Obama Didn't Address Middle America in the Debate

On the night of the first presidential debate, I shrieked when Barack Obama said in response to John McCain’s suggestion of a spending freeze to alleviate our financial crisis, “The problem with a spending freeze is you’re using a hatchet where you need a scalpel. There are some programs that are very important that are under-funded. I want to increase early childhood education and the notion that we should freeze that when there may be, for example, this Medicare subsidy doesn’t make sense.”

In response to McCain’s suggestion of considering a spending freeze except for “the caring of veterans, national defense, and several other vital issues,” Obama had the audacity to suggest increases for government preschools. Then he suggested cutting the military budget: “Let me tell you another place to look for some savings. We are currently spending $10 billion a month in Iraq when they have a $79 billion surplus. It seems to me that if we’re going to be strong at home as well as strong abroad, that we have to look at bringing that war to a close.”

Apparently, for Obama, government preschools will make us “strong at home.”

I had received a call from a friend that afternoon asking if I could give her a ride to our usual Friday night activity of contra dancing. She could not find gas to buy in the Atlanta area — even at $4.20 a gallon. On my seven-mile drive home from work, I passed a dozen gas stations with their price signs blank, except for one that had a line of cars out in the street with drivers waiting to buy gas.

Here, we’re worried about being able to buy gas to get to work. Across the country, people are worried about losing their life savings and their homes. Some say that this is the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

And Barack Obama wants to increase spending on government preschools.

I anxiously awaited commentary on this absurdity from the pundits lined up on Fox News.

Nothing.

Nothing on CNN or MSNBC either. In fact, many commentators, even conservatives, opined that Obama won the debate in terms of style and effectiveness. Why? He said “middle class” numerous times, while McCain did not. McCain failed to connect with Middle America, they said. In fact, the Obama campaign has released an ad with an announcer saying, “Number of minutes in debate: 90. Number of times John McCain mentioned the middle class: zero.”

But despite his repetition of the phrase, and the recently acquired flag lapel pin, Barack Obama is not appealing to the middle class or to Middle America.

Obama is still appealing to the same people he appealed to as a community organizer: the disenfranchised who have spent generations in public housing, the bitter single mothers who expect government to provide them with daycare, the easily outraged, and those duped into believing that they are victims of a racist and sexist America; they see Obama as the savior. (His other supporters are parent-supported idealistic college students and the Hollywood stars disconnected from reality.) In fact, on the Association for Community Organization and Social Administration website, Chair Tracy M. Soska from the University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work wrote a defense of Obama’s experience as a community organizer in response to criticism from Sarah Palin and Rudy Giuliani. The “skills” of a community organizer that translate into leadership abilities sound like nothing more than the duties of a government nanny:

• “listen to and involve citizenry on issues affecting them;
• “bridge differences to develop common visions and action plans;
• “mobilize resources — most importantly, people — to work on common agendas.”

And the list goes on in the same vague, feel-good way that one would expect from a make-work position.

Are these the kinds of skills Middle America is looking for in their next president?

Obama’s base also sees a college education as a fundamental right because it provides entrée to a well-paying job. That’s it. No concern about qualifications or the intellectual ability and discipline to master the work.

Obama, the former overpaid temporary part-time lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School at $60,000 a year, who taught such classes as “Race, Racism, and the Law,” said, as he has said so often, that we have to “make sure that college is affordable to every young person in America.” But Obama has never taught at any of the community colleges that I have for $6,300 a year as a part-time instructor and faced students on special scholarships who do not bother to read the material, bring books to class, or even keep their heads up during class discussion. He also wants, as he stated during the debate, to “make sure that we’re competing in education” by “investing in science and technology.” The students I see I am sure fare no better in calculus than they do in my freshman composition classes. In fact, we import more and more students in math and science, mainly because our students have been led to believe that school is supposed to be a fun place where they think well of themselves and train for bringing about “social change.”

When Obama expressed agreement with McCain about the need to help veterans, it was not in terms of medical care and rehabilitation for those who have lost limbs, but for those suffering post-traumatic stress disorder. Again, the nanny state taking care of soldiers traumatized by an unjust war, in Obama’s eyes.

Obama brought up national health insurance. McCain quite rightly said that Americans don’t want the federal government in charge of health care.

Again, not a peep from the commentators on any of these points.

The stutterer who had to search for words and his bracelet to remind himself of the name of the fallen soldier did not connect with Middle America, despite the pass given him by the pundits. Obama, in fact — through his proposal for the government nanny state, with everything from indoctrination centers for preschoolers, to government health care, to the implication that our veterans are mentally ill — was the furthest from Middle America. Obama is still speaking to the masses at community rallies, the disenfranchised who believe that government should take care of them.

McCain needs to point that out in the next debate and let the large segment of still-undecided voters know that Obama is not speaking to Middle America.