For some reason, Slate.com is not accepting comments to Mickey Kaus’s weekend article. It this is a technical problem, then post it. I’m submitting my comments here instead.

The media once again shows its own incredible disdain for the American public by calling upon themselves to interpret Obama’s disjointed extemporaneous remarks in response to a question at a San Francisco fundraiser. Parsing as a media sport is getting out of hand. A candidate should be judged on the sum total of what he/she has done and said, not a slice of a talk that they play up as contradicting everything before it.

In Obama’s recent remarks, the operative word is cling. But not in the way you suggest.

Cling is a strong word implying emphasis. Obama never implied that the good people of Eastern Pennsylvania do not enjoy hunt or find comfort in going to church at any time. Instead he is says that in times of economic dislocation, people cling to the things that most matter to them and their families more than ever. At the same time he implies that people from areas ignored for decades will tend to turn away from national electoral poiitics because too many elected officials have not served them well in the past.

Obama is not stupid. He won downstate Illinois (rural, small town, working class) substantially in his run for Senate. He knows that hunting is a huge and beloved pastime in the Midwest, of which Illinois is one of the largest states, as well as other (if not moat) areas of the country. Factories in Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Missouri and others used to (or still do) close a week during hunting season. Why? Because no one would show up for work anyway. And most likely the boss is a hunter, too.

Obama also knows that many rural and small-town Americans attend church regularly, just as large segments of the black community do. Just like Obama’s family does. In fact, the US has the largest percentage of churchgoers than any other industrial state.
Obama’s religion is obviously a big part of his life but he is not among the economically dislocated.

Again, the issue is clinging to those things closest to us in times of crisis and focusing less on what we have not control over (like politics in the last few decades). This is, in fact, pretty much human nature

To suggest Obama meant something demeaning by pointing these things out is an invention of the Clinton campaign and a mass market press needing to feed its voracious appetite for ‘scoops’ and ‘ratings.’

Obama was confusing in the next part of his remarks. He jumps into talking about anti-immigrant, anti-foreign sentiment without making a proper transition that showed a switch of gears. But to link this to some unsavory meaning of clinging is ridiculous. Talk about elitism. When did the media pundits get certified in Freudian analysis?

I believe he was saying that times of economic dislocation bring anxiety to those who lose their means of support and have little hope that their old job, or one similar, will ever be back. This is as true for the hundreds of thousands of Californians laid off during and after the tech bubble burst (are they hi-tech elitists?) as it is for the unemployed or underemployed of the rust belt. As Obama says, we all have more in common than our differences would suggest.

Obama believes the way to grow jobs in the rustbelt is, in fact, to bring new technologies on line in conservation and other fields that can’t be outsourced. He believes politicians who target only immigration restriction and protectionism as solutions to America’s economic woes are pie-in-the-sky and mislead their constituents. If it were that easy, our problems would have been solved before now.

Obama believes the economy can overcome America’s loss of jobs to globalization by seeding new industries here in the US. He believes in America and that she can deliver jobs and stability to the rustbelt and other overlooked areas under new and creative leadership.