There is nothing worse than having to argue with a guy who likes jazz and golden retrievers and worse yet writes a sensible sounding column. But where Mike Elk and I shear off in radically different directions is at the point where he believes that only Union organizing can stop Sarah Palin’s ascending to the presidency.
Writing for the Huffington Post, Mike Elk is a union organizer who has also worked as a staffer on the Obama-Biden campaign his recent article “Liberal Elitism will make Sarah Palin President – How only Union Organizing Can Stop It” gets kudos from me for admitting that Liberals are elitists or to quote Elk “indeed very elitest”. Elk’s goes on to explain how the actual “working class” union members feel a disconnect from Liberals as the liberals tend to be vastly more educated thant the “70 percent of Americans that never graduate from college”.
This is where Elk starts to loose me he talks about the only communication that liberals have with actual workers in “real life” is going to McDonalds and asking for fries – hmmmm okay. So most conservatives work at McDonalds? Elk’s apparently considers his fellow liberals even more snobby than he is, as he says in the following “Such snobbery was expressed to me in an email recently sent to me from a Democratic media strategist who said the message of the day was, “Conservatives face a choice about the future of their movement: Will they come to the table to get things done or ’stick with the angry people’?”
So Mr. Elk manages to sound like a snob while talking about what snob liberal elitists are and then he goes on to talk about Sarah Palin who he says “… indeed represents all the rage of the working class that liberals of this country are trying to quiet down. Many liberal elites engaged in revisionist history say that McCain’s defeat was caused by Palin. However, anybody who actually worked on the Obama campaign like I did knew that McCain’s defeat was caused by the financial crisis and McCain’s baffling response and coddling of Wall Street.”
It’s really kind of easy to believe that the liberal elite despite their dismissal of Palin do have a real and abiding fear of her running again. Witness the NYT/AP article today that ‘fact checks’ her newly released book “Going Rouge”, the NYT chastise Palin for such sins as seeking out reasonably priced hotels for the most part, but then for splurging on one once with her daughter. My guess would be that most politicians would have the exact opposite record (ie, splurging on hotel rooms except for that one time that they went crazy and were frugal).
Regardless, the fact that the left’s attack dogs are out early and often are a very good sign of their fear. In the short time since I started writing this article MSNBC, The AP, Newsweek, etc., have all jumped on the Palin attack train. And she sure draws some critisicm. She is villified by people such as Debbye Turner Bell for calling her own husband “good looking” as this (in Turner Bell’s opinion) is not “Presidential” unlike our President and his Presidential remarks like “The police acted stupidly” not a very high bar there is it?
But again, Liberal elitist or not, Elk’s strikes a vein of truth by saying that “As an organizer for the Obama campaign on the ground in Western Pennsylvania during the election, I remember how white, working-class, swing voters couldn’t stop talking about Sarah Palin for weeks on end. For the three weeks between Palin’s selection as VP candidate and the financial crash, we were scared shitless the Republicans were going to win as Palin led to McCain surging in the polls.”
The “working people” or “uneducated working people” as the leftist elite refer to us apparently identify with Sarah Palin because the media and the left treat her as an uneducated bufoon also. Of course anyone without an Ivy League education is a ‘bufoon” (according to most of the leftist with Ivy League educations). Personally, I think that we have had quite enough of Ivy League graduates in the White House for awhile and after observing the politics and decision making ability of some of the Ivy League members of this administration I am believeing that the Ivy League’s academic standards must not be that tough anymore.
Now beyond continuing on about why the left is underestimating Sarah Palin, Elk’s talks about motivating the unions to “be constantly sitting down with working class white conservatives one-on-one, listen to their concerns, and engage them in honest dialogue. Only real community organizing can do this” he then goes on to say “Sure, not all of them came over, but enough that it was worth the effort. If we can just bring over one-third of white, working class conservatives, we can dramatically change the political landscape of this country. That’s what the Employee Free Choice Act would be able to do.” and “We as progressives can win only when we get all the teabaggers into our movement through getting them into unions. As Lincoln said, “United We Stand, Divided We Fall.” Only organized labor can achieve that type of unity. Failure to bring working people into the Employee Free Choice Act could easily lead to the election of a Sarah Palin.”
Please, read the above paragraph over again once or twice before continuing, because it is probably one of the first and only times you will read a Progressive speak the truth. Let’s hope the following is true also:
“Sure, liberals laugh off the idea of Sarah Palin being elected president. However, elitist, out-of-touch liberals laughed off Nixon, Reagan and Bush as unelectable. Well, guess what, they all won. If we don’t stop laughing at white, working class people, we are going to lose too.”