Elite Echo Chamber Can’t Hear the People (II)

Here is more about how the American elite misses what’s going on in Middle America. From Clive Crook, Financial Times (UK) commentator:

Democrats speak up for the less prosperous; they have well-intentioned policies to help them; they are disturbed by inequality, and want to do something about it. Their concern is real and admirable. The trouble is, they lack respect for the objects of their solicitude. Their sympathy comes mixed with disdain, and even contempt. Democrats regard their policies as self-evidently in the interests of the US working and middle classes. Yet those wide segments of US society keep helping to elect Republican presidents. . . for much of the media, the fact that Republicans keep winning can only be due to the backwardness of much of the country.

Democrats [cannot seem to] contain their sense of entitlement to govern in a rational world, and their consequent distaste for wide swathes of the US electorate. . . [T]he fathomless cultural complacency of the metropolitan liberal rules . . .out [winning]. . .Democrats need to learn some respect. . . develop some regard for the values that the middle of the country expresses when it votes Republican. Religion. Unembarrassed flag-waving patriotism. Freedom to succeed or fail through one’s own efforts. Refusal to be pitied, bossed around or talked down to.

Caroline Glick, a Jerusalem Post columnist, similarly notes how elite ideas—meant for themselves—obviously don’t carry to the masses:

the Left's ideology, whether relating to women's rights, human rights, academic inquiry or war and peace is not universal but tribal. . . [W]hen the Left is challenged on any one of its signature issues, because it cannot actually make a case for the universal applicability or even logic of its [tribal] views, it tends instead to embrace the politics of personal destruction while ignoring the obvious contradictions between its stated beliefs and actual behavior.

A tribe. Indeed, a tribe.

While conservative commentators may match their liberal counterparts in their ability to explain America’s current divisions, it doesn’t get us to where we want to be, a nation working together—elite, minorities, and working class whites—for the benefit of all. Dick Meyer, affiliated with NPR after a career with CBS News and author of Why We Hate Us: American Discontent in the New Millennium, says it’s untrue we are a nation divided into "two Americas." Meyer maintains “the vast majority of Americans. . . are pragmatic, independent and un-partisan in their basic views. They are eclectic: ‘liberal’ on some matters, ‘conservative’ on others.” Meyer’s view is a useful, heat-of-the-election-campaign reminder that the middle usually dictates election outcomes. It’s where both Obama-Biden and McCain-Palin should be looking for votes.