this world. So what is *appropriately next!?! – Really, though. So why not? For us all? ? For *thought to be actual there has to be a clearing via appropriate unconcealment [a space] which ain’t easy since that’s what’s really NEW. Scary. Poor, little me…don’t plow me under? ! Whatever. Up to my betters… what else is new? Out of the mouth of babes – Way it is. Way it is.
10 Comment by Disgruntled Former Employee on 25 April 2008:
The point which Mr. Buchanan misses and Mr. Reavis has touched on with his quote is that none of the candidates are “one of us” or even for us. No matter the party, the majority of candidates on the national level at least do a passable job of acting like hostile aliens governing a conquered people. Deliberate misgovernment, incompetence or a toxic amalgam of the two is the new norm. It would be fitting if the people returned the treatment we have consistantly received from the political classes but we seem to have lost both the will and the awareness to solve such problems.
11 Comment by Peter RV on 25 April 2008:
If two of our Candidates are promising us Wars and the third one is anti-War, who dares to claim that we don’t have a choice?
Whilst the conservatives were worrying about size of the Government, Gay Marriages, Purity of our Culture, Immigration etc, the NeoCons have infiltrated themselves in in all strata of our Government and are leading us from one war into another.
Not only that, the insane McCain is promising us he is going to follow the AIPAC instructions to wage a hundred year war. The Liar Hillary , not to be left behind, is promising us the obliteration of Iran (a music in AIPAC’s ear)
What a joy of candidates.
We don’t know what kind of President Obama would make, but as Andrew Bacevich recently observed, he deserves a benefit of the doubt. The other two absolutely not.
The only one who might unseat the NeoCons, gentlemen, is Obama.
12 Comment by roho on 25 April 2008:
The only positive thing that can come out of this election is that the “more observant” voter recognizes that our democracy has become “Wrestlemania D.C”, with MSM promoters creating the illusion of a 2 party system?
In reality it’s a 2 departmental system under the same “Corporatocracy” with the International Bankers allowing the 2 departments to have a go at it!
People don’t want to be free! They simply wish to be told that they are free!………….They have to be at least 50 to even remember freedom.
13 Comment by james on 26 April 2008:
Theres a saying attributed to one of the founding fathers that says something in the line like ” …liberty for all.” That Neocons and hardline foreign advisors say is the intent to spread democracy across the world, a supposed more democratic version of the British empire. Does anyone know what the saying is and who its attributed too? I think it was either Washington or Jefferson.
14 Comment by Galvin on 26 April 2008:
Paul-Buchanan 08!
(Sorry Pat for the 2nd spot, but the country is not yet ready for its first authentic Catholic president).
15 Comment by P. Henderson on 26 April 2008:
I don’t think Barack is any more out of touch with middle America than Hillary. In fact, I think he’s closer to the blue-collar mindset than she. Hillary long ago convinced me she is basically a socialist. Consider her fondness for the word ‘compulsory’ – the chief distinction between her health plan and his. Compulsory Clinton should be her nickname. And consider the outrages of the Clinton Administration – Waco, the installation of a communist Juan Aristide in Haiti, Filegate, the attempts to pass anti-terrorism legislation aimed at gun-owners and pro-lifers.
I just refuse to believe a youngish black male is very PC – he’s mostly done what he needed to do to rise within the party. But Hillary, I think, is sincere in her leftism, insincere when she says “God bless America” and “God bless you all.” (I wonder if she says that when she’s in San Francisco?) Blacks on the whole are very politically incorrect: they’re ’sexist’, ‘homophobic’, ‘antisemitic’, and religious to a far greater extent than the NPR crowd who back Hillary. Barack is being targeted because he’s considered unreliable on Israel, and that in turn is largely because he’s black. Do you think Hillary has never met Bill Ayers or his equivalent? For heaven’s sake, Black Panther Defense Minister Bobby Rush is now a Democratic congressman. Do you think Hillary is not on ‘friendly terms’ with him? The party is lousy with aging radicals.
Is being black an advantage? Yes and no. It’s certainly not an advantage with blue-collar whites, especially with Rev. Wright’s worst moments being broadcast in an endless loop. These whites, who pride themselves on their patriotism, are the same people Buchanan thinks are being hoodwinked into supporting an absurd war. Maybe they’re also being hoodwinked into thinking Hillary is on their side.
Barack’s in favor of ‘talking to our enemies.’ Good. Maybe we could avoid spending the next 50 years fighting the Arabs and suspending the Constitution.
16 Comment by Strategos on 26 April 2008:
I’ve voted Republican in the last 6 national elections. If Hillary gouges out the nomination for herself I’ll write in Ron Paul. But if it’s Obama vs. McCain, that’s an easy one: Obama.
It didn’t get much press, but the exits polls from PA show that most party-switchers in PA voted for Obama, not Clinton. And though McCain has nailed down the nomination long since, nearly 30 percent of GOPers registered their dissent with votes for Paul or Huckabee. 30 percent of what miserable GOP turnout there was, that is. This is why: angry GOP voters know that the neocon filth who wrecked the economy, fostered this infestation of immigrants and blew our once enviable strategic position have to be turned out. I for one will be damned if I help their latest stooge perpetuate their tenure in the corridors of power. Obama is likeliest of three abysmal choices to get the neocons out. That’ll have to suffice, for now.
17 Comment by Big M on 27 April 2008:
“But if, with a little help from Hillary, McCain can paint Barack indelibly as a man of the trendy and radical left, he can win. America will have nowhere else to go.”
Really?
This is the same mindless crap that I heard in the (fixed, by the way) California recall in 2003. “I think that McClintock is the best candidate, but I’ll probably vote for the Guv-a-nate-a, because McClintock’s probably not going to win.”
No s***! If every imbecile that wanted to vote for McClintock voted for Ah-nuld or anybody else, of course McClintock couldn’t win!
The reason that this country is in the condition it’s in is simple — Americans are idiots.
18 Comment by uwi on 27 April 2008:
“The reason that this country is in the condition it’s in is simple — Americans are idiots.”
Bingo. And the reason we have an idiot in the White House is because we have a representational form of government.
19 Comment by vita on 28 April 2008:
In Kosovo, we see America’s future.
20 Comment by Red Phillips on 28 April 2008:
Great news. Chuck Baldwin is now the nominee of the Constitution Party. He defeated neocon war supporter Alan Keyes 3 to 1. Check out Chuck’s archives. He is one of us. Very little that he has written would a paleo disagree with.
21 Comment by G. Oren on 28 April 2008:
I’m in the same camp as P. Henderson and Strategos. It went uncommented on that Huckabee got 40% of the vote here in Texas – this after McCain was supposedly the nominee apparent. The “stupid party” may yet rally around McCain but his support is still tepid.
The last two issues of NR have been aimed at painting Obama as a gaseous liberal “phony reformer” – the same NR that backed Romney. Well, we shall see how things shake out, but there is something happening in the hinterland, more than the dunderheads at NR are willing to admit.
The American people may be idiots, I’ll go with Willmoore Kendall on that one.
22 Comment by PcH on 2 May 2008:
I have already been ethnically cleansed from my native state and it feels like my legs were cut off. I know every little creek, ridge, and stand of oak and sagebrush where I grew up and I wake up in the middle of the night wishing I could still be there. Ask me about Drink Water Flat sometime.
My brother-in-law took a trip with my niece out there, and he tells me it looks like about 13 people live in the little home I grew up in. America’s future is well underway. Nobody talks about it.
23 Comment by Doug Stewart on 4 May 2008:
All three candidates confirm to me that my decision to join the Constitution Party was definitely the correct decision. There is severe illness in both the Democratic and Republican Parties which needs healing. Thus, I look forward to supporting Dr. Chuck Baldwin, the Constitution Party nominee for candidacy for the office of president. Please check out http://www.constitutionparty.com and http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com.