Obama Talks Bitterness; Elites Vie for the Sucker Vote

Posted by Mister Leonard Pierce, Sadly, No! at 8:00 AM on April 13, 2008.

You gotta be shitting me:

Glen Bolger, Republican pollster: "It's never helpful to be dismissive of whole chunks of America -- rural religious voters, gun supporters, and the entire 'flyover' country. Obama has become part of the Kerry wing of the Democratic Party -- the beautiful people who know what's best for the rest of us.

And who the fuck is Glen Bolger, you ask? Why, he's this guy:

Glen Bolger is one of the Republican Party's leading political strategists and pollsters. He is a partner and co-founder of Public Opinion Strategies, a national political and public affairs survey research firm whose clients include leading political figures, Fortune 500 companies, and major associations. Public Opinion Strategies has 20 U.S. Senators, eight governors, and more than 50 Members of Congress as clients. [ ... ] Glen's corporate polling experience includes crisis management polling for some of the top issues in recent years, as well as image and message work for major clients such as Wal-Mart, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida, Tyson Foods, BNSF Railway, Intuit (the makers of Quicken), and numerous other Fortune 500 companies.

Prior to co-founding Public Opinion Strategies, Glen was the Director of Survey Research & Analysis for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the political arm of the House Republican Caucus.

God, does he sound like he's in touch with the common man!

Call me a liberal elitist if you must, but the fact that corporate fat cats get to pass themselves off in the press as blue-collar salt-of-the-Earthers just goes to show how fucked up this country really is.

UPDATE: Sadly, Mark Ames' utterly brilliant political analysis of American public discourse is still devastatingly relevant:

The left struggles to understand why so many non-millionaire Americans vote Republican, and yet they rarely ask themselves why so many millionaires, particularly the most beautiful and privileged millionaires in Manhattan and Los Angeles, vote for the Democrats.

I can answer both. Rich, beautiful, coastal types are liberal precisely because their lives are so wonderful. They want to preserve their lives exactly as they are. If I were a rich movie star, I'd vote for peace and poverty relief. War and domestic insurrection are the greatest threats to their already-perfect lives--why mess with it? This rational fear of the peasantry is frequently misinterpreted as rich guilt, but that's not the case. They just want to pay off all the have-nots to keep them from storming their manors and impaling them on stakes. Republican elites don't set off the spite glands in the same way, and it's not only because of a sinister right-wing propaganda machine. Take a look at a photo of the late billionaire Sam Walton, a dried-out Calvinist in a baseball cap and business suit, and you'll see why. If Republican billionaires enjoy their wealth, they sure as hell hide it well. As far as one can tell, Republican billionaires genuinely like working 18-hour days in offices. Their idea of having fun is a day on the golf green (a game as slow and frustrating as a day in the office) or attending conferences with other sleazy, cheerless Calvinist billionaires. If that's what all their wealth got them, let 'em have it--so says the spite bloc. This explains why the Republican elite--the only true and all-powerful elite in America today--is not considered an "elitist” class in the spleens of the white male have-nots.

Tagged as: obama, elites

Mister Leonard Pierce is a blogger for Sadly No!