If you want to see exactly what Orwell was talking about, read Wigan Pier or better, Down and Out In Paris and London, and then read Barbara Ehrenreich's present day Nickled and Dimed. Ehrenreich tries the Orwell experiment of going out and actually living among the minimum wage working poor on what she earns there, but she can't resist condescending to the people she is living among. Orwell never did. Orwell was on to something -- that many progressives of educated middle class background are alienated from their own culture and have no respect for the tastes and desires of working people. What they want to do is to transform the common folk into something like themselves. The result is that ordinary people see them as puritanical killjoys and tune them out. This is part of Orwell's broader theme that democratic socialism was never going to prevail in the UK until its advocates learned to talk to the people in their own language, both stylistically and emotionally. He thought that the way to a majority was by appealing to the instinctive neighborliness, decency and sense of fair play that were the product of religious training even among the large number of Englishmen who no longer had any formal religious belief. He also that much of the English intellectual left were power worshippers who identified so strongly with Stalin and the USSR precisely because they themselves longed to be recognized as an elite with the power to jack up the common people and make them listen to what was good for them, goddammit! The only figure from English history they respected was Cromwell. (I don't want to overpraise Orwell, who was very much a man of his time. One of his favorite terms of abuse for the kind of intellectual leftist he described was "pansy left.") A very good contemporary American writing on the same theme is Joe Bageant, whose Deer Hunting With Jesus is essential reading. Bageant is a lifelong radical who was born and raised a redneck in the Shenandoah Valley, got out by joining the Navy, and went to college in California during the 60s after his hitch was up. He now lives outside of Winchester, VA, a few miles from where he was born. He has some pretty sharp things to say about why the Mandarin Democrats can't connect with his people that are definitely worth a look. This is a problem that goes back to the earliest days of radical politics in 16th century England. The Puritans, the radicals of their day, also wanted to uplift the common folk, which is why they hated the theater, maypoles, bear baiting, football, church picnics, and anything else that took peoples minds off the four hour sermons they were supposed to be listening to. It's why they never could command a popular majority. The conservative response is always the same. People who don't believe the common people are capable of improvement, or even of rational thought, are willing to keep them content by letting them have their country pleasures. James I, the Puritans' great enemy, issued a Declaration of Sports allowing football &c. on Sundays and holidays. The Tory party in the 18th and 19th century was backed by the brewers and was quite willing to use what was called "beer barrel influence." The GOP has for 40 years beaten the crap out of the Democrats by telling ordinary uneducated white folks that their tastes, values and desires are just wonderful and the Democrats are a bunch of snobs who look down on them because they aren't entertaining like colored people and can't tell arugla from radicchio. It doesn't always work, but it has worked over and over. You can't convince people that they can be better than they are by telling them that they're worse than you are. You have to appeal to what's already in them and turn it to your purposes.

Hi Jack - I don't always agree with you, but do I enjoy your posts. My clients, labor unions (and affiliated health and welfare funds) in construction industry, voted for Hillary in a state that went for Obama. They don't relate to Obama and I believe, now, that Obama don't really relate to them. Part of it is a racial thang, but it is a cultural thang as well. I have to say, it is difficult to see Obama in Wisc. or Mich. during deer hunting season in the fall. How did Hillary get this bunch, because I also don't see Hillary deer hunting either, unless, of course, it gets her a vote.

Thanks. Nice to have a public, even if it's a public of one. Sorry about the paragraphing screwup, which makes it look more like a rant than it is.

Interesting question as to why Clinton, rather than Edwards, got the vote going to The One Who's Not Black. Part of it, oddly enough, is that there's something Nixonian about her. She lacks the grace Obama started out with; while she's done well as a meritocrat (Wellesley and Yale), electoral politics doesn't come naturally to her. The effort still shows, and that appeals to some people who distrust smoothness. So does the immense will towards not so much power as vindication.

I don't see her deer hunting (or bowling) either; she's too well schooled to make a fool of herself doing something that so obviously isn't her. But when she knocked down a shot and a beer in PA, she looked at home doing it.

One of the things I see in Obama is that, like Bill Clinton, he learns from what works and what doesn't. He's reaching toward those ordinary white folks, and getting better at it. He doesn't have to go deer hunting this fall. He just has to not go wind surfing, or pseudo tank driving, in July. (That "bitter" crack at the San Francisco private fund raiser was a major gaffe. That's despite fact that what he said was absolutely true -- describes several of my Midwestern relatives to a T.)

The key question is whether there is enough time for him to get enough better at it. His inexperience on the national stage -- despite great natural gifts -- does show. Could McCain outmaneuver him on the key symbolic narrative issues? I like to think not, but only time will tell.

Praying for a happy 1/20/09 ----