Tell me, which side are you on? Well I’ve got advanced degrees and I’ve worked on Wall Street but I ain’t no part of the “creative class.” If you can’t connect with the working class, you have no business running this country. This is not a country of the creative class for the creative class by the creative class. I ain’t an arugula eating, latte sipping liberal stuck in the realm that I know better than my neighbours down the street. To label some someone, anyone a “low information” voter because they lack a high school diploma is such an affront to me and to them. When I first monitored an election in Haiti back in 1995 in a country where most people barely have a grammar school education, I did not encounter one “low-information” voter nor I did so in Zimbabwe when I monitored the election there. It is an affront to democracy to disparage entire groups of people based on their education. They are masters of their own experience and theirs is no less important than anyone’s else. I am shocked by some of what reading on “liberal” these days touting the arrival of a new politics based on a new liberalism led by the “creative class.” How stupid can you be?

Over a blog called “Liberal Values,” Ron Chusid has written a post entitled Hillibillies for Hillary that is so crass and so elitist that it leaves me dizzy. Here is the post:

I’m not surprised that socially conservative areas are going to go for the socially conservative Clinton over the socially liberal Obama. Add racism and an area more prone than most to fall for the usual conservative scare tactics and lies and a Clinton landslide is inevitable. After all, it was the voters of West Virginia that the Republican National Committee conned with mailers saying that if he was elected John Kerry would take away their bibles as well as guns.

There’s no doubt that an area like West Virginia would be the last bastion of Clinton conservatism, even at this state in the race. It doesn’t really matter. The Democratic nomination is pretty much settled. West Virginia will go Republican in November regardless of whether Clinton or Obama, now the presumptive nominee, is the candidate. Besides, even if there was any truth to the claims that Clinton could do better in November due to bringing in such conservative voters, this is not how I want to win.

Actually I wouldn’t even see it as a win. I’d go with a liberal such as Obama over a Clinton conservative, regardless of the impact on electability as the election would be lost from the start if our only choices were Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Fortunately we do not have to face such a dilemma as Obama is likely to bring in far more educated, affluent voters than Clinton is likely to bring in socially conservative, uneducated, and working class voters.

Update: As we’ve encountered so many times before, the economic populist/social conservative wing of the Democratic Party which backs Clinton resorts to ad hominem attacks when they have no rational arguments to support their case. The Democratic Daily begins by repeating the fallacy of over-emphasizing the fact that Clinton does better among working class Democrats. To them, only white, working class voters seem to matter. If you are black, a white collar worker, or, heaven forbid, educated, you are an elitist whose vote does not count. By their bizarre logic, Hillary Clinton wouldn’t be able to receive more than eight percent of the black vote, as James Clyburn has pointed out.

This attitude that only the working class vote matters is a major reason why the Democrats have been a minority party for so many years. As I’ve pointed out in several previous posts, Democrats have the best shot when they form a big tent which welcomes the votes of a wide variety of people. Obama does have the ability to bring in the votes of liberals, including the affluent and educated voters which Clinton supporters insult as elites whose votes do not matter. Obama will also bring in the traditional core Democratic votes, including the working class, just as Clinton would have been able to bring in the black vote under normal circumstances. (This year creates a particular problem in that the race baiting used by the Clinton campaign will cause a tremendous number of blacks to remain at home should Clinton be the nominee).

Education and intelligence are also important in distinguishing between Clinton and Obama supporters. There are several reasons why the educated voters overwhelmingly choose Obama over Clinton. One reason is that Clinton campaigns based upon flawed economic policies to pander to the lower income voters. She promotes policies such as the gas tax holiday and and her proposals for the mortgage crisis which require education and knowledge of the issues to see the serious errors. Clinton and her supporters try to circumvent criticism of her plans by the educated by writing them off as elites whose views do not matter. While Obama is developing a diverse group of supporters, Clinton is now leading an anti-intellectual movement which believes they can shout down those who criticize them as elitists.

Clinton has also depended on low educated, low-information voters when she has spent much of her campaign using mailers and robo-calls to distort Obama’s positions and record. The smarter one is, the more likely they are to see through such attacks. One responds to the Clinton campaign’s talking points in much the same way the do with Fox News. Either they have the ability to see through the propaganda or they do not.

Another reason that education and intelligence separate the voters is that there is a high correlation between education and belief in the liberal values which differentiate Obama and Clinton. While populist on economic issue, and therefore mislabeled a liberal, she is a conservative on social issues, civil liberties issues, and foreign policy. She has stronger ties to the religious right than the presumptive Republican candidate. She backs the same types of abuses of executive power practiced by George Bush. Clinton supported the war, despite her attempts to hide this fact. It is unfortunate that the Clinton camp echoes the Republicans in opposing these liberal values and in considering the educated people who defend liberalism as elitists.

What planet do you live on? Whose side are you on? This is unbelieveable. You are throwing away the working class that built this country. FDR must be spinning in his grave. No the reason Democrats lose elections is because they nominate effete liberals that are “out of touch” and who call rural voters “bitter” and “clinging to religion.” I vote my values and Obama does not share my values. Voting ones values makes one a highly informed voter. Ron Chusid simply wouldn’t know a liberal value if one bit him in the ass but I’ve a feeling a whole bunch of liberal values will biting Obama and his supporters come the Fall.

Then there is Chris Bowers who writes:

Cultural Shift: Out with Bubbas, up with Creatives: There should be a major cultural shift in the party, where the southern Dems and Liebercrat elite will be largely replaced by rising creative class types. Obama has all the markers of a creative class background, from his community organizing, to his Unitarianism [sic], to being an academic, to living in Hyde Park to shopping at Whole Foods and drinking PBR. These will be the type of people running the Democratic Party now, and it will be a big cultural shift from the white working class focus of earlier decades. Given the demographics of the blogosphere, in all likelihood, this is a socioeconomic and cultural demographic into which you fit. Culturally, the Democratic Party will feel pretty normal to netroots types. It will consistently send out cultural signals designed to appeal primarily to the creative class instead of rich donors and the white working class.

The future of the Democratic Party is a Whole Foods shopper? We are doomed because Whole Foods has 270 stores in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. The latter two don’t vote and while Whole Foods has stores in 37 states, in many of them it has but one store. And in terms of food retailing market share nationwide, Whole Foods has a but 2% share. Good luck winning an election based on Whole Foods shoppers. Try Wal-Mart. They have a 47% market share.

To me liberal values encompass fairness, equality of opportunity and tolerance.  Calling a wide swath of people “low information” is hardly tolerant and it presupposes a holier than thou I know better attitude. It is condescending and that is the crux of Senator Obama’s problem with the working class.