The Dirty Jobs Candidate

September 14th | Comments (0)

Of all the remarks I’ve seen about Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin, I think my favorite is one from the blogger Cobb. He called Palin the “Dirty Jobs” candidate. This pretty succinctly captures the appeal she has for lots of working class voters.

I think the Democrats (and lots of Republicans too) misread what Palin brought to the McCain ticket. They assumed that she was simply chosen to appeal to disgruntled female Hillary voters. While I’m sure that went into McCain’s calculation, I’m pretty sure McCain was also looking towards working class voters with his pick.

And the Democrats have only made things worse for themselves by attacking her in the way they have. Portraying her as a hick mayor of a backwoods town might win them applause from a liberal audience, it is only going to alienate small town voters. Obama is going to have enough trouble with them as it is.

A Thousand Marbles

September 9th | Comments (0)

The Misses forwarded the following story to me. It’s pretty thought provoking, and made me want to go to IHOP.

A Thousand Marbles

A few weeks ago, I was shuffling toward the garage with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and the morning paper in the other. What began as a typical Saturday morning turned into one of those lessons that life seems to hand you from time to time. Let me tell you about it: I turned the dial up into the phone portion of the band on my ham radio in order to listen to a Saturday morning swap net. Along the way, I came across an older sounding chap, with a tremendous signal and a golden voice. You know the kind; he sounded like he should be in the broadcasting business. He was telling whom-ever he was talking with something about “a thousand marbles.” I was intrigued and stopped to listen to what he had to say

“Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you’re busy with your job. I’m sure they pay you well but it’s a shame you have to be away from home and your family so much. Hard to believe a young fellow should have to work sixty or seventy hours a week to make ends meet. It’s too bad you missed your daughter’s dance recital” he continued; ”Let me tell you something that has helped me keep my own priorities.” And that’s when he began to explain his theory of a thousand marbles.

“You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The average person lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live more and some live less, but on average, folks live about seventy-five years. “Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3900, which is the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their entire lifetime. Now, stick with me, Tom, I’m getting to the important part. It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this in any detail”, he went on, “and by that time I had lived through over twenty-eight hundred Saturdays.”

“I got to thinking that if I lived to be seventy-five, I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy. So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had. I ended up having to visit three toy stores to round up 1000 marbles I took them home and put them inside a large, clear plastic container right here in the shack next to my gear.” “Every Saturday since then, I have taken one marble out and thrown it away. I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the really important things in life. There’s nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight.”

“Now let me tell you one last thing before I sign-off with you and take my lovely wife out for breakfast. This morning, I took the very last marble out of the container. I figure that if I make it until next Saturday then I have been given a little extra time. And the one thing we can all use is a little more time.” “It was nice to meet you Tom, I hope you spend more time with your family, and I hope to meet you again here on the band. This is a 75 Year old Man, K9NZQ, clear and going QRT, good morning!”

You could have heard a pin drop on the band when this fellow signed off. I guess he gave us all a lot to think about. I had planned to work on the antenna that morning, and then I was going to meet up with a few hams to work on the next club newsletter. Instead, I went up stairs and woke my wife up with a kiss. “C’mon honey, I’m taking you and the kids to breakfast.” “What brought this on?” she asked with a smile. “Oh, nothing special, it’s just been a long time since we spent a Saturday together with the kids. And hey, can we stop at a toy store while we’re out? I need to buy some marbles.

McCain’s Housing Crisis

August 21st | Comments (0)

McCain committed a pretty embarrassing gaffe today when he admitted that he doesn’t know exactly how many houses he and Cindy own. The Democrats are naturally trying to take advantage of the mistake and use it to paint McCain as being out of touch with the working class voters.

Now I suppose that this could hurt McCain with some voters, but my suspicion is that it won’t gain much traction. The Democrats don’t like the way that the GOP has tried to pin the “elitist” label on Obama and seem to think that turnabout is fair play. However, I think they are misreading why the charge of elitism has been effective against Obama.

Obama hasn’t been accused of being elitist because he is wealthy. He’s been accused of being an elitist when he has made comments that appear to betray a condescending attitude towards certain segments of the population. The most damning of these was his remark about how some working class people were clinging to their guns and their religion because of the economic hardships they face.

The fact that many Democrats didn’t see what the big deal was about his remarks just illustrates how big of a problem it is for the party. Americans don’t inherently have a problem with wealthy people. In fact, lots of us aspire to be wealthy one day. But we don’t like snobs, and the Democrats seem to have more of a problem with expressing snobbery towards their fellow Americans.

Do some Republicans look down on average Americans? I’m pretty sure some do, but they don’t have as great a tendency to express such sentiments. A Democrat might argue that the Republicans are just better at lying. Maybe so…but it’s also possible that the Democrats have more of an open contempt for other Americans. Either way, voters typically see more cultural snobbery coming from the Democrats.

And Senator McCain doesn’t have a history of expressing disdain for average voters as far as I know. So trying to label him as an elitist probably won’t work. Americans resent attitudes, not bank accounts.