Clive Davis

THE IVY LEAGUE EFFECT

A number of analysts suspect Barack Obama is too cerebral to connect with blue-collar Democratic voters.  An odd notion, perhaps, considering Hillary Clinton's lofty background and persona. Still, some striking data in the LA Times:

Obama's early support is following a pattern familiar from the campaigns of other brainy liberals with cool, detached personas and messages of political reform, from Eugene McCarthy in 1968 to Gary Hart in 1984 to Bill Bradley in 2000. Like those predecessors, Obama is running strong with well-educated voters but demonstrating much less support among those without college degrees....

Among whites, Clinton so far is showing broader reach. She's competitive upscale and dominating downscale, a combination that allows her to lead Obama in most early polls. In the latest nationwide Gallup survey, for instance, Obama led Clinton by 3 percentage points among white, college-educated Democrats, but she bested him by 23 points among whites without college degrees, and she led overall.

Although Obama's team has its own counter-arguments:

David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist, dismisses these numbers as artifacts of his candidate's lower name recognition with non-college voters, who aren't yet as tuned in to the race. Axelrod said that Obama, through his campaigns for the Illinois state Senate and the U.S. Senate and his experience as a Saul Alinsky-style community organizer on Chicago's South Side, has demonstrated that he can bond with white working-class voters.

"This is a guy who began as a community organizer banging on the doors of government to … get some attention for people who were living in the shadow of a closed steel mill," Axelrod said. "So his profile is not the typical effete reformer profile."

REMEMBERING WHITTAKER CHAMBERS

I wasted so much time grappling with my computer last week (the gremlins still haven't quite gone away, alas) that I missed Peter Preston's admiring review of the biography of the man who brought down Alger Hiss:

Tanenhaus leaves no room for argument here. Chambers told the essential truth - Hiss was the liar. Hiss was a Stalin man. The liberals on the barricades got it wrong and traduced a formidable intellect who, time and again, let basic decency guide his trajectory.

Until I read Stephen Pollard's post, I wasn't even aware that Sam Tanenhaus's book - first published in the States a decade ago - had only just found a British publisher. If you haven't already seen it, Stephen reproduces Tanenhaus's updated introduction, which includes some thought-provoking comments on how far you can draw a parallel between the anti-Communism of the 1940s and the battle against Islamism. Tanenhaus urges caution.

BARACK-BASHING

No doubt there'll be plenty more like this in the months ahead. LA Times writer David Ehrenstein complains that the Senator is a "Magic Negro", Sidney Poitier redux. To the New Republic's Leon Wieseltier, he's "the Billy Eckstine of American politics". You have to be of bus-pass age to get that reference; he means Obama is too suave:

Whatever his vision of America, and I have no doubt about its fundamental decency, he has been mainly recommending himself. More specifically, Obama has been promoting the multiplicity of his origins as a qualification for leadership. This strikes me as little more than identity politics, but with a cunning refinement: instead of being representative of one thing, he is representative of all things. He is typical of everybody, the most racinated American of all. In America, you can be heroic for being typical. But I do not see how your grandfather can make you a hero. ... And it is narcissism to vote for a candidate because he is like yourself, or one of your own. I would not vote for a hero of the Jewish partisans from my mother's own town if he were not obsessed with the injustices of the health care system in this country.

But isn't the emphasis on personality partly the consequence of the campaign season starting so early? Wieseltier is on stronger ground, perhaps, when he raises the question of how the newcomer would deal with the wider world:

Obama's opposition to the Iraq war seems to have been principled, and somewhat prescient. But the foreign policy inclinations presented by the candidate are vague and platitudinous and sanguine about the reasonableness of the world. The ghost of Cyrus Vance seems to be consulting for the campaign. So I continue to regard the phenom with some misgivings. Nobody ever charmed anybody out of a nuclear weapon.

WHAT FEMALE VOTERS WANT

Is all of this true? Maybe one or two female bloggers will have something to say about it... David Frum muses on the gender gap in American politics. I assume similar factors apply in Britain:

Men have much stronger political opinions than women do, and they make up their minds much earlier in the election cycle. Women take much longer to decide. And that is why most campaign events and most campaign advertising is aimed at women rather than men: Women are more persuadable.

After the '96 election, journalist Christopher Caldwell asked a pollster specializing in women's issues why women voters decide so much later than men. The pollster replied, "Do you want the politically correct answer? They're busy juggling both career and home. They're pressed for time. The non-politically correct answer is that they decide late because they're only marginally interested in politics." Women voters are only about two-thirds as likely as male voters to read the newspaper. In 1996, only about half of female voters could name the vice president of the United States.

SOME ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

PS: The late Lord Young's heretical thoughts on the meaning of real-life, 21st century meritocracy can be found here.

In case anyone is still labouring under the illusion that America is a classless society, this snippet from John Fund's column on Hillary Clinton's campaign [via Comment Central] offers some salutary figures:

Should Mrs. Clinton win and serve two terms, the presidency will have been held by members of two families--the Bushes and the Clintons--for 28 years. (That could be good news for Jeb Bush, who will be only 63 in 2016.)

Oh, and I've used fingers and thumbs to work out that Al Gore (son of a senator) will be only 68. Plus ça change.

LET THEM MAKE BEDS

Maybe I've been looking in the wrong places, but I haven't seen much media coverage of Karl Rove's throwaway remark about immigration: "I don't want my 17-year-old son to have to pick tomatoes or make beds in Las Vegas."  A classic example of out-of-touch elitism. Rod Dreher's disdain is a wonder to behold:

Once upon a time, I was a garbageman at a trailer park. It was not the kind of job that got teenage boys a lot of respect, or attention from girls. Twice a week, I'd spend a couple of hours collecting trash from the barrels behind house trailers, loading them into my pickup, and driving them to the town dump. This was a particularly challenging job in the hot months in south Louisiana -- which is to say, for much of the year -- because being beset by heat, humidity and the aroma of rotting melons, crawfish and other savories really has a way of keeping you humble.

I hated that job, but I'm glad I had it. My dad owned the land the park was on, and he could have paid somebody else to pick up the garbage, but why should he? I was a strapping boy, I had an old pick-up truck, and I was not too good to pick up other people's stinking trash. My dad, who grew up during the Depression and who worked his way into the middle class by studying and by the sweat of his brow, has had nothing but contempt for men who look down on physical labour as beneath their dignity.

IN DEFENCE OF PUBLIC RADIO

"Crunchy Con" Rod Dreher experiences a moment of doubt, but reaffirms his faith after being deluged by ads on Dallas's main commercial station. He's sorely tempted by Barack Obama too.

We live in interesting times.

UNCLEAN

"I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy." Joe Biden mis-speaks on the subject of Barack Obama. I think JB deserves a pass on this one. Daily Kos, however, sniffs a scandal.

OUTRAGE BY NUMBERS

In case you missed the opening sentence of Ann Coulter's latest column, here it is. Is anyone going to be offended, or are the catch-phrases becoming just that tiny bit predictable?

Fortunately for liberals, the Iraqis executed Saddam Hussein the exact same week that former President Ford died, so it didn't seem strange that Nancy Pelosi's flag was at half-staff.

Sigh....

BARACK OBAMA'S IMAGE "PROBLEM"

Not only does his name rhyme with "Osama" (shock, horror), his casual no-tie dress sense reminds some people of the equally laid-back President Ahmadinejad. While I assume Jeff Greenfield had his tongue firmly in his cheek in that report, it just goes to show how obsessive we've become about every irrelevant detail.

Stop press: one of the Plank's commenters uncovers even more dirt:

...Obama published an autobiographical work while in his mid 30s full of reflections on race and race relations. You know who else did that? Ever hear of "Mein Kampf"?!?!

UPDATE: George Will explains why Obama should run in 2008:

He has, in Hillary Clinton, the optimal opponent. The contrast is stark: He is soothing; she is not. Many Democrats who are desperate to win are queasy about depending on her. For a nation with jangled nerves, and repelled by political snarling, he offers a tone of sweet reasonableness.