Some on the Left are puzzled why expensive shoes don’t make John McCain into an elitist and the object of ridicule. After all, Phil Gramm used to advise him and he’s in favor of tax cuts so why isn’t he the out-of-touch rich guy? (Regarding for the claim that he “has no connection to working people on a personal level,” we’ll put aside for the moment the debate as to whether military veterans or Hyde Park academics better fit the definition of “working people.”)
The Left and its chosen candidates continually make the same error. We saw it in Bittergate in spades and during the damage control in which Obama and his wife set out to explain that they were really of modest means. It is not the wealth of the candidate that matters. It is the worldview, the disdain for the little guy and the cultural condescension that riles those voters in Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, Texas, Pennsylvania and lots of other places. McCain doesn’t psychoanalyze voters or ridicule their value system. He invokes and praises the same cultural values, some say old-fashioned values, which these voters take seriously.
Nor should the manner in which a candidate runs his campaign and interacts with voters be ignored. There is no better way to lose the common touch and sever bonds with ordinary voters than for a political candidate to elevate himself to messianic proportions, claim that he is unlike any other politician ever to come on the scene, surround him with creepy iconography and venture overseas to revel in the adoration of his fellow world citizens. Contrast that with the candidate who invokes the virtues of participatory democracy and delights in town hall Q and A’s with ordinary voters, and you understand why the former might be considered the strange, distant one and the latter a regular guy.
As to the substance of the candidates’ message,the Left’s persists in arguing that Americans don’t know what’s good for them. We’ve seen this “false consciousness” critique (by way of What’s The Matter With Kansas?) many times before. Aside from missing the degree to which Democrats continually find a way to make themselves “odious to vast swathes of Middle America,” it assumes that the message of high taxes, huge government spending, and protectionism is inherently more appealing to average voters. What’s not to like in all that? Well, lots and the track record of that agenda is not impressive, either in the U.S. or abroad.
But it is just this puzzlement which sends Democrats again and again back to the well of weak candidates. There is every reason to expect that any Democrat should be able to win this year. Yet the Democrats have a knack of finding the very one who can’t. That may or may not hold true this year, but they would have a better track record overall if they found candidates who understood and related to average voters rather than citizens of the world. And it really doesn’t matter how much money they have in the bank.
