I Drank Obama's Milkshake

The most annoying thing about the Democratic primaries?  The accusations that anyone who supports Obama has "drunk the Kool-Aid."  Clinton supporters insist that the only reasons anyone would support Obama are 1) unconscious sexism or 2) Kool-Aid intoxication. 

At Kugelmass's place, I forestalled the first complaint with all the wit and subtlety of an enraged moose.  Me and my ten-foot pole will avoid that one from here on out.  As to the other charge, I'm convinced that people who claim Obama's supporters have drunk his Kool-Aid are the same people who failed my freshmen composition course lo all those years ago.  Consider the complaints aired in this thread at The Left Coaster.  Here is Joe (7:03 AM):

If you cared about civil rights and health care you would find Hillary Rodham Clinton inspiring.

To say you find Barrack Hussein Obama’s empty rhetoric inspiring says as much about the shallowness of the listener than the speaker.

I saw a stat yesterday about how 60% of Hussein Obama's supporters would not vote democratic if he wasn't on the ticket, and it explained why so many are so baseless ...

... they voted republican in 2000 & 2004.

Besides adopting the other party's talking points, Joe delivers that most egregious of undergraduate composition errors:

He mistakes the use of rhetoric per se for the effective use of rhetoric.  Anyone who's ever taught composition has bored you with stories about students whose "argument" is "In this essay the author uses rhetoric to influence people."  Of course people use rhetoric.  Not an issue.  Instructors want to know whether that rhetoric is effective or not.  Students want to point out that rhetoric is there and is being used ... and that therefore and thereby and thusly the person using it is lying because rhetoric is trickery and if this person was really honest no trickery would be needed to convince us that this person is correct in all things always and forever. 

I kid you not.  This is what undergraduates think.  Did I write "undergraduates"?  Because I need to expand that a bit.  Witness the protestations of "iamcoyete":

I'm not one of those that need inspiration, but I understand that the masses need their opiates. The original Pet Rock sold millions. I didn't buy one of those either. But since I want a dem to win, I hope the fad lasts to November.

And before anyone yells "sour grapes," let me just say that I never expected Clinton to win; there's just too much animosity out there, especially in the media, who, ironically enough, has pretty much chosen your candidate for you, despite all the protestations of "I don't want the media choosing my candidate!" Sure, I hoped, and even though Hope is now officially considered a plan, my personal hope was always unfounded considering the sheer volume of loathing the Clintons now "inspire" in the same people who spent 7 years defending them.

No, my disgust comes from the realization that I was stupid enough to believe that the left blogosphere was the "reality-based community," mainly because I hoped it was true. Shoulda known better; humans have always been profoundly disappointing.

But, woohoo! The bright side is that I no long have to worry about getting my facts straight, or feel guilty about deliberately misinterpreting something a talking head says if it furthers my own narrative! It'll make commenting on the issues way easier now, and for that, I'm grateful ...

Before you ask, "Pet Rock" is Obama.  Because the only people who consider him the superior candidate are incorrigible faddists.  You didn't know that?  All those people who support Clinton are cooler than us anyway.  They listened to Pavement back in 1993.  They revile Fugazi for selling out.  They're not joiners:

I'm just saying that although I'm not a joiner, I understand that most people need that feeling of belonging to something bigger than themselves. That's why we have religion. I tend to be suspicious of all movements, but that's just me.

We're all tools.  We buy Pet Rocks while they listen to Big Star.  We worship Travolta while they're hip to Byrne ...

Comments

[saurabh]

Before you continue excoriating that poor anonymous commenter, I would hope you'd note the adjutant adjective - "empty". Which is the real meat and guts of the complaint, is it not? Obama promises a hearty meal, but really the plate he's serving is quite bare, and whatever's there isn't really some sort of new, exotic cuisine, it's rather more of the same stuff we've been eating lo these many decades. But the BEVERAGE he gives to wash it down with - that seems to be fucking excellent.

I've asked this many, many times of Obama supporters and have yet to receive an answer - WHAT CHANGE? What does he have the audacity to hope for? Martin Luther King followed his brilliant bit of rhetoric, "I have a dream", with some substance - he actually told us what the fucking dream was. Obama has not. So I remain confused, and I think you should go easier on those poor undergraduates.

[tomemos]

The reason people talk about sexism in Obama supporters (or, more accurately, Clinton critics) is that many of them have been unapologetically sexist. The reason people talk about Obama as a cult of personality is that many of his supporters are only interested in the 2008 election if he gets nominated, yet can't name a substantive difference between him and Clinton. Neither of these things apply to every Obama supporter or even most of them, but they both are disturbingly common. So you can compare all us skeptics to nineteen-year-olds (correction: below-average nineteen-year-olds), or you can (as Saurabh says) give us some substantive reasons to support Obama. Which will be more rhetorically successful? Let's find out!

[John Emerson]

Nazi.

[Justin]

It's funny that outside of the tubes, most democrats would be pretty happy with either candidate. I think they're right, despite the fact that I have clear opinions.

That does indicate that the people talking about kool-aid have themselves drunk some kool-aid.

[Jake]

What other composition errors do undergraduates make? I'm curious.

I'm glad There Will Be Blood's nifty one-liner is finding its way around the world. Soon I will fulfill my dream of publicly using the quote in any context I wish with little embarrassment! It is just a dream, though. I still have to refine it.

[Ahistoricality]

I decided about a month ago that the only safe course was to entirely avoid Obama v. Clinton discussions unless they could be done in a dispassionate "isn't it historically significant that..." fashion. I think the rhetoric on both sides has been needlessly heated, especially given the nearly non-existent policy and experience differences between them. I think both candidates are significantly to blame for their supporters' tones and I think the mainstream media exacerbates and feeds off the problem like a vampiric troll. I think "momentum" is stupid, too, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I think any Democrat or supporter of democratic candidates who is wasting vitriol on rival primary candidates is missing the big picture, which is that electing a Democrat is the only way to slow, much less reverse, the decline and fall of America.

[Rich Puchalsky]

Someone's against Obama? Racist.

Just kidding. Although the sentence "The reason people talk about sexism in Obama supporters (or, more accurately, Clinton critics) is that many of them have been unapologetically sexist" could be reversed in polarity with Obama/Clinton and sexism/racism with no loss in head-nodding among those who want to head-nod.

I personally don't care which Democrat wins. Well, not actually true: I would prefer that Obama wins purely so that the last presidential terms will not read Bush, Clinton, Clinton, Bush, Bush, Clinton. The people who complain about Obama benefitting from a cult of celebrity haven't looked at how celebrity really is turning politics into a hereditary business.

[tomemos]

Rich, the difference is that, aside from the right-wingers who love to refer to Obama's middle name, none of the criticisms of Obama have a racial basis to them. (That I've seen; someone should set me right if I'm missing some.) By contrast, quite a few criticisms directed at Clinton--that she's unpleasant sounding/"shrill," that she is blatantly and unpleasantly insincere, that she's dependent on her husband, that her tearing up shows that she's fake, that her tearing up shows that she's weak, etc.--are pretty clearly gendered. It's the same reason Biden rightly got into trouble for calling Obama "articulate": regardless of the truth of such statements (and in Clinton's case I think there's very little), the point is that people of color and women are being held to a different standard than other politicians are.

I voted for Obama, incidentally.

[JPool]

(Ennumeration abandoned in favor of:)
Several things--

First, the discussion you link to reminds me of why I don't bother to read more of the internets. Jurgen Habermas is rolling around in his grave (not that I ever had much hope of a quiet rest for him) amidst all of the pointless shouting and name-calling. Not to mention the social science gone mad of all of these cherry-picked satistics.

Second, I think that Ahistoricality is correct that most of these arguments and the accompaning vitriol exists in the echo chamber between campaign talking points and media yammering points. Momentum is a dumb argument that comes out of horserace politics, but it's one that all campaigns use when it's to their advantage. This bickering does nothing to resolve the contest and everything to turn people back off of politics entirely.

Third, yes, some of the Obama commercials that I've seen were a little warm and fuzzy and devoid of substance for my tastes, but the charge that his candidacy as a whole is an appeal to feeling rather than substance is nonsense. As Ron Walters pointed out on NPR tonight, Obama has a few hundred policy statements out there, so any or all of those can be engaged with if you want to. As Ahistoricality points out, there's not that much difference between Clinton and Obama on policy matters, but they both have clear and substantial positions staked out if you want to try and hash that out.
But, here's what convinced me to support Obama: In an NPR interview a few weeks back, Obama was asked what made his healthcare proposal the one that could get pushed through. Rather than taking the bait and arguing that Clinton's or Edwards's (marginally different) proposals could never get passed, Obama made the argument that rather than one proposal versus another, what we need to pass universal health care, besides a president to back it, is a voting public who decide that it is important to them and that they're not going to let their representatives not pass it.

This is not a small point, and it's one that I expect he learned from his time as a community organizer. This is where charisma or enthusiasm are substantive issues, because what it will take for a Democratic presidency to have greater impact than, say, the current Democratic congress, is a citizenry that can be mobilized to become an active part of the process. We don't just need a better managerial class, we need a different relationship between people and power.

[JPool]

Tomemos,
I think there's a pretty strong racial subtext to the argument about Obama doing well in caucusses rather than primaries -- that whites, when they're alone with their conscience won't vote for a black candidate -- as well as the endless parsing of him not doing as well (in California) with whites, latinos, asians as with african americans. Additionally, any number of things can fit into racial or gendered frames as well as being separable from them, as all of your examples for Clinton, other than "shrillness," can. On Obama's side, can have the argument about experience - he's not ready - be just about that, or be about how the country isn't ready for such a black president.

[JPool]

Sorry, the "such" in the last sentence was left over from an earlier phrasing and shouldn't be there.

[Ahistoricality]

Rich, the difference is that, aside from the right-wingers who love to refer to Obama's middle name, none of the criticisms of Obama have a racial basis to them.

I've seen Obama's campaign called racist because it attracts stronger support among non-whites than among whites and doesn't consider that a problem (bit of an extreme case, but it's out there). I've seen people claim that a non-white male candidate with his record wouldn't be anywhere near the nomination at this point. I've heard (and usually turned off or clicked away, etc., as soon as possible) innumerable commentaries on the "black enough" question, usually from white commentators who are more concerned with "electability" than with authenticity or proportionality. Then there's the Eric Rudolph Wing of the LGF crowd, who are so enamored of Obama that the Secret Service began protecting him (and, I think, other candidates, to be fair) before the primary season was over.

I don't know that it rises to the level of constant casual misogyny which the Clinton campaign faces, but that's getting into comparative misery, which is a no-win argument. And, of course, the constant subdivision of the electorate into simplistic and easily manipulated racial/gender/age/interest categories does nobody any good.

[Other Ezra]

I don't want to compare grievances, but Hillary gets to count the word "shrill" as sexism, then Obama gets to count all the not-so-subtle drug insinuations, if not the statement that he only won a certain state's primary because he's black. And that's just from the Clinton campaign. No need to rely on blog commenters.

[aaron]

I'm constantly amazed at how Obama's rhetoric is "empty" whereas Clinton's vacuous use of the word change never gets called out. I mean, come on, "I've been making change for decades"? How is that a meaningful statement? How is that anything but rhetoric? Not that Obama's rhetoric isn't rhetoric, but it feels to me like the "empty promises" meme is an outgrowth of the Clinton=experience trope, another premature concession from democrats: since Clinton=experience, anyone who is not Clinton can not possibly have any kind of substance to their rhetoric, which is therefore empty and vacuous. The fact that Obama has a record, and a pretty good one, cannot enter into this equation, because Clinton=experience. Nor can the fact that her record is pretty mixed (see "health care," for example, filed under "debacle beause of top-down management style and poor use of resources"). Because, you see, Clinton=experience and Obama=!Clinton, therefore Obama=empty rhetoric. QED.

Also, I hate women too.

[PSlaven]

I'll throw my lot in with Ahistoricality and Jpool on this one. I'm not much for dipping into the blogosphere - I read my friends blogs and that's about it. For the most part I think that the anonymized discussions lend themselves to hyperbole, vituperative attacks and further evidence of John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory (I'm not thinking of anyone in here, but one needn't go too far afield from these pages to find the jackassery). Nonetheless, I wanted to pipe up on this.

I count myself among those individuals with a leftward slant who would be perfectly happy with either of the front runners. Even so, I find it dismaying to see that even though Democrats have the best chance of gaining the White House than they have in a while, Democrats are still engaging in that time honored preoccupation with eating their own. Not long ago it seemed like the feeling among liberals was, "Anybody but a Republican," but now it sounds like we're more intent on tearing each other down. I'm all for differentiating between the candidates, and pointing out their weaknesses, but the attacks are wearing thin.

It's naive of me to think so, I know, but if one doesn't want to vote for McCain in November, one may want to spend some time talking about why one appreciate both of the Democratic candidates now, if only to strengthen the cohesiveness of the party. Nevermind that it doesn't sound so appetizing to have to eat one's own words/hat/crow come fall.

[Rich Puchalsky]

Let's keep our focus on the real opponents here. By which I mean those annoying people who previously said that the Democratic party would never run a woman/black person for President, and who are now going on about the obvious insult to feminism/people of color it will be when Clinton/Obama is rejected for obviously sexist/racist reasons in favor of Obama/Clinton.

Just kidding again. Though I do keep wondering when those people will finally confront the reality principle. It's like all the lectures I used to read about how the netroots were in the can for the establishment Democratic party and how they would never participate in primaries to try to move the party to the left. I assume that those people have just shifted over to the ever more left.

[tomemos]

Ahistoricality, JPool, OtherEzra, you're all right, of course; I was imprecise. I've heard loads of crypto-racist (and sometimes just racist) stuff about Obama from his political and ideological opponents. What I mean is that, on the left, I haven't heard those remarks (the drug thing hasn't come up as a negative once, for instance), whereas I've seen no shortage of examples of sexism; and it strikes me as sad that some progressives flippantly discard egalitarian principles in favor of a preferred candidate. But I agree that comparative misery is a mug's game, and acknowledge that this is mostly a function of what blogs I visit; if I went to a Clinton-friendly blog I would probably see some pretty ugly stuff.

And, yes, the world of the blogs is not the real world, and thank goodness. I was feeling happy about the choice between candidates before the internet weighed in; now I just want it all to be over. Every time I vow I won't read comments at political blogs, they keep sucking me back in.

* * *
"And I hate women too."

What is it going to take for people to learn that protesting too much is not cute or convincing?

[aaron]

"What is it going to take for people to learn that protesting too much is not cute or convincing?"

Well, apparently it's not cute, which is all I was really trying for, so mea culpa. I didn't mean to be flip with a serious issue; I apologize. But if she wins the nomination, the gender bias in the general will make this kind of stuff look like small potatoes. I guess my real frustration is that while it seems to me that the debate has been much more friendly to Clinton than I would have expected (again, I think the general will/would make the kind of crap she deals with now look petty in comparison), the gendering of the election has so far worked in her favor at least as often as not. For example, if one says that "she is blatantly and unpleasantly insincere," it is often read as a gendered stereotype, rather than the kind of stereotype that could be applied to almost any politician, and this shields her from the charge of insincerity. I'm not saying a gender bias doesn't lurk in there somewhere, but it's the oldest cliche in the book that politicians are insincere and unpleasant. Similarly, when people say "that she's dependent on her husband," this is, on a certain level, absolutely true. Can you imagine that she would be running for president had she kept the name "Rodham" like she did in Bill's first term as governor or Arkansas? Never. But she gets a pass on her claims to be the "experience" candidate, because pointing out her lack of experience feels so sexist. And who knows what the effect of the tearing up episode really was, but it's hard to make the argument that it hurt her; she came from behind in the polls to win NH the next day, iirc. In the general, either democratic candidate will suffer heavily from racism and sexism, but it feels like the debate on the left has so far been pro-active in a way that actually defers making the debate about substance.

I guess I'm just trying to explain why I feel the need to be flip, where that frustration comes from. Maybe politics and blogs put together just bring out the worst in us. So it's a good reminder to think more carefully before speaking.

[David R. Block]

In the general, I think that either of these "racism" or "sexism" charges (depending on who the nominee is) should be used with extreme care. There are certain folks out there (I am one) who tend to get rather pissy if they feel that there are attempts to "guilt manipulate" them into voting for a given candidate.

In other words, it's not going to sell well in certain independent circles. Particularly if the independent streak is rather pronounced.

In fact, I tend to have my chain so severely yanked that I'll do the opposite of what the guilt manipulator wants just out of spite.

[JPool]

Yeah, the guilt thing (used by the candidates' advocates rather than the candidate themselves) has been one of the more annoying aspects of the campaign, both because it shakes up that hierarchy of oppressions/identifications cocktail that always leaves a bracingly bitter aftertaste, and because it quickly descends into that snotty name-calling nonsense. Aaron, all of your points about Clinton are at least arguable on their own, but collectively they add up to, "Sexism isn't really that big of a deal," and that ain't true. And Scott, I know that you know and Tomemos told you already, but your manuever over at Kugelmass's was offensive and dumb dumb dumb.