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Go Home He’s a Yuppie

POLITICS FEBRUARY 3, 2010

He’s a Yuppie

BY JOHN B. JUDIS

Here is a fact: Barack Obama has trouble generating enthusiasm among white working class voters. That’s not because they are white. He would have had trouble winning support among black working class voters if they had been unable to identify with him because he was black. He has trouble with working class voters because he appears to them as coming from a different world, a different realm of experience, a different class, if you like. And that’s because he does.

I have recently read several stories about Obama that treat these difficulties as if they were paradoxical. The latest is from The Washington Post. “Despite his roots,” the article is headlined, “Obama struggles to show he’s connected to middle class.” And the story—which seems to use middle class, working class, and blue collar interchangeably—describes his supposedly non-elitist roots as follows: “He turned down high-paying jobs after graduating from Harvard Law School and became a community organizer, compelled by the experience of growing up with a single mother who sometimes lived on food stamps. He married a woman from a working-class family on the South Side of Chicago, and they rented a walk-up condominium in Hyde Park.”

The first thing to note about this description is that, like many accounts I have read of Obama’s life, it gets its facts wrong. He didn’t become a community organizer after graduating from Harvard Law School, but after graduating from Columbia. He left community organizing to attend Harvard Law School. After graduating from law school, he joined a prestigious Chicago law firm with offices just off Michigan Avenue. In 1991, he began teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago. He was chair of a Chicago branch of the Annenberg Foundation. Obama’s wife, who admittedly did grow up working-class, nevertheless graduated from Princeton and Harvard Law School. And Hyde Park is a pricey upper-middle-class section of Chicago.

The second thing to note is something about class in America. By Marx’s definition, what we have in America, and in other developed capitalist countries, is a large, diversified working class that ranges from low-paid laborers and clerks to engineers and teachers, all of whom work for someone else, and cannot claim to own or control the means of production. But even if one accepts this account of the working class, there can be enormous social divisions between parts of it. Race and income are important, of course, but so is function, which separates people who perform routine or menial or manual tasks from people who produce ideas and complex services. College professors do not always make more money than electricians; but they live in a different world. In census terms, it is the world of professionals compared to that of operatives, laborers, clerical workers, and technicians.

Obama’s parents were professionals—his mother was an anthropology PhD and his father was a Harvard-trained economist. How much money they made was immaterial. His grandmother, who raised him in Hawaii, was a bank vice-president. He went to a fancy private school and to prestigious colleges (Occidental and Columbia) that turn out professionals and managers. He clearly was not obsessed with making money, but with performing a public service—yet that doesn’t distinguish him from other professionals or other Columbia graduates. It does distinguish him from a working- or middle-class American for whom being a civil rights lawyer or professor or politician is at best a passing fantasy.

It is admirable that Obama spent three years after graduating as a community organizer on Chicago’s South Side, but many graduates of elite colleges spend several years after college doing something unusual, before returning to graduate school or settling into a profession. Some travel around the world; some join the Peace Corps; some try to write novels. In the days of Theodore Roosevelt or George H.W. Bush, some became cowboys or oil wildcatters. It’s a tradition that goes back over a century. It’s called “sowing your wild oats.” Afterwards, they usually return to more sober and sedate occupations appropriate to their social background and education. That’s what Obama did. As I wrote of his community organizing period, he became weary of the life of the community organizer. He doubted he was accomplishing much, and decided to go to law school. He didn’t choose to go to Kent College of Law or John Marshall Law School—schools where he could have retained his ties with working class Chicago—but to Harvard Law School.

Once out of law school, Obama lived and worked over the next decade in a grey area between the very upper reaches of professional America and the country’s managers, owners, and rulers. He didn’t just have access to more money and live differently from ordinary Americans; he possessed power and authority that they didn’t have. He was of a different world, even if as a politician he would occasionally visit theirs.

There is no paradox, therefore, in Obama’s distance from white working class voters. What would be unusual is if he were able to echo their concerns in a deeply moving rather than in a somewhat mechanical way. Yes, there have been some gifted politicians of an upper class or professional background who have been able to do so. Some, like Bill Clinton, Lyndon Johnson, or Ronald Reagan, could draw upon their working class childhoods; others, like Franklin Roosevelt or Edward Kennedy, could evince a kind of upper-class paternalism. This made them great politicians. It didn’t necessarily make them great men or great Americans. Barack Obama is, by any fair measure, a great American, and he could turn out to be a great president. But he is not yet a great politician. He has not been able to transcend the political limits of his own social background. And that has been one of his problems as he attempts to extricate America from the mess he inherited.

John B. Judis is a senior editor of The New Republic and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

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29 comments

Why don't voters resent the Roosevelts, Kennedys, Rockefellers, and Bushes, but do resent the Obamas? Because the former come from the upper class and are forgiven if they act like they do, whereas the latter come from the lower or middle class and are not forgiven if they act like they don't.

- raylward

February 4, 2010 at 8:01am

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So why doesn't Obama bring someone like Hillary to help him sell the HC plan? Someone who can ride a circuit through non-Obama-favoring areas and reach out to voters he doesn't connect with. He needs someone who does connect with white working-class folks and who they trust to convince them that HC reform is not a plot by the yuppies to steal their "freedoms." If he hasn't reached these folks at this point, he's not going to reach them without help. If it's not the message maybe it's the messenger.

- huntmark

February 4, 2010 at 8:58am

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Where's Biden? This is his job.

- Claris

February 4, 2010 at 10:36am

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I don't think he's lost the middle class at all. If the jobs come back, so will the adoration and support. Right now, they are just wondering what happened to all the wonderful promises. Many were convinced during the campaign that big business were the reasons they were getting foreclosed upon, screwed over credit card rates, runaway healthcare costs, etc. And the guy who made a really convincing case that he could all of this really hasn't done anything to fix it. And thus the people start to think "more of the same" and go about their business, remembering to be a bit more cautious next time.

- SeattleEngineer

February 4, 2010 at 10:52am

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I doubt whether Obama's disconnect with the white working class has much to do with any supposed privileged background. After all, Dubya's background was far more elite, and he had no trouble making that connection. Obama is perceived as an intellectual, and the working stiff rejects any hint of intellectualism. And as an intellectual he is more comfortable in the world of ideas than in drinking beer with the boys.

- robertgorton

February 4, 2010 at 11:16am

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Thanks for this. Obama is the child of academics, the grandchild of middle class white collar workers, a prep school student, and a graduate of the Ivy League. Mom may have collected food stamps while in graduate school, but, frankly, this isn't very unusual and doesn't indicate in any way actual poverty. You might add, but won't, that while Obama's adult life has brought him into very limited contact with the black working class, he has absolutely no experience with the white working class, small town and rural America, etc. That isn't as much of a problem as the fact that he shares with other yuppies, including people posting here, a most often offensively stereotyped and prejudiced view of these Americans -- and sometimes it shows. For instance, his "bitter" remark was as cliched a stereotype as you could come up with -- it both indicated a lack of knowledge of the people he was talking and the fact that he shared the stereotyped perceptions of the affluent people he was talking to. Obama belongs to a class that would of course never use the "N" word -- but have no self-conciousness or shame about throwing the term "trailer trash" around in public. Even, as I've seen yuppie political commentators to, in the course of televised political conversations. Stereotypes are offensive and harmful. Especially when the people operating on those stereotypes and prejudices have immense political and economic power.

- esmense

February 4, 2010 at 12:14pm

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Esmense, say what you will about Obama's experience with the white working class, but three years of community organizing on the South Side of Chicago brought him into a heck of a lot more contact with the black working class than just about any white politician in this country (your idols Bill & Hill very much included).

- wildboy

February 4, 2010 at 12:48pm

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Gee, there goes robertgordon making my point. Bush appealed to his evangelical and rural supporters by using language that had meaning for them -- while going over the heads of most urban dwellers -- working class and elite. That language was culturally specific but it was not limited by or indicative of economic class or level of education. It use to amuse me every time Bush would talk about "appreciatin'" something. Exactly the same kind of language my affluent Southwestern business customers used (typical sign off "I appreciate ya"). Was it an act? Or did it really reflect his experience as a born again Christian and time spent among the Texas business elite? I don't know. But I do know enough to know that while he was indulging in the good salesman's trick of putting his target audience at ease, he probably didn't think he was talking down to anyone. The simple fact is, the poor, uneducated working class do not vote Republican. The Republican base is middle class and affluent. Educated professionals are beginning to desert the party -- they did so especially in the last election -- but that is a very recent development.

- esmense

February 4, 2010 at 12:51pm

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...But he is not yet a great politician... Isn't this the nub of of it--race and class, important to be sure--nothwithstanding? I left out from what I quoted this which follows it: ...He has not been able to transcend the political limits of his own social background... What I left out is inconsistent with the larger point which blankets it--political skill as in retail politics, the intangible that led to W. getting two terms and beating--which verb,"beating", I use advisedly in the case of Gore though even them being neck and neck makes the point-- two retail-politics at-the-presidential level stiffs: Gore and John Kerry. We will need to say if Obama turns out to be a one termer that W. and Clinton were better politicians than Obama.

- basman

February 4, 2010 at 1:38pm

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I agree with robertgorton -- it's the intellectual, cerebral thing, not the class thing. Americans don't like anyone who does too much thinking, as brain activity has a secretive, exclusivist aspect. A bluff heartiness that shows your values are the same as theirs, that's the ticket.

- ironyroad

February 4, 2010 at 1:38pm

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...it's the intellectual, cerebral thing, not the class thing. Americans don't like anyone who does too much thinking, as brain activity has a secretive, exclusivist aspect. A bluff heartiness that shows your values are the same as theirs, that's the ticket.... Nicely put, but I think overstated. It's not the the "too much thinking" that's the problem as such, for a lot of thinking and policy wonkery and sheer intellectuality were as much, if not more, present in Clinton Bill. He had-and still has-- in fact the great ability, evident in my greatest professors, of making complicated matters straight forward without dumbing them down. Clinton had that ability plus intangible retail politics greatness, which, I argue, goes to upset the apple cart of your little thesis. Mind you the "secretive, exclusivist past" I can get with: another way of saying that is that it's bad politics to evince it.

- basman

February 4, 2010 at 1:51pm

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"Play to your strength." If you're an intellectual, you're an intellectual. And what's wrong with that? I prefer that to Bush's phony folksiness. Obama needs to shore up his flanks and find some ordinary Jane and John Does to carry water for him. This has been a huge shortcoming in his PR machine.

- Claris

February 4, 2010 at 1:56pm

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Judis & Krugman & Walsh and the rest of them can't let go of the primary narratives, notwithstanding the fact that they were never really sincere in the first place. I wonder if it wouldn't be a profitable investment of time to round them all up and have all the Obama boosting transgressors spend a good afternoon stroking their egos six ways from Sunday- 'you were right all along, really. I don't know what could've possessed us to doubt your eternal wisdom', etc. etc. Perhaps then we'd only have to endure a few of these oblique 'I told you sos' a month. In any case, as regards Judis's show tune it doesn't even rise to sophistry. How many Presidents have we had in the last 50 years that weren't Ivy League educated? 1? Hell, how many have we ever had? And yet, apparently this is some big political liability for Obama. If you say so John. But to really appreciate the travesty that this piece is, look no further the Washington Post article that Judis sites as inspiration. Can't say it any better than this: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2010/02/facts_and_data_be_damned.php Facts and data be damned indeed. Congratulations Judis for endorsing the necrotic byproduct of diseased DC journalism as your own. PS Someone really ought to look more closely at how that long drawn out Democratic primary has factored to the resulting Obama Presidency. No one says it, but I can't get over the feeling that this has played a major role in the degree of criticism and cynicism Obama has faced from his own party, which has unquestionably abetted the administration and Party failures of the past year. America today is divided in so many ways, and so deeply, it really is a negligent oversimplification to reduce it to blue v red.

- I Majorajam

February 4, 2010 at 2:08pm

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I have not read a more uninformed, outrageous article about our President than this piece of nonsense by John Judis. Mr. Judis conveniently overlooks two centuries of American History during which the same 'working class' along with its friends in 'high places' did everything in their collective power to prevent any one of color in the United States from achieving anything, much less the Presidency. Where have you been Mr. Judis? Are we to believe that President Obama should not have gone to Harvard? That perhaps Howard University or Morgan State would have made him more acceptable to 'working class' Americans -- (this amorphous group, by the way that internet pundits always haul out of their collective pockets to use in their downplaying of whatever President Obama does). I suggest you read our American History. From the southern yeomen, the 'Know Nothings', the 'Draft Rioters' -- these 'Working Class Americans' have denied people of color a place in unions, adequate housing, integrated schools -- on and on -- this segment of the American population has always had a hard time granting 'anything' that has value to anyone that is not white -- period. That President Obama has not performed like Jackie Robinson, boasted like Muhammad Ali, or preached like Martin Luther King has most of these people shell shocked, including John Judis -- or more than likely Mr. Judis comes from the same class of people and just 'can't seem to get his head around President Obama'. Please write something better researched in the future -- The New Republic is a fairly intelligent magazine. You dishonor it with this kind of tripe.

- chadama

February 4, 2010 at 4:52pm

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Esmense, I spent my childhood growing up among the very demographic addressed by Obama's "bitter" remark, and what I have to say on that subject is this: In some cases, stereotypes accrue currency from the fact that they are mostly true.

- zaiquiri

February 4, 2010 at 6:17pm

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Chadama, you have it exactly right. BTW, "working class", "small town America", "rural America", these are all code terms for "white". As in, "white people built this country", "we white people are the ones doing all the hard work", "we white folks are the ones paying all the taxes", etc, etc.

- zaiquiri

February 4, 2010 at 6:38pm

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George W did connect with the white working class. It's not unimportant that he did it by sounding stupid. Not being stupid, which he certainly isn't, but by sounding stupid. By mouthing the sort of unsubtle, in your gut kind of taglines that the relatively less educated and intellectual folks in our society love, and love to mistake for wisdom. I came from folks who had a strange mixture of that anti-intellectual, just-folks sort of psuedo-wisdom, and a rock solid devotion to getting an elite education for their children. I still live amonst the unwashed rural working class, and have to say, that as much as I admire certain things about them, overall, they are nothing of which to be proud. They easily mistake catchy for intelligent, and they thoroughly resent the notion that knowing things may make a person better able to contribute to society. It's sad, really.

- IowaBeauty

February 4, 2010 at 7:02pm

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Zaiquri -- I spent my childhood growing up among the white working class -- in a family in which stereotyped and "narrow minded" thinking and the use of derogatory perjoratives against ANY class of people wasn't tolerated. My parents were activist in progressive causes, read widely and encouraged me to do the same. My Mom packed me a lunch and put me on a bus to Washington in 1963, when I was 16 years old, so that I could stand up for human and civil rights on the mall with the Rev. Martin Luther King. They were also deeply religious. Their friendships included people from a broad range of ethnic, racial, religious and geographic backgrounds. What does that prove about the white working class in this country? About as much as your personal experience proves. Nothing. When I went off to college with my "betters" I heard endless moaning from my more affluent and upper class classmates about how "hypocritical" their parents were on matters of race. My parents had their very human faults, but the were never hypocrites -- they lived their liberal values. My own experience as an adult, in the business world and among the creative class, that is among people much more affluent and well educated than the devout, fair-minded and intellectually curious people I grew up with, has taught me this; prejudice and "narrow minded" thinking and the propensity to see those whose experiences we don't share in stereotypical ways (that say more about the bigotry and limited experience of our peers than the reality of those "others") is not in any way determined by class. Or, for that matter, education. It is much more determined by experience. And a working class man or woman may be just as likely, and in some cases, more likely, to have experiences that take him out of his comfort zone, broaden his outlook and challenge his presumptions about others and the world as someone from a more elite, but perhaps more protected, background. As for the trite and conventional yuppie argument for other Americans' "anti-intellectualism," being made here I consider that, frankly, as just a back-handed way of making a claim for your own superiority. It's not a thought. It's an almost pavlovian, class-based knee jerk. When I hear people make this "argument" I wonder -- if this is really what you believe about most of your fellow citizens, how can you support democracy? And if you don't support democracy, what do you think would be better? A "meritocracy" with you in charge -- with the power your intellectual inferiors what's really best for them? How come I think it might somehow end up just being what's really best for you.

- esmense

February 4, 2010 at 10:05pm

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By the way, the urban white working class tends to vote just as liberally as their minority and educated elite neighbors. Seeing conservative politics as a marker for race and class is simple-minded. The political realities in this country are much, much more complex than that.

- esmense

February 4, 2010 at 11:39pm

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Esmense, I was not making an argument but rather an observation. It sounds like my family was similar to your own in a number of ways. So? My family was the exception. >As for the trite and conventional yuppie argument for other >Americans' "anti-intellectualism," Again this not an argument, it's an observation.

- zaiquiri

February 5, 2010 at 4:39pm

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I said: "small town America", "rural America"... Esmense said: "the urban white working class..." And: "Seeing conservative politics as a marker for race and class is simple-minded." Straw-man: You are taking issue with things I've never done, and things I never said.

- zaiquiri

February 5, 2010 at 4:51pm

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The problem, zaiquiri, is your "observation" positively supported attributing negative characteristics to people based solely on economic class. That is just as objectionable as negatively stereotyping people based on race, religion or ethnic background. The fact is, the negative stereotypes commonly attributed to the working class by the educated middle class and affluent -- on the left and right -- most especially bigotry, anti-intellectualism, resentment, are in fact widely distributed across the economic spectrum. The myriad Ivy-educated Wall Street fools ranting about "lucky duckys" too poor to pay taxes, that braying tv idiot, Rick Santelli, calling for a revolution among his fellow mansion dwellers, Bill O'Reilly (the well-educated son of a middle class manager), Rush Limbaugh (who hails from an affluent family of well educated professionals and started his radio career at a station owned by daddy), James O'Keefe (Rutgers educated son of a middle class engineer -- notable both for his ACORN sting and his less-publicized flirtation with white supremicists groups) and Barbara Bush (who famously resented being asked to sully her "beautiful mind" with thoughts others' suffering) all have, in one way or another and often in more ways than one, publicly demonstrated exactly those characteristics attributed to "the working class." But there's not a "working class" person in the bunch. And the above list is only the tip of the ice berg. Of course there are working class people who exhibit those faults too, and all the other failings of the human race. But that doesn't justify indulging in group stereotypes and class prejudice -- or confusing stereotypes and prejudice with reality.

- esmense

February 5, 2010 at 6:02pm

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To say that white working class, blue-collar voters were less likely to vote for Obama in '08 than college-educated citizens -- a factual truth that nobody denies, as far as I know -- is not to say that all working class, blue-collar people had/have a problem with black Americans or are easily manipulable pawns for GOP resentment politics. The queston as to 'why?' is a legitimate one, however, and is not answered by a listing of individual cases where the premise isn't true. To put it more bluntly, "my working-class family was liberal/anti-racist/intellectually open" is not an adequate response to "why are so many working-class voters open to being won over by conservative, quasi-racist, and anti-intellectual values?" It's very easy to tread on a mine when it comes to the particular and the general -- especially when people bring their own personal and family experience into the argument.

- ironyroad

February 5, 2010 at 7:46pm

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Ironyroad -- The answer to your question only seems elusive if you insist on seeing "blue collar" or "working class" as an indistinct blob of people all sharing the same characteristics and interests. The truth is, there are regional and other differences in how working class people vote. The white, urban working class, for instance (as I pointed out earlier) vote as liberally as urban minorities and educated elites. Local values and mutual interest trump class. And there are, of course, other differences too -- for one thing, many people dubbed working class are actually independent tradesmen and self-employed. They see themselves as small business owners, not laborers or "working class." And, in fact, that's exactly what they are. Their economic interests are distinctly different from those of their employees, for instance. The same applies to farmers. And, there can be a huge difference in interests between those who work in a poor, rural economy, where making a living may require a variety of skills (and a lot of creativity) and living and working in a suburban or urban environment. The economic life of a plumber in tiny Malta, Mt doesn't have a lot in common with a plumber in well-to-do Bellevue, WA. And, of course, the organized working class sees its economic interest differently, and votes differently, than the non-union working class -- a difference that is heightened by regional economic history. Non-union people, for instance, are likely to vote more like their union neighbors in the Northeast because the historical advantages of unionization in those places has provided advantages to the non-union workforce too. While non-union workers in other areas of the country have a totally different economic history and have seen their economic interests advance or stagnate for difference reasons. Why does anyone, for instance, find it strange that industrial and service workers in the South -- whose gains in employment and wages in the 1970s and 80s were acquired by providing a lower wage alternative to unionized workers in the Northeast, and by the explosion of service industry growth in the same region during the same time period -- would vote much more conservatively than those workers for whom the same developments, and the same conservative policies that encouraged those developments, resulted in bad economic consequences and lower standards of living? I am astonished at how people never stop to consider that the South, still the poorest region of the country but MUCH richer than it was in the first 60+ years of the last century, not only went through a dramatic social transformation during that period, but also through an equally dramatic economic transformation -- from an extremely poor agriculltural economy to a relatively more affluent service and industrial economy. Race and the Democratic Party's embrace of Civil Rights may account for the differences in voting patterns between black and white in the South, but it doesn't account solely for why the South is much more politically conservative than the rest of the country. The simple fact is that Southern workers made gains under conservative administrations that they didn't under more liberal ones (although, in fact, the foundation for those gains -- massive investment, in the 50s and 60s especially, in energy production in the region that made industrialization and urbanization possible -- was built by liberal administrations.) I don't think there is much mystery as to why they may see their interests as aligned with that of their conservative employers. Nonetheless, even in the South, the white working class is more likely to vote for Democrats than the much more affluent managerial and professional class. The other reality is this; working class people vote at lesser rates than the more affluent. Voter participation rises with income in every region of the country. And, while working class voter participation, and voter participation overall, has increased in the South since the 1970s, it has actually decreased in the Northwest and upper Midwest. A bigger truth perhaps (than a turn to the Right) about the working class is this; outside the South, working class voters have become increasingly discouraged by the political process (that hasn't, in fact, represented working class interests for a very long time). The result has been lower participation and a huge increase in "Independent" voters who feel little identification with either party and less identification with any ideology.

- esmense

February 6, 2010 at 7:30pm

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Let me put this more simply, Irony -- you can't answer the question of why working class people vote as they do if you persist in seeing them only as stereotypes.

- esmense

February 6, 2010 at 7:34pm

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I wasn't saying one should see them as stereotypes, or build answers around that perspective -- in fact, I wasn't asking any question at all in the foregoing. I was simply saying that the advancing of personal experience ("my family wasn't X but Y") as counter-evidence to the demographic/voting record isn't any more truthful or revealing than the original, rather generalized, assertions. Beyond that, esmense, I agree with much of your analysis as regards the South (the spread of military and NASA dollars across the region in the 1960s may have played a bigger role in economic development than most people admit), and I concur that terms such as 'working class' and 'blue-collar' are often used in dangerously loose ways that serve to imply a rigor of analysis on the speaker's part that doesn't hold up under examination.

- ironyroad

February 6, 2010 at 8:44pm

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Ironyroad -- I suspect you didn't actually read the post you were responding to -- because in that post I said said that my personal experience, and zaiquiri's, proved "nothing" about "the white working class." In fact, that was the whole point of my post; that you shouldn't make broad assertions about an entire and complex class of people based on limited personal experience and "observation."

- esmense

February 7, 2010 at 12:22pm

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You are right, esmense -- I conflated your and zaiquiri's posts, to make a non-existent post in my head. My apologies.

- ironyroad

February 7, 2010 at 1:00pm

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It really appears to be nothing more than a continuation of the "anti-elitism" / "anti-intellectuallism" that started with Bush v. Gore (who would you rather have a beer with?). For some reason, there is a sufficient proportion (I hesitate to say "majority") in this country that suspects "learnin' ". And just the other day, La Palin was giving a speech about how this country needs a Commander in Chief, not some Professor lecturing to us. It scares me that we keep getting the government we deserve based on anti-intellectualism. Of all the trends going through the country, it's this anti-intellectualism (and also Glenn Beck's popularity) that I just don't get. Tough problems DON'T require thought, experience, education, debate? Merely a gut feeling or better yet, revelation? To me, THIS is the true sign of America's decline.

- ericad

February 9, 2010 at 8:09am

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