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Yesterday's Trib had a big article about Barack Obama's ability to appeal to "beer-track voters," and today Media Matters posts a smack down, saying the Trib could just have easily focused on different anecdotes that support the opposite point. Is this a typical conservative paper vs. liberal blog fracas? Well ... maybe. But it's fun anyway! Beer, wine, poker, Obama — sounds like a party.
The story sets up the difference between "beer-track" and "wine-track" voters — the former are less educated and poorer, the latter better educated and richer. According to the Trib, Obama has "done well attracting the Chardonnay crowd, but he has had less success winning over Joe Sixpack;" Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, is doing A-OK with Mr. Sixpacks. The Obama camp says this has more to do with fame than anything else, but the Trib says it's because he's too "professorial." The Trib notes that "it was white zinfandel with an Obama logo on the bottle that was for sale at a rally one recent evening," not beer. MM says there was a fund-raiser this summer that included beer with the big O's face on it. (Neither story mentions that back in 2004, Kenya nicknamed their Senator-brand beer "Obama.")
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Speaking solely for myself as a documented beer drinker, my reservations with Obama lay in the lack of substance behind his style, not my education, net worth, or lack thereof.
Although it is nice to see the Tribune trading in antiquated notions of who drinks beer and wine and how that correlates at the ballot box. Maybe we'll see a "Kool Aid-track" for the leading GOP candidates in the paper soon.
Hillary is polling better with "beer track" people simply because she is better known.
One dilemma in electoral politics is that people who are less educated (i.e. beer track) are more easy to influence or "educate" but are much harder to reach (because they aren't as involved in reading newspapers, blogs etc).
On the other hand, "wine-trackers" have much more set opinions but are at the receiving end of most political messages.
While clearly this is not Obama's fault, he must figure out a way to get his message more on point for the "beer track". The "rising cost specialty vegetables at Whole Foods" certainly isn't going to help him in that area.
More importantly: who is the "box wine" candidate and who is the "wine cube" candidate?
I can already say with some confidence that Mike Gravel is the Boone's Farm candidate and Dennise Kucinich is the "Who cares what he drinks, have you SEEN that dude's wife? How did THAT happen?" candidate.
I want to be known as the pbr voter who sometimes drinks wine but usually, depending on the amount of money i have, i stick to mid range beers like sam adams because it's easier to sip on and doesn't go down like water.
O'Bama has never been committed to issues of poor and working class folk. Even during the year he spent as an "organizer" his “moderate pragmatic” approach was from Saul Alinsky who focused more on white ethnic working class issues.
Hillary on the other had has more experience advocating for those at the bottom of the heap, including Black folk and women
And I see another "liberal" white male with a hip O’bama print t shit, I’m going for the throat, word is bond, and that’s on every thing
White zin sucks! That's reason enough not to vote for him.
Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for white zinfandel?
Why not black zinfandel? Why's it got to be white? Ain't that a bit racialist?
You're generalizing, Ferdy. Not all rosés are terrible.
It's easy to peg Elizabeth Kucinich as the "What is his wife drinking? candidate. But the man's gotta have some skills.
Chuck, I love rose. I just hate white zin. By the way, I love just plain zin, too, which is red, y'all.
matty, is that your best spook impersonation?
Rachelle's thoughts.....
"its like soooo much easier for me as a goo goo liberal to like cope with The Spook by placing every thing he/she says in a Black and white context, because the class,economic,and historical perspective that Spook brings makes my midwest sensibility head hurt"
Didn't know the Spook could read minds did you?
About as well as you can construct haikus, apparently.
Su su Sudo how easy it is to sit back on the side lines and pass judgement on the haikus of others because you are about bankrupt in Haiku as a prime loan issued in an underserved southside community
Forty year old Spook
tends to overcompensate
for his lighter skin
grasping for straws
bollweevil in cotton brain
Chuck keeps buying bridges
You still can't construct a haiku. I thought you'd learned something besides the John Thompson scowl.
Obama doesn't connect with the less economically motivated people because he does not understand them. He understands people who are focussed on money, and who believe that money makes the world go round. He understands them so well, that he is a messiah. But he is just an upitty American to people who don't think life is about having a good job and getting a good education. BTW- That is why he gets on the Latinos' nerves.