David Brooks February 3 column epitomizes the break between Obama and Hillary voters in the Democratic Party quite well from the standpoint of how voters are consumers. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/opinio n/08brooks.html

Read the "Rise and Fall of Class in Briton" to understand the rise of the consumer as a political entity. http://www.textbookx.com/product_detail. php?upc=9780231096669&type=book& affiliate=froogle)

Also, Obamaphiles, read this CAREFULLY before posting. You will notice that it is strategically written to encourage certain changes in your camp that need to be made before voters like me in Pennsylvania can vote for Barack Obama and not join Hillary Clinton.

This is sort of a collection of musings based on the Brooks' column but I think it fits into the minds of a lot of us on MyDD right now.

The interesting thing about 'more educated people' is I feel the lot of college educated people is becoming dumber as a demographic because more and more, the determination of who colleges choose to admit is based on ability of the student's parents to pay tuition without the 'intervention' of financial aid. Needs blind admission is falling out of favor and thus, we are seeing colleges produce a different breed of graduate, one who is more like current president George Bush: rich and stupid. This is detrimental to American competition and as documented in Richard Florida's "Flight of the Creative Class," it is something non-American universities plan to take advantage of in recruiting talented, poor American students.

I have already been approached by recruiters from a Chinese University to attend an MBA program there that would cost me $1000.00 American a year. As a small business owner, thinking of the economic opportunity in China vs. America, it is almost no contest. Hopefully, that does not have to happen and I can finish my graduate work here and work for other Americans. But if it comes to pure survival, I'll eventually take my own financial welfare.

I believe this is also creating a sort of social change person who bases many of their decisions on emotions rather than on factual information, (see Brooks column.) When daddy has foot the bill for everything in your life, one does not have to think in stark economic terms.

Whole Foods liberals, the type who have flocked to Obama and the types Brooks states love an emotional buying experience do not like to be typified as consumers because even though they are, in fact, hyper consumers, the lingering of Marxism in their progressive sentiments makes them curdle at the word. They don't spend too much on food that might not even be organic at a store that the United Farm Workers have asked to boycott because they are high-end consumers, they spend too much on food at Whole Foods because they are spiritual world changers who think optimizing one's dollar is against helping poor African children or whatever other strange notion they have in their vegan heads.

I found it interesting that Barack Obama got so much support at the University of Wisconsin, Madison which receives an F on racial diversity, an F on economic diversity and is roundly criticized by watchdog groups in education for not keeping tuition affordable for lower and middle class students. It is a population that is an exemplar of the new consumer leftist. The median household income of a University of Wisconsin, Madison student is $90,000. The number of middle income students at the school has dropped from 11% to 4% over the past decade. As the former Plan 2008 Chair, I was also the only education activist on the campus who had met with the head of Financial Aid, Steve Van Ess in his 26 years in the position to carefully go over the problems of tuition affordability to map out realistic plans.

When I went there I had a room mate who did not know that Lake Michigan was a lake, not an ocean and that it's water reserves are freshwater.

I was ran out of my position on a rail at Wisconsin by people now working on the Obama campaign because I wanted incremental change, (much like Hillary) and was not an immediate advocate of free tuition. Yeah, great idea but as someone who went to school on a full Pell Grant, I knew the need for incremental solutions to be put in place before the big dreams and the Great Leap forward happened from my experience paying for school myself. These same people held their positions on things with the same blind religious zeal they have carried into the Obama campaign.

Slowly, Hillary Clinton is beginning to appeal to voters like me.
I have seen those plans I began to spell out at Wisconsin more concretely realized in Hillary Clinton's higher education plan which is why I began to back away from the Obama camp into Hillary's arms. The unfortunate thing for Obama in PA is I am representative of people his campaign really needs, people who have a storied history of activism in the city's neighborhoods that predates Progressive Philly. Somehow, his campaign seems to think a bunch of student upstarts are more important that long time activists from the Latino community who are already organizing in key areas.

His campaign also forgets that we are the ones trained in Chicago Slap Down, as he said to Hillary and if it comes to a bunch of Penn students vs. Fishtown working class people backed by an educated organizer, you might as well have a card counter at your blackjack table.

Many Hillary people, who are hurting because they are working class or have come from the working class like myself, realize that to win, we need to play Chicago slap down against Republicans.

I have a problem that Obama has ties to churches on the South Side of Chicago that also have ties to Bethany Christian Services, a notorious covert anti-abortion front that has led the leading pregnancy help campaign in Chicago and works as a proxy for pro-life. Obama has to start realizing he can't have progressive cake and eat conservative pudding, too. Pretty soon very nuanced supporters of the Democratic Party like myself, people who ultimately put our stake with the less fortunate human beings over organic foodstuffs for ourselves, are going to start going over things with a fine tooth comb and asking questions.

His campaign leaves no room for asking questions and basically asks his supports to be in like like a moonie for the Unification Church.

It has reached the point of creepy and I had to get out of the Church of Obama and join Hillary.

Those of us traditional working class voters realize Hillary has shortcomings but at least she seems to be fighting for us. We liked Obama at first but then began to realize his mantra of Change might be kind of empty -- like Hare Krishnas in the airport.

I would go back to Obama if his policy was more robust and if his movement actually started educating his followers.

This is exactly why so many Dean people on myDD have begun to support Hillary as well. The Dean people were not as motivated by feel-goody stuff, especially all this mix-race mish-mash. I am mixed race and I really don't find it constructive to discuss race in a campaign with much bigger issues that affect people of all backgrounds. Dean people got involved over the past four years and as many of them begun to get nuanced at policy, they began to develop the same healthy cynicism many long time Dems have.

Sure, I'd love the revolution to happen but in the real world, I also know that revolution can wreak what Cuba has wrought. I am suspicious of grandiose claims that seem to be what the Obama campaign has become nothing more than.

Also, I was a direct recipient of many Clinton advancements that were made during the 1990's. I gained leadership experience from training through the National Council of LaRaza that was part of Clinton's programs to make America more inclusive and I found greater opportunity in the corporate world because of the atmosphere Clinton created. Bush ruined many good things the Clinton's created outright. I am beginning to resent, from this point of view, the casting of Hillary as an ineffective shill for the establishment. Maybe for those of you who have never sat outside enfranchised America she is just that but for those of us in our lower 30's who saw America transform before our eyes and saw ourselves presented with opportunities our parents never had under the Clintons, I think myself and others do feel a great deal of gratitude towards Bill and Hillary. Not giving her the proper due, especially coming from the mouths of young'ns with little real experience in hardcore, grassroots Democratic politics, that sort of ingratitude is fermenting a rebellion.

I would like to see it quelled but to do that, Obama has to turn his troops a different way and the campaign needs to start answering direct questions about how they plan to get America from point A to point B.

This is a hard decision for me because I do feel very strongly that Obama has created a movement. I think many of the people in that movement will eventually make better presidents that Obama. Furthermore, if the movement looses its religious edge and is further enfranchised into the Democratic Party and all the Democratic proxy institutions that make up America's social web of people programs, what Obama will be able to do is create a network of people who will create policy change without government by simply creating individual initiatives on such a scale, that we won't need government.

Unfortunately, the campaign seems to be more interested in following the meaningless messiah path by posting posters designed by Sheppard Ferry and Sue Coe on bus stops everywhere around Philly. That shit has gotten real silly. They need to be preparing 'the troops' for the next level fight. I meet too many Hillary people who are already in the fight and understand its nuances.

Let's not give Obama all the credit this is a resurgence in the Democratic Party and Hillary faithfuls are as much movement people as Obama people.

As a man of color, to use a 90's phrase, I tend to stand with feminism over race politics because I truly believe we are coming into an age, as an evolving species, where women are becoming the leaders of the world. I welcome this maternal change and love learning how to compliment my machismo with nurturing feelings. I think Hillary is part of that change and this might be more important than electing someone who makes us finally feel good about race in America. I grew up in an African-American neighborhood for part of my life on the South Side and Black women are leaders in that community, they are leading men much as women will lead men in other sectors of life. I believe this is happening because our world needs to refocus on family and on what is good for our children.

Furthermore, most of my right-hand people in activism for educational equity have been women. Bitches absolutely do get things done, as Tina Fey says.

Overall, I think the DNC needs to unite the party, co-op Obama's movement (who he holds captive for himself in what is becoming an egotistical game) and train ALL of us on both sides in being strong Democrats that fight for both Whole Foods and Safeway interests.

However, as a former art director working on a Safeway account, Safeway paid my bills for years so when it comes to Whole Foods vs. Safeway brothers and sisters, I'm trading coupons in Safeway.

I don't shop at Whole Foods because the prices don't make sense and I know from producers in Latin America, that most of the organic imports there are not organic. I look beyond labels and packaging and that is what many other Democrats in Pennsylvania are doing.

The bad thing is, we are being punished by Obama people for doing that and mix Chicago with North Philly slapdown played against a bunch of whimpy go-fish Penn Students: Fishtown wins over go-fish.

There are real MyDDers switching to Hillary because MyDD has become the new DNC and some of those newbies through my DD see an  urgency in this campaign that has caused them to shop at Safeway and learn Chicago Slap Down.

Finally, after all this primary fray is over, we have to all settle the dust, find our new leaders in this community as people did before, find them in both camps and storm the doors again. This time MyDD has to go for the heart of the Democratic Party leadership as an online collective without a candidate.

I would resolve that in this fray, we should all become stronger, come together to back whoever wins and in that backing, learn how to find a medium between Safeway and Whole Foods that reflects the Reagan era Republican Party. In the end, Obama may have a movement, Joe Trippi may have brought campaigns online but the real change was started by MyDD. As a group, we can push any candidate that our party elects and we need to in the end, lean on that power because this is a forum that transcends consumer identities and other factional identities that have broken apart the party.

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