Obama feels your pain
On the campaign trail, his voice “coarse and tired” (don’t they mean “hoarse and tired”?), Obama tries empathy:
“Look, Ohio, I know we’ve been through tough times,” Obama said. “Every day I think about everybody out there across the country who’s still looking for a job…whose homes may be still under water or at risk of foreclosure. The folks out there who at the end of the month are sitting at the kitchen table trying to figure out, How am I going to make all these bills? Michelle and I understand it, because we know what it’s like to have a tough time sometimes.”
We know what it’s like to have a tough time sometimes. What does that even mean? That once he and Michelle had a problem of some sort? That he and Michelle, graduates of some of the finest educational institutions in the land, with many positions from which to choose (and early celebrity and book contracts on his part, contracts which were extended when he failed to produce), didn’t know where their next meal was coming from, or how to provide for the basics?
Whatever is he talking about?
I know what he’s talking about, of course. He’s setting himself up as the proletariat vs. the privileged aristocrat Romney. Your struggle is his struggle, and all that.
What the peasants cannot afford plain ol’ iceburg lettuce?
Well, then, let them eat arugula!
Ah Neo, nuance escapes you.
Nuance just leaks out of The Won.
FWIW, there is that story making the rounds about President Obama’s 2000 Congressional campaign, and the effect it had on the Obama family finances. And I seem to recall news stories in 2008 that suggested that the Obamas had spent some time living from paycheck to paycheck.
So he feels their pain? Every afternoon on the golf course, every night he spends chumming with McCartney or Letterman or Stewart, and every evening he hob-snobs with Streisand and Clooney and Wintour? Good to know.
From a recent ABC/WaPo poll: Regardless of who you support, which candidate do you trust to do a better job handling the economy? OBAMA 43% ROMNEY 52%
Regardless of who you support, who do you think better understands the economic problems people in this country are having? OBAMA 48% ROMNEY 46%.
If only we could convince enough voters that it’s probably in their best interest to elect the person most likely to help them get or keep a job, instead of the one who seems to feel their pain. Or that the one who claims to feel their pain would rather party with the elite than address the concerns of the jobless.
“… Obama’s 2000 Congressional campaign, and the effect it had on the Obama family finances. And I seem to recall news stories in 2008 that suggested that the Obamas had spent some time living from paycheck to paycheck.”
I seriously doubt Barack & Michelle spent a single penny of their own money on his failed run against Bobby Rush. Please provide a link.
I hope he’s feeling our pain on Nov 7th. If he loses, it will be the first time in his life he’s been given the grade he earned. Plenty painful to America’s first affirmative action president.
I think he made up for whatever imagined “hard times” he had link
∅bama:
The folk, the folk, the folk, the volk. 🙂
I have never encountered a less folksy politician than ∅bama- nor have I ever encountered a politician who talks more of “folk” or of “folks.” Compare ∅bama with Harry Truman, a well-read man whose folksy manner was not an affectation but a reflection of his middle-class life in MidAmerica.
Admittedly, by now perhaps anything ∅bama says irritates me. After hearing the same buzzwords for four years now, my tolerance is not great.
Politicians need to connect with people who, were they not politicians, they would never encounter. From Bob Dylan’s “I Shall Be Free:”
∅bama is by far not the first politician to play the “I love you all [as long as you vote for me]” game. All have to play it. There have been politicians of plutocratic origins who have played the folksy game, a great incongruity given their backgrounds. Nelson Rockefeller and JFK come to mind. Rockefeller and JFK were better at the game than ∅bama, as they appeared to connect with the hoi polloi, in spite of their origins.
∅bama seems , like Richard Nixon, appears to be uncomfortable playing the glad-handing politician. Such discomfort is seen as phoniness. ∅bama’s serial lying does not help.
Rant #115, over and out.
Gringo…
FDR had even JFK and Nelson Rockefeller beat.
He could drip aristocracy yet still feel the national pain.
Well, like many Americans, I bet Obama’s worried about keeping his job.
I feel his snrkkk.
Let me try again.
I feel hi heheheheh.
One more time:
I feel his pahahahahah.
Sorry.
Neo:
I had a thought-problem the other day, and wanted to pass it along to you. I think it may speak volumes:
Make a list of world leaders who would consider Mr. Obama to be a friend, in the I like to hang out with this guy sense.
Cf. Reagan, Thatcher.
Don’t world leaders have friends among their ranks? Who among them considers Obama friend-worthy?
Gringo Says:
” the folk, the folk…the volk.”
I dislike it when Obama refers to terrorists as “the folks.” He does is constantly, as in “We will bring those folks who murdered our people to justice.” Don’t equate those murderous thugs, those terrorists, those dark age throw-backs to the citizens of the United States, Mr. Obama.
Someone must have drilled into his head never say the word people when you can use the warm and fuzzy term “folks.” Now it’s a habit he can’t break. I believe GW Bush was guilty of the same thing. It makes me want to throw things at the TV, radio, or computer screen. Grrrrr.
Susanamantha, ∅bama’s use of “folk” to refer to terrorists is yet one more example of how ∅bama’s connection with much of mainstream US life and culture is something grafted on for the purpose of winning votes. He doesn’t have an intuitive grasp of mainstream US life and culture, because his only connection to it has been for the purpose of political campaigning. He has spent his life in outliers to US mainstream life: Hawaii, elite private colleges, Noo Yawk, South Side of Chicago.
Like when ∅bama, a Chicago South Side resident for two decades, referred to the the place where the South Side residing Chicago White Sox play as “Caminsky Field.” I have no problem with “Caminsky,” as that is Chicago-speak for Comiskey. If the Sox no longer play at Comiskey Park- that is also OK , because who can keep up with all the stadium changes. But Caminsky FIELD? Even I, whose only time spent in Chicago has been to transfer from bus, train or plane, know that the White Sox play in a PARK and the Cubbies play at Wrigley FIELD. ∅bama can’t even get that right, after two decades in Chicago?
Obama feels your pain
I’d rather felt Chris Stevens’s pain.