Ben Smith watched last night's Compassion Forum on CNN and caught this answer from Hillary Clinton to a question regarding Barack Obama's recent comments:
"The characteriation of people in a way that really seemed to be elitist and out of touch is really something that we have to overcome," she said, turning to the Democratic Party's problem with religious voters in the past."The Democratic Party, to be very blunt about it, has been viewed as a party that didn't understand and respect the values and the way of life of many of our fellow Americans," she said.
"It did seem so much in line with what often we are charged with -- someone goes to a closed door funraiser in San Francisco and makes comments" that, she said, could be seen as "patronizing."
Clinton then repeated her suggestion that John Kerry and Al Gore had failed to be seen as respecting people of faith, said Obama is " a good man and a man of faith."
"We had two very good men, and men of faith, run for president in 2000 and 2004," she said. "Large segments of the electorate concluded that they did not really understand, or relate to, or respect their ways of life."
Smith also catches Obama's response:
Gore is probably the single most powerful superdelegate, and Obama begs to differ."Al Gore was mentioned earlier. I think Al Gore won," he says.
I think there could be an argument made that Al Gore and John Kerry didn't connect with voters, that they were out of touch. Certainly it's a meme that a lot of folks inside the Beltway seem to buy into, even if it's one that I don't think is particularly valid. And I don't think that Clinton, who has either been the first lady (of a state or the nation) or a Senator for 28 of the last 30 years and who along with her husband earned more than $100 million over the past seven years, would be the person to successfully make such an argument. However, I can understand one making that argument.
Yet it's not clear to me that such an argument especially helps Clinton, particularly given that Gore is the 800 pound gorilla in the room who has yet to endorse. Perhaps Clinton assumes that Gore will inevitably support Obama, so maligning him in a very public way will not decrease the likelihood of him endorsing her or increase the likelihood of him endorsing Obama. Maybe she's right, maybe she's wrong. Only Gore really knows the answer to that question.
But to the 51+ million Americans who voted for Gore in 2000 (more than had voted for any previous Democrat in history) and the 59+ million Americans who voted for Kerry in 2004 (again, more than had voted for any previous Democrat in history) -- the tens of millions of Americans who thought that both Gore and Kerry were very much in touch with them -- these comments could come off as at least a little condescending (in sort of the same manner that Obama's comments could come off as a little condescending). To narrow in a bit more, Gore and Kerry certainly spoke for me. They were in touch with the things that I, as an American and as a voter (at least in 2004), cared about. And I don't think I'm alone there.
So if Obama is "out of touch" (to use Clinton's wording) in the way that Gore and Kerry supposedly were -- Gore, who won the presidential election, only to have it be taken away by the Supreme Court, and Kerry, who received a greater share of the vote than any other previous challenger to an incumbent president during a time of war -- maybe that's not such a bad thing after all.
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