Republicans have been banking on the “elitist” label to tar intelligent liberals as “out-of-touch” for at least the past eight years… to the detriment of the Republic. The trick was to link intelligence and deep policy thinking to higher education, and let higher education stand as a proxy for (1) the hated university professor and (2) the money to pay for higher education, drawing on both ideological and class divides. Let Rush Limbaugh do the rest.
Somewhere along the way, though, the term lost touch with its original meaning: “elitism” was, originally, only offensive insofar as it connoted entitlement, and removal from reality. But the “financial” aspect of elitism dropped out somewhere in the Bush years, leaving “elitism” as a purely cultural theme, attributable only to intelligent liberals, confounding its original pejorative nature. Knowledge earned through hard work is hardly elitist; it’s in line with the American ideal of the self-made individual.
Now, talking down to someone who’s lost their house? Misunderstanding the troubles of those with less than 1/1000th of your net worth? Blaming individuals for a market problem? That’s elitist, out of touch, and condescending.
It’s time to reclaim the “elitist” label, by bringing it back to its original meaning. John McCain is the place to start. Barack Obama’s compelling life story rebuts the charge of his “cultural” elitism, so long as he keeps quiet about the arugula, and every inch of his education was earned. His personal fortune is no greater than McCain’s, making his “financial” elitism a knock-out between the two… except insofar as McCain lacks comprehension of the plight of middle America. Time to emphasize every mistake he’s ever made in contextualizing the current economic downturn, and take his own invitation to misconstrue his definition of “rich”:
Talk about dodging the question.
At worst, the prior clip can be misrepresented to show that McCain doesn’t understand the real definition of “wealth” in America – almost no-one bankrolls $5,000,000 in one lifetime. Arguably, that’s dishonest. But even at best, the clip displays a total lack of understanding of the rich/poor gap in America: “cut everyone’s taxes” isn’t an answer, and it misrepresents what McCain’s plan would actually do, completely refusing to engage the questioner on what “class” means in America. McCain’s so out of touch with reality that he doesn’t even acknowledge that his tax cuts affect people with different means. Whither that alleged vast amount of experience?
And how come the new guy sounds so sensible, talks so candidly about his plan (dare I say he talks “straight”?), and seems to understand that taxes do not, in fact, look the same to every citizen?
That link above is symptomatic of the liberal mentality which is that if the rich don’t want to give more of their income than someone making $150,000/year then they are selfish.
Hilarious.
McCain puts it well…he doesn’t believe in class warfare or redistribution of wealth. The short answer is that liberals do. He also makes the correct point that the problem is not taxes, it’s spending. Obama has no plan to cut spending, so it would make sense that he would indeed need more of the rich’s money to fund all those plans.
I have yet to hear a republican say he wants more of anyone’s money. Not the poor, not the middle class, not the upper class. Obama does.
Posted by Progressive Conservative | August 17, 2008, 9:41 pmWe’ve had a progressive tax for the past hundred years. To present it as “class warfare,” something new and offensive, is to miscomprehend the last century of American history. McCain’s tax plan modifies rates based on bracket, too, just places less of the burden on the rich, and MORE on the poorer. Under your rubric, that’s just as much “class warfare,” but in the opposite direction.
Nor has McCain explained how he plans to right the economy and continue the expensive Iraq war without a tax increase, or scuttling half of the federal government. Nor do Republicans have a stellar record when it comes to spending; they don’t want other people’s money, but they have no problem spending the money of future Americans.
Posted by Ames | August 17, 2008, 11:10 pmThose who agree, please click the “Digg” or “Stumble” buttons – this is an important point to make.
Posted by Ames | August 17, 2008, 11:11 pmI’m amused at the suggestion that a wealthy person making $5,000,000 and being unwilling to pay more taxes than a family making under $150,000, who may very well need relief, would somehow not be acting selfishly…
Posted by Evan | August 17, 2008, 11:44 pmAs Ames said, I’d have much more sympathy for McCain’s general opposition to taxes if he seemed sincere in wanting to cut spending. I really have no problem with very libertarian positions as long as they’re consistent on both taxes and spending, but cutting back on spending is simply not something that the electorate will go for (except, possibly, on the military, and that’s certainly not something that McCain is going to cut spending to). The Republican position would be admirable if they actually followed through on it – instead of spending cuts, however, we get massive deficits, and Obama has a point when he says that this is essentially a way of making future generations pay for our programs.
Also, it’s worth noting that a given % of income is actually worth less to a person making more money. The value of money doesn’t scale with income – we have so many costs which increase more slowly than income as income increases (I have no good way of putting this except dIncome/dCosts > 1) that an ‘equally selfish’ contribution for a person making more money is actually a higher percentage of his income.
Posted by Gotchaye | August 18, 2008, 12:02 amJust what, if anything, did McCain do to stand athwart the runaway spending of the Bush years? And why can we expect him to change now? McCain was a willing accomplice in all of Bush’s failures. Why America can trust him to have defected – or trust him IF he’s defected – is beyond me.
Posted by Ames | August 18, 2008, 12:13 amWell, Ames, McCain can only pretend to want to control spending by relying on a definition of “spending” that doesn’t include the military-industrial complex — veterans’ and troops’ benefits are, of course, included in the spending McCain is more than willing to cut as mere “pork.”
But the truth of the matter is that military spending is very much part of overall “spending,” and McCain has not only endorsed the malevolently frivolous military spending of the Bush administration, he was actually publicly pushing for a war against Iraq months before Bush was doing so.
As some other blog said…Digby?…probably Digby…John McCain is what George W. Bush has been dressing up as all these years, “right down to the flightsuit.” The real thing is much scarier.
Posted by Evan | August 18, 2008, 2:36 amMcCain has expressed a desire to cut taxes and also cut spending. Obama has expressed a plan to increase taxes and increase spending. We can all speculate that there won’t be a follow-through on either side, but if we’re going to actually debate their plans then the analysis should really be that simple.
Posted by Progressive Conservative | August 18, 2008, 8:12 amPC,
It becomes more than speculation when one of the candidates is running for a party that has a history of not doing one of the things they promise. Somehow the Republicans have indoctrinated their followers into believing they are the more fiscally responsible party, when in fact recent Republican presidents have seen a marked increase in spending during their administrations. When speculating about what our next president is going to do with our tax money, we have to take into account he might be lying, or that he won’t be able to cut spending in spite of his intentions. It’s not as simple as believing in his vision.
Posted by MarshallDog | August 18, 2008, 10:25 amPC, that’s a really simplistic and not entirely accurate way of looking at it, but whatever.
Posted by Evan | August 18, 2008, 1:56 pmMarshallDog,
You’re right, the GOP has a history of not following through. So we must assume McCain is lying.
Likewise, most Democrats favor abortion, gay marriage and massive social programs. So I should assume that any statements to the contrary by Obama are false?
Posted by Progressive Conservative | August 18, 2008, 2:07 pmYou say that sarcastically, but don’t most read Obama as supporting exactly those things? Isn’t it assumed that most Democratic politicians talk about being personally (not politically) opposed to abortion or gay marriage as code for “I’m not actually going to do anything about these, and will nominate justices who favor them”? And Obama’s almost certainly going to have a rather hefty health plan, all told. For example, Obama’s talk at Saddleback about welfare programs as a means of reducing the abortion rate was transparent salesmanship; it’s obvious that his (and the Democrats’) chief motivation for these programs is social justice and not the protection of the unborn.
Posted by Gotchaye | August 18, 2008, 2:27 pmThat’s a reasonable starting point. McCain says he wants to cut spending, but he also wants to keep an extremely expensive yet totally idiotic war going because of…well, he’s not given us that detail yet, but keeping the Iraq fiasco going is very important to McCain and all right-thinking neocons.
It really annoys me when conservatives and other right-wingers whine about “tax and spend” liberals. What they really mean is “liberals want to spend money on stuff that I’m not particularly in favor of and they have the audacity to expect the American public to pay for governmental services.” The past few Republican administrations have shown that, instead of “tax and spend,” they prefer “owe it and spend.”
Note to conservative apologists: It’s your boy Bush who insisted on both an expensive war and cutting taxes for his fellow millionaires. Now it looks like McCain wants to give even more tax breaks to the rich and have the middle class pay for it. And you guys pretend that liberals are the ones promoting class warfare.
Posted by JoJo | August 18, 2008, 9:23 pmNicely put, JoJo.
I’m tired of my government borrowing money from the largest human rights abuser in the world in order to kill innocent people on the other side of the world without provocation, and leaving the debt for my children, who haven’t yet been conceived.
I don’t think most people realize just how backwards and gross our nation’s military expenditures really are, especially when compared to how much of our taxpayer money goes to help people.
Posted by Evan | August 18, 2008, 9:30 pmNow it looks like McCain wants to give even more tax breaks to the rich and have the middle class pay for it.
Please explain how the middle class will pay for a tax break on the rich…
Posted by Progressive Conservative | August 19, 2008, 9:50 amMcCain’s health plan includes a $3.6 trillion tax increase on middle class workers.
That’s how.
Posted by Evan | August 19, 2008, 12:14 pmClass Warfare continues as it has for centuries, that the current state of the conflict clearly shows that one class has almost completely disarmed the other proves Engels’ assessment of The State as a product of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. The bourgeois state is incapable of “reconciling” the class differences we spend such lengths of time debating. This or that definition of “rich” & what level of taxation or gradients of taxation will render equitable what is by definition a system for the preservation of inequality are discussions of nonsense.
How much jelly must the Jabberwocky eat before he is able to fly?
Until we resolve to create for ourselves a proletariat state to replace the current one, that is as meaningful a question to ponder as any formulated taking the continuation of the capitalist economic system for granted.
Posted by euthyfro | August 23, 2008, 3:11 pmFound you via the COEB.
This is a very clear post – nice videos with plenty of context. Thanks for elucidating things so well – I’m on the other side of the atlantic and so don’t get much exposure to candidates’ speeches, but am still taking a keen interest in who the most powerful person in the world will be next year.
I find it sad that Obama’s ‘money the state spends has to come from somewhere’ gets so much less applause than McCain’s ‘I don’t want to take your taxes (but I will anyway, if you judge by my record)’.
Also – tax credits for each and every child? Even if you have 12 of them? I thought McCain was all about personal responsibility – what’s responsible about having more children than you can afford to keep? Of course, if you define birth control as abortion and ban it, there’ll be a lot more people with 12 children. This isn’t a terribly cohesive plan for cutting spending.
Posted by Charlotte | August 30, 2008, 8:37 pmRe: euthyfro
A Marxist is the absolute last kind of loonie I expected to come flying out of the woodwork here.
Hail the glorious revolution! : )
Posted by Radioactive afikomen | August 31, 2008, 12:11 amOoh, good post.
Posted by efrique | August 31, 2008, 1:27 amThanks!!! Did a new CoEB just go up? Did I submit to and then forget to read it?!?!
Posted by Ames | August 31, 2008, 1:30 amI… I… I think I love you.
Posted by Cobalt | August 31, 2008, 12:45 pm