Obama is Seriously Out of Touch

This latest mishap by Barack Obama revealed more of his true self than he probably wanted to. At a San Francisco fundraiser, he stated:

"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them and they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Wow. So the assumption that Obama attended Trinity United Church of Christ for political purposes seems true. If he even circled a few times within the Christian community, he would not have even been able to utter those words about people "clinging to religion" out of bitterness.

Most of the liberal elites are seriously out of touch with religion, especially Christianity. Even if they go to church for Easter, Christmas and other public holidays, many of these politicians still wouldn't understand the drivers of people's faith. They would have to dive just a little deeper out of the shallow end to comprehend what moves people.

Even recently I attended a political seminar where a person incorrectly said that "the largest fundamentalist churches are in the most economically depressed areas of the U.S." Of course, I had to correct this ignorant, liberal elite who made this statement with such authority.

"Umm... point of correction. The largest fundamentalist churches are in the most affluent areas of the U.S..." There is Willowcreek Community Church in South Barrington, IL that has over 23,000 members in one of the affluent suburbs of Chicago. Rich Warren's Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, CA has over 22,000. Redeemer Presbyterian Church services thousands of investment bankers, consultants and other bitterly driven people in Manhattan. And my own church, Menlo Park Presbyterian Church services all those poor venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and tech geeks in Silicon Valley.

This whole situation with Obama takes me back to my old op-ed in The Boston Globe, "A lesson for the liberal elite" (Nov. 3, 2004):

IN A recent speech at Tufts University, Andy Rooney reflected on the election and said, according to The Tufts Daily, that Christian fundamentalism is a result of "a lack of education. They haven't been exposed to what the world has to offer."

Those comments as well as the identification of the "bigoted Christian redneck" after Election Day in various editorials left me wondering: Where do these "liberal elites" get this fictional image of Christians? When did this distorted perspective begin in our cultural history? How can I work to bridge this gap?...

I believe Andy Rooney in the article could have easily been replaced by Barack Obama.

The Wall Street Journal has a spot-on oped today, "The Other Obama":

As political psychoanalysis, this is what they believe in Cambridge and Hyde Park. Guns and God are the opiate of the masses, who are being gulled by Karl Rove and rich Republicans. If only they embraced their true economic self-interest, these pure saps wouldn't need religion and they wouldn't dislike non-white immigrants.

Mr. Obama's unreflective condescension is reminiscent of the famous 1993 Washington Post article that described evangelical Christians as "poor, undereducated and easy to command." And the fact that he said it so naturally in front of a San Francisco crowd suggests that this is what he may truly believe. This is Mr. Obama's inner Mike Dukakis. (full op-ed)

It's disappointing to see the luster fade on Obama's persona.


obama, clinton, election2008