Michelle Obama's Hopeless America

National Review Online: Senator's Wife Delivers A Gospel Of Bitterness In N.C. Stump Speech

(National Review Online)  This column was written by Yuval Levin.

---

By her husband’s logic, Michelle Obama must be a heavily armed xenophobic religious zealot, because boy is she bitter. The speech delivered by Mrs. Obama in North Carolina last Friday is characteristic of her peculiar recent performances on the stump. It is an hour-long talk to supporters who just want something to cheer about, and who get some opportunities at the outset, but then find themselves treated to a profoundly and relentlessly negative vision of American life.

She first offers, as she often does in her appearances, a kind of victim’s history of the 2008 Democratic primary race. In Mrs. Obama’s telling, the Barack Obama campaign becomes not an extraordinary mix of strategy and skill, but a sad reflection on the unfairness of American life. The bar, we are told, is always being raised just as her husband is about to reach it. They said he couldn’t win because he didn’t have an organization. Then he built an organization, so they said he couldn’t win because he didn’t have money. He raised money, so they said he couldn’t win because he couldn’t win caucuses. He won caucuses, so they said he couldn’t win because he couldn’t win primaries.

In the tone and substance of the story is the implication that the fact that this race isn’t over is evidence of a profound injustice done to her husband. “The bar is constantly changing for this man,” she tells us. Of course, the only relevant bar in an election is whether you win a majority, and Sen. Obama has yet to win a majority of Democratic delegates. If he did, the race would be over. The bar’s not moving.

But this tale of woe is really only an introduction to a larger and more sweeping list of bars getting raised just as hard working people are reaching for them. “So the bar has been shifting and moving in this race,” she says, “but the irony is, the sad irony is, that’s exactly what is happening to most Americans in this country.”

In Michelle Obama’s America, everybody’s suffering, no one has time to make any friends, no one earns enough to eke out a living anymore, and the bar of success is always being moved just out of reach. “Folks are struggling like never before,” she says, and in a nation struggling like never before, society cannot stand the strain.

What happens in that nation is that people do become isolated, they do live in a level of division, because see when you’re that busy struggling all the time, which most people that you know and I know are, see you don’t have time to get to know your neighbors, you don’t have time to reach out and have conversations to share stories, in fact you feel very alone in your struggle because you feel somehow it must be your fault that you’re struggling that hard, everybody else must be doing ok, I must be doing something wrong, so you hide…What happens in that kind of nation is that people are afraid. Because when your world’s not right no matter how hard you work, then you become afraid of everyone and everything, because you don’t know whose fault it is, why you can’t get a handle on life, why you can’t secure a better future for your kids.

In such a state of debilitating terror, of course, we can have no hope for the next generation. “Our fear,” Mrs. Obama says, “is helping us to raise a nation of young doubters, young people who are insular and they’re timid, and they don’t try because they already heard us tell them why they can’t succeed.”

It turns out, also, that it didn’t use to be this way. In fact, a great bulk of Mrs. Obama’s speech is devoted to nostalgia for a simpler time - an odd approach for a progressive, yet an altogether common one on the left today. She describes a steady downward path from that golden age of distant memory. “We know where we’re living,” she tells the slightly confused audience, “this is where we are right now, and this has been the case for my entire lifetime: that trajectory of hope has gotten more difficult for regular folks.”

Her listeners have to wonder exactly what she has in mind by “regular folks” when Mrs. Obama says that after completing their Ivy League undergraduate and graduate educations, she and her husband “found ourselves in a position like most young couples, with our PhDs and JDs and MPHs and LMNOPs, all those wonderful degrees, all mired in debt. We had not paid off our loan debt until just a few years ago.” But whether you are highly educated multi-millionaires or not, in Michelle Obama’s America, chances are you’re afraid, isolated, and hopeless.

Her husband, of course, manages a peppier and more upbeat stump speech, but in fact the same dark view of American life permeates his rhetoric too. Both Obamas seem to think the country is deeply depressed, and in need of a spiritual, economic, and political savior.

This view of America has been a real problem for the Left in the Bush years. As the liberal labor economist Stephen Rose has put it, “What progressives generally say about the economy is unrelentingly pessimistic - stagnant wages, rising costs, overwhelming burdens of debt. It’s a message that doesn’t resonate with the middle class - not only because it’s overly negative (by itself political poison), but because it’s simply flat out wrong.”

This gospel of bitterness arises from one analysis of what is unquestionably an anxious middle class, and one that believes the nation’s politics is on the wrong track. But anxiety is not necessarily a sign of desperation and injustice. Aspiration, too, can leave families anxious, as they strive to reach high aims with no guarantees. A political message that speaks to the aspirations of American families, rather than imagining that America is on the brink of suicide, would be a welcome and quite possibly a winning message in this election year.

It would seek to offer help to families facing uncertainties on the path of upward mobility, and would offer to fix some of the institutional failings that might create avoidable anxieties in a changing world, but would not describe the striving of America’s lower middle class as tale of failure and anguish. It would offer a reform agenda aimed at fusing American ambition with the energies of the market, rather than a cathartic transformation aimed at a return to an imaginary past.

The candidate of hope, it seems, draws much of his energy from a sense that America is hopeless; and the progressive in the race yearns for the America of his childhood. Let’s hope his opponent can do better.

[truthyness]

BLACK LIBERATION THEOLOGY .....WHAT IS THE

DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP THINKING OF??????

[glock4me]

my job pays half what it should, my kids go to a lousy school, the roads are full of pot holes,
the military has been turned into a joke and a
career move for ex-felons, the economy is a mess,

no one has health care,

well except fot the wealthy wall street republicons

that bush and mcbushcain spend so mush time
protecting


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Posted by joyous88 at 09:05 AM : May 08, 2008



Sounds like you need to get a better job. Or perhaps you should have studied harder in school. I''m not a rich wall street republicon, as you call them, but I have a good job with health/life insurance benefits, retirement, etc.

Here is some "tough love" advice... get off the *** computer and either go to night school to get a better job or work longer hours at your current job instead of whining about how bad your life is. Also, move out of the ghetto so your kids can go to a decent school.

Hard work over the course of time pays off big in America. Get with the program and you will truly be "joyous."

[ladyesq1]

This woman has no class!!! She will be the nastiest, trashiest First Lady we ever have if Obama is elected.
Oh, wait...Obama won''t be elected. lol Never mind.
If Hillary doesn''t get the nomination, Obama will be shredded by the GOP machine in the fall and the Dems will lose again just as they did with Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry.

[joyous88]

same old song and dance

same old dog and pony show,

same old fascist republicon party

four more of the same mcbushcain

Reading this article and Michelle''s senior year thesis at Princeton certainly does indicate her extreme sense of isolation and failure to be accepted by those whose positions she truly aspired to. Coming from a genuine black American background, taking 20 years to contemplate the messages of Jeremiah Wright and neighborhood guru Ayers, even Rosa Parks, Mildred Loving and James Meredith would have had somber, hopeless views of an alien, hostile world. What Michelle needs to do is stand up, say I am going to the front of the bus and America has enough room for me to do that, and then just do it. She would be shocked at how many people stand at her side for that journey. Color will not be a determinant of that crowd. She needs to take it as her destiny, her right, her inheritance and her legacy. And if she won''t, she needs to see that her daughters do.

[joyous88]

a lot of us feel that way,
what do you clowns expect?

talk about being out of touch with america

my job pays half what it should, my kids go to a lousy school, the roads are full of pot holes,
the military has been turned into a joke and a
career move for ex-felons, the economy is a mess,

no one has health care,

well except fot the wealthy wall street republicons

that bush and mcbushcain spend so mush time
protecting

[juwboy]

Blue Dastard:

What''s a "DUEL PASSPORT"?

A license to kill?

[catlady1412]

I found an error in this article. It says that Obama and his wife''s speeches do not "resonate with the middle class". Those of us who were the middle class have now taken a HUGE backslide into lower class so of course, they do not resonate with the middle class. There IS NO middle class left! In fact, we were upper middle class and inflation, gas prices, stalled wages and rhetoric-laden media coverage of every single thing, whether significant or trivial, pretty much pushed us down. So I can say that they resonate with those of us now in the lower class at least!

[guysdigdirt]

THANK GOD OBAMA IS NOT BOUGHT BY THE ISRAELI LOBBY GROUPS!

AMERICA STAND UP OR SHUT UP!
Posted by bluestardad

You are right Bluetard. Obama is a terrorist at heart and his alegience is not to the USA. He does not have to be bought, he is already there.

[kailumego1]

A lot of white folks criticize Michelle Obama for her candor and truthfulness, which they should be more willing to step outside themselves and listen.

I admire her truthfulness, she could have hide behind a mask, and became a charming "sociopath" like many politicians and lied through her teeth.

But instead she welcomed the American people into the struggles of African American professions, trying to compete in a society where systemic racism still prevails.

She and her husband brought to the table dialogue on race, where most Americans have continuously remained selectively mute.

If any thing, at least she''s not trying to put on a pretense or be disingenuous.

[bluestardad]

THROW THAT SLIME NRO!

ANOTHER DUEL PASSPORT HOLDING ISRAELI AMERICAN TRYING TO INFLUENCE REAL AMERICAN NATIONAL POLICY IN FAVOR OF STAYING IN THE MIDDLE EAST!

THANK GOD OBAMA IS NOT BOUGHT BY THE ISRAELI LOBBY GROUPS!


AMERICA STAND UP OR SHUT UP!

[archamrh]

This is not about HATE, unless your Michele Obama & Rev White, it is about the rich against the poor and we are all the poor, unless your a Politician! Way back when I was a young boy it WAS about parties, but not today, all Politicians are rich and giving our jobs away to other countries with NAFTA and the WTO! Please, someone show me a poor Politician, PLEASE! The left hates the right, and the right hates the left, period! The left would not give Bush anything unless they had plenty of ear marks in the Bill he wanted. Now it''s the right, for the last year and a half that wants all the ear marks, which is nothing more then money in their own pockets! As far as Michele Obama goes, her very first speech told me all I needed to know about her, and that was hatred of most people in America! Her saying "this is the first time she was EVER proud of her country"! Well there are plenty more countries out there she can go too, isn''t there?! I''m sure I will get a lot of hate mail for this, but this is how I see it and this is my opinion, which I am entitled too, I hope!

[joecoolswat]

joyous88.....are you clueless ?....Neoconservatism (NeoCons) are defined as "a political philosophy that emerged in the United States from the rejection of social liberalism, and rejection of the New Left counterculture of the 1960s"....Wilkapedia 2008

[truthyness]

Hillary Supporters,

If you do nothing else today...watch this tape.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5W5jyPQ3_I


Hillary''08

pass it on!!

[rightnright]

When I read Al-Jezeera I expect this kind of ignorance. When I read CBS I expect respectful intelligent dialogue and I have seen very little of it.
I am proud to be an American and any of you who are American and not proud of your national heritage are ungrateful, untraveled and probably uneducated. The accomplishments of the American people and our standards of living are envied thoughout the world and your kidding yourself if you think otherwise. Also, my economic situation has done nothing but improve in the last several years. My husband and I also started broke out of college but didn''t have fancy degrees. So many people forget what makes this country great. Get educated, obtain skills and work hard. That is the American way and it applies to all races. If you are not doing that, you are America''s problem.

[superdem]

Well, we can''t all dump our first wife to marry a rich heiress to a beer fortune. Being rich does elevate the spirits, I imagine. For the rest of us "malcontents" what do we see - two endless wars sucking our nation dry, people losing their homes and unable to afford being sick, trying to buy items made in China or gas at prices spinning out of control. And the New Republic wonders why everybody isn''t happy ? Don''t Worry - Be Happy ! must be the new Republican mantra. It''s always the Democrats who see things for what they really are - screwed up. Keep on those rose colored glasses - the elections are coming.

[middleman8]

If the last "BAR " is the super delgates, there will be hell to pay.

I am so sick of the right wing media picking on the wife of a presidential candidate. It borders on hate speech.

While I mostly agree with what Michelle Obama says, it is pretty much irrelevant. People don''t marry someone because of their political views or public speaking skills. It is enough that a wife gives up her own career to support her husband''s, e.g. Maria Shriver.

[notblue]

joyeous88, thank you very much for once again proving my point.

[mswolfestock]

The only reason that Barak Obama is still in the race is because his opponent is a woman.