Bi-Polar Bear wrote:be fair nimh, a lot, NOT ALL but a lot of them have brought this on themselves with this "The educated class supports Obama " bullshit with it's clear insinuation of superiority. Very annoying.
I'm torn on this one.
On the one hand, I have found there to be an annoying classist undercurrent among some Obamaites. Not necessarily here though: the only person here that ever really got my gander up with that was Cyclo, whom I got a bit pissy with over it. But in general, in comments to blogs etc, oh yeah - I went off about that in one of your threads
about a month ago, and a page or two
later, again.
Also on that thread, I posted a thoughtful critique of Obama supporters, by a fellow Obama supporter, that
went into that more deeply. Thought it was spot-on. So I know what you mean.
But I'm also on the other side. Because I also see Hillary supporters take things the wrong way time and again.
Take your sentence, for example: "The educated class supports Obama." That's the kind of thing you describe as condescending. But take my Polls etc thread. It's into its 197th page now, and there's reams of demographic and electoral analysing going on there, based on opinion polls, exit polls etc. Just because the patterns in Hillary's and Obama's support are genuinely interesting; plus, it looks like these primaries will actually be decided on the demographics rather than on policy platforms or the like. So we analyse all that and then, yes, you're going to get a lot of sentences like, "higher educated voters tend to support Obama, while Hillary does well among lower-income voters," for example. Because well, it's
true, and it's interesting, and it's highly relevant in explaining the election results from state to state. E.g: Ohio has a lot of relatively low-education, low-income primary voters, so Hillary had a big advantage there.
Now I mention this because every so often, when someone points out things like those, there's the accusation that (s)he's being elitist or snobbish. Same with race, by the way. Every x posts I write analysing vote preferences among whites, or among whites by region (the South vs the West), or among blacks, some poster will complain that we're race-baiting or setting racial groups up against each other, or whatever. And we're not. We're just analysing the data. And likewise, if the data shows that one of the biggest and most decisive electoral gaps in these primaries is the one between high-education voters vs low-education voters, then it's going to be talked about. Is someone being superior/condescending if he writes, "high-education voters again strongly supported Obama", for example? What if it's true? What if that's what's decided the outcome of the primary in question? How should he have put it, then?
Now I know you may not have been referring to me - I'm just saying that those of us who are interested in the numbers and data and polling are in a bind here. That's why FreeDuck reacted immediately to your joky post a couple pages back too, I'm guessing. I've seen Sozobe be accused of being condescending too, when all she was doing in whatever post that was, was assessing the chances of Obama in the next primary, referring to polling data, going: "looks good for Obama, lots of high-education voters," or something like that.
So yeah... sure, I've gotten upset at times at the condescending tone among some Obama supporters (much worse on other forums/blogs than here), towards those 'proles' of Hillary supporters. So I know what you mean in general. But the very sentence you use as example also hits a nerve for me. Some Hillary supporters are so damnn sensitive that you cant even just mention the actual, real demographics anymore, in any context, without being accused of acting superior. When that wasnt the point at all. That's
also just unfair.
:wink:
Nice effort to try and make lemonade.
