Au unimportant correction: New Rochelle is not on Long Island. It's in Westchester County.

Where's the thread on Russert?

Crikey, Kevin -- you don't seem to realize that spending time on a train or in traffic is what made America great!!

obviously, john mccain didn't want to ride the trains every day either - and some people marry women who are not beer heiresses, but don't we need to respect them anyway?

We can't all be touted as secular messiahs, surrounded by adoring throngs.

That's reserved for Bush^D^D^D^D McCain.

What Obama didin't do was dump his wife while she was sick to marry a younger, wealthier heiress to escape the dismal 9-5 life. No, Obama's sin is working to get where he is. What a bastard-schmuck our next President is.

David: Noted and corrected. Thanks.

Are John McCain's eight houses linked by rail service, I wonder?

NRO's Jim Geraghty is out of his mind. I want a President with ambition. I want a President who strives to be more than the average. I want a President who is willing to stay up nights working harder than anybody else.

We have a President who was a C- student and is the product of mindless social promotion. How well has that worked out.

MarkC, why do we need a thread on Russert? They are everywhere on the web.

People want different things out of their lives. Some want constant excitement. Some want to be surround by warm fuzzy kittens. Some want to have an easy job and play golf in the afternoons. It's called the pursuit of happiness.

Wait a moment. He really is an elitist in the sense that for himself, he has aspirations that require a lot of work, and a high standard to which he has to conform. i dont' want to be a commuter in those trains either.
A better analysis of this, rather than just shoot from the hop liberalism from the masses, is to look at how elitism is precisely what America DOES need, and what will help us out of our mess. Elitism is a merit based evaluation of life and social order. It needs to be tempered with context: elitist demand high commitment and work from people, regardless of their station in life (or train, in this analogy). You can be a waitress, and have high standards and aspirations, and be working towards those. So OBama is an elistist. The left needs to take that word and redefine it to mean precisely what it does:
THE AMERICAN DREAM IS ELITIST!

I have a suggestion for the Obama campaign. Show pictures of the homes that Cindy McCain and Michelle Obama grew up in.

Calling the Obamas elitist wreaks of the worst kind of cynicism.

McCain's communications experts best beware before someone starts looking too closely at how the extremely wealthy live.

If this Geraghty character senses elitism, that's fine. Whatever. But is he completely oblivious as to just how condescending HE sounds? It's really remarkable.

Robert Creamer in HuffPost on difficulty of plausibly advancing charges of elitism for a guy with eight houses:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/it-takes-real-chutzpah-fo_b_96376.html

Architectural Digest had a thing in 2004 about the McCain house in Phoenix; it's the house Cindy grew up in.

Not to mention that the people of New Rochelle are not exactly the salt of the Earth--it's a really wealthy commuter town, like so many along the New Haven Metro North line.

They forgot Jessica Alba and her Pop Tart interview. Or maybe not. I couldn't bear clicking through.

Seriously, is that the best they can do? Obama sneers at commuters? If so, the quiver full of hate-and-fear-mongering arrows must be just about empty.

At least Obama doesn't cheat on his wife.

Well, there goes the trainspotter vote.

Shorter Geraghty: "Obama hates Rob Petrie!"*

*The Dick Van Dyke Show**

**Man, it sucks to be old enough to feel you have to footnote your own pop-culture references.

It's forgivable and almost natural for a 21-year-old to sneer at commuters. I know I did when I was that age.

And New Rochelle is 1/3 Hispanic and 1/4 below the poverty line. Many of those New Rochelle commuters are working two jobs.

I would still like Obama.

I'm voting for Michael Meyer. At least he wants IMPEACHMENT.

Good grief. What swill. I suppose that if a 21 yr old Obama had aspired to do something other than scrubbing toilets for a living that Geraghty would still write this?

For myself, I would rather do just about anything then be a NRO blowhard.

They really don't have much to go on, do they?

Wow. A college kid spoke disparagingly of the grey-flannel-suit, 9-to-5, commuter's life? Next you'll find a letter to his sophomore year girlfriend, where he said he wanted to be a high school teacher, but the kind of teacher who really got his students, and wanted to open their minds, really help them transition into adulthood. And a witness to that pot-fueled discussion of life in parallel dimensions!

Stop the presses!!

Bruce A: I hear ya, brother. Never having lived in New York, "New Rochelle" is almost synonymous with The DVD Show.

The Obama campaign is putting together a team whose sole job is to respond to internet rumors, and has just launched their Web site, Fight the Smears. The Democratic nominee has been inaccurately characterized as a Muslim and a black supremacist, while his wife has been called unpatriotic.

Clearly, the response team has their work cut out them. Why not test the campaign's smear response chops by asking them about your worst Obamian fears? http://www.236.com/news/2008/06/11/the_obama_smear_response_team_1_7101.php

Before we start getting cocky, remember where Jimmy Carter was against Jerry Ford at this point in the campaign, and remember he won by a whisker only due to Ford's screw-ups on the NYC bailout and Russia's domination of Poland debate question. Obama is an arugala eating egghead, he lives in an egghead neighborhood, and he hobnobs with other eggheads in his spare time. At least Carter rode a tractor once in a while between Reinhold Niebuhr books. I think Geraghty is doing us a favor pointing out a real problem Obama needs to address.

loki

Exactly what is that problem? Obama is one smart dude who reads books?

I would rather have an "egghead" as President than another Incurious George.

Oh, if you want to see how the other 1/4 of one percent lives, there is a great feature on John McCain's Arizona digs in Architectural Digest. He got that house when he married Cindy. Talk about an elitist.

Christ. He probably wanted to be a cowboy when he was five years old too. And now he wants to be president?? Well? What's it gonna be, Mr. Flip-flop?

Ahh...the new version of the conservative dream that they talk about endlessly...Pull yourself up by the bootstraps, and one day, just maybe, you can ride the train to work for the rest of your career...

Good luck with that in November my friends...

Ahh...the new version of the conservative dream that they talk about endlessly...Pull yourself up by the bootstraps, and one day, just maybe, you can ride the train to work for the rest of your career...

Now that's hope we can believe in!!!

Good luck with that in November my friends...

Hasn't he by implication rejected every single individual who ever had the audacity and ambition to run for the President of the United States?

McCain is heading for the worst electoral drubbing since Walter Mondale, so who cares?

Jeralyn Merritt has bought into this nonsense, too.

I lived in New Rochelle from August 1980 through July 1987 and commuted into Manhattan. New Rochelle was pleasant enough, but I hated running my life on the train schedule and gladly moved into the city. I also could probably not afford to live there anymore and could barely afford to rent there by myself when I did live there.

Capt. Crisis,

Don't know where you get your numbers, but the Census Bureau's 2006 American Community Survey Data Profile Highlights for New Rochelle shows 5.6% below the poverty line and, whereas, the survey doesn't have details about the Hispanic population in 2006, in 2000 it was 20%. Sure you're not thinking of Mt. Vernon?

Sheesh. By the same token there's a fine line between preferring the commuting life of the Northeastern suburban professional and looking down on those who don't.

Except not: only head cases think that one naturally follows from the other. Personally, I liked riding the train to work: it gave me the chance to relax and read the paper. But I don't have problems with those who have different preferences. As a rule, I don't look down on people with different skill sets than myself. Whiners are another story.

Lost in the legit complaint over the overreaching of Obama's critics is this about trains: They are the most efficient way to move passenger-miles/gallon or equivalent fuel. We need more trains and a better rail system, and especially not to drop or even privatize (unless provably better) Amtrack the way market fundies want to do.

Of course, all those commuters spend their ride home every day fantasizing about a life of self-actualization and achievement--like the one Mr. Obama is living.

"Hasn't he by implication rejected every single individual who ever had the audacity and ambition to run for the President of the United States?"

No, only those candidates who ran "above their station."

Jeez, you can just smell the stench of envy and resentment emanating from Geraghty's article. Evidently, Obama is an elitist because he didn't want to live in a boring suburb and commute to a soul-sucking job in the city where all the fun liberals live.

Whatever happened to the good old days, when National Review scribes were unabashed WASPy Tory elitists like William Buckley and Florence King?

At least their position had the virtue of forthrightness.

Jeralyn Merritt has bought into this nonsense, too.

I believe there's a real-estate term, 'pre-sold', that applies here

Kevin, I think you're underestimating this line of argument. Calling it a sign of Republican desperation is soothing but misleading. It's more like a sign of Republicans knowing their audience and playing to it expertly. The fact is, people loathe being condescended to by snobs, and the emotional reaction to this treatment is intense enough to short-circuit plenty of more "rational" ways of thinking about a candidate. If the Republicans do actually suceed in tagging Obama as elitist (which they may well succeed in doing), he's in serious trouble.

I'd really like to live beside you, baby. I love your body and your spirit and your clothes. But you see that line that's moving through the station? I told you, I told you, told you that I was one of those.

They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom for trying to change the system from within. I'm coming now, I'm coming to reward them. First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.

At least Obama doesn't cheat on his wife.

If he did, she would kick his bony ass all the way into next week. She has that "be very afraid" look.

Hillary? Well, we all know how that turned out.

The real translation of Geraghty:

Oh, how I wish Obama was on one of those trains to New Rochelle with a nice management job. Then we could get really nasty with Hillary.

McCain's Phoenix home featured in Architectural Digest (view slideshow of 10 pics).

McCain's Sedona home where he hosted that press BBQ.

Obama will have plenty of problems, but this won't be one of them. 90% of the commuters on that train would agree with him.

I can believe how dumb Geraghty's post is. It is sadly what I have come to expect from conservatives and especially NRO. But even as "off the rails," so to speak, as Merritt has been this political season, it is difficult to believe she would buy into this nonsense.

We are actually sitting here talking about a second hand account of a 21 year old deciding that a certain lifestyle is not for him. I am completely unable to even guess at what is supposed to be wrong with that. You make choices for what you want out of your life and you reject others. Presumably this is what every human being wants even if they don't have as many choices as others.

To inflate this into some sort of half baked charge of elitism is beyond ridiculous. To actually buy into it and create some sort of hometown pride wounded narrative as Merritt does is just painfully dumb. To read comments by people like Lukusiak in that thread over at talkleft that actually then take that nonsense and try to weave into evidence of Obama's apparently rampant narcissism is well... I don't even know what to say about anything that stupid.

I swear this political season has given me a perspective on my fellow liberals that I find a bit hard to take.

Jim Geraghty makes a living as a highfalutin writer at a fancypants magazine, when he could have been satisfied to flip burgers for minimum wage like millions of Regular Joes do in the Heartland.

Jim Geraghty is an elitist.

Wanting to live one's life to achieve a high and noble purpose is, by definition, elitist. Challenging oneself with complexity in music, literature or art even as pass-times is elitist. Learning about diverse subjects and science is elitist.

To do otherwise is to be a Republican. A Republican challenges someone else to squeeze his God damned orange juice and ghost write his cookbook.

Hey Kevin, why don't you tell us about the Trinity Church admonishment regarding "middleclassedness".

http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/southtown03272008.html

-------------------------------------------------------------

In addition to advocating devotion to the black community, the black family, the black work ethic, allegiance to black leaders who advocate the Black Value System and personal commitment to the Black Value System itself, Trinity's unique church doctrine details the "Disavowal to the Pursuit of 'Middleclassedness.' "

Until just recently, Trinity's Web site provided a description of the Black Value System's conflict between blacks (referred to as "captives") and non-blacks ("captors"):

"Classic methodology on control of captives teaches that captors must keep the captive ignorant educationally but trained sufficiently well to serve the system. Also, the captors must be able to identify the 'talented tenth' of those subjugated, especially those who show promise of providing the kind of leadership that might threaten the captor's control," the site said.

Trinity's Web page described these captors and what they do to keep control of captives. According to Wright's teachings, "captors" purposely separate the "talented tenth" from other "captives" through three various methods:

First, "Killing them off directly, and/or fostering a social system that encourages them to kill off one another."

Also, "Placing them in concentration camps and/or structuring an economic environment that induces captive youth to fill the jails and prisons."

Then finally, "Seducing them into a socioeconomic class system which while training them to earn more dollars, hypnotizing them into believing they are better than others and teaches them to think in terms of 'we' and 'they' instead of 'us.' "

A black person must reject the lure of money and success, which often leads to "rising above one's raising," the perceived curse of "Middleclassedness." Reject "Middleclassedness," Trinity teaches, and blacks "no longer will be deprived of their birthright, the leadership, resourcefulness and example of their own talented persons."

yeah, the piranas at Talk Left made a bloody mess of this one yesterday.

I don't want to be on the commuter train either, but that is my choice, and not a dis to other people and their choices.

I don't want to wait around all day and then get called into a burning building in the cold, water everywhere....but that does not mean I look down on firemen!

yeah, the piranas at Talk Left made a bloody mess of this one yesterday.

I don't want to be on the commuter train either, but that is my choice, and not a dis to other people and their choices.

I don't want to wait around all day and then get called into a burning building in the cold, water everywhere....but that does not mean I look down on firemen!

yeah, the piranas at Talk Left made a bloody mess of this one yesterday.

I don't want to be on the commuter train either, but that is my choice, and not a dis to other people and their choices.

I don't want to wait around all day and then get called into a burning building in the cold, water everywhere....but that does not mean I look down on firemen!

Andrew @6:34 has it correct.

Repubs don't argue logic, they argue emotion. This thread is trying to argue logic, which there is none of in this attack.

The middle class is taking a beating financially. The Repubs have delivered the beating and everybody knows it, but the media has sold the narrative over the last 30 years that it is not OK to be a "liberal", aka Democrat, aka N-lover.

The Repubs need to sell to the middle class that it is OK to not vote for Obama; they can't use logic, because there is none, so they need emotional attacks. They already have the perfect justification, Obama is black, but this is not socially acceptable to most people who would consider voting for Obama. They need other justifications, elitism is one of the covers they will try to exploit.

Elitism is an absolutely ridiculous attack on Obama. Both Barack and his wife have middle class upbringings, Barack from a broken family. They have a traditional marriage and family life. If anything, Obama should paint himself as the model of the American dream.

McCain on the other hand, is the picture of elitism in this country. The son of an Admiral, the grandson of an Admiral, he was born into a family of privilege. A poor student, very bottom of his graduating class, he dumped his 1st wife to marry into extreme wealth. He has lived the life of the well to do since his marriage.

If Obama cannot create the narrative of being the working class candidate versus the child of privilege candidate, he deserves to lose.

Obama suprisingly ignored his upbringing during his campaign against Hillary, which I did not understand. My guess is that he thought that a charge of elitism was not a serious threat in a Democrat primary and was reserving it to use against the Repubs in the general.

so sorry I posted three times!!!!

I rode that same train almost every workday for 30 years before moving from NY to Atlanta. I don't blame him; it's no picnic. You must also remember that 25 years ago Obama was a much younger man. Many young men can't see themselves riding that train, and I understand why. The main reason I'm glad I did it is that it helped me retire with 3 fully funded pensions.

Brad,

Is that piece written by Obama? So why are you bringing this up? Let me tell you something just as not all black look alike they also don't think alike.

I think there are people, particularly on the right side of the political spectrum, but some on the left as well, who believe that if you make a statement about preferring NOT to do something, that means that you are automatically dissing those who do have that preference. I think it comes from black-and-white thinking or the inability to perceive that there are usually more than 2 choices in any given situation.

I also think that Geraghty is deliberately being a rabble-rouser. If lots of Publicans start making these sorts of comments, Obama can give one of his wonderful speeches pointing out that just because he didn't want that type of life doesn't mean that he looks down on it, but that he made different choices which worked FOR HIM but may not work for others. He can say it much better than I can.

I am also with the others who say they want a president to be an elitest in the original sense of the word. Have a beer with the guy? What does that have to do with him leading our country in a better direction?

Notice that Geraghty says "us," implying that he too, a well-known pundit, is one of those unsung, underpaid little guys.

Sheesh.

Uh oh, sounds like another Obama smear in the works -- the "Hated the Westchester suburbs as a 21-year-old". Hillary, get on the phone pronto! Call your Chappaqua neighbors & smooth things over.

I wonder what the ethnic makeup of New Rochelle was 30 years ago -- I'm guessing there weren't too many African Americans living in Westchester County. Yonkers doesn't count.

What are Yonkers, anyway?

As a one-time New Rochelle resident, I can tell you that there has always been a fairly prominent African-American community there, some of whose residents have long time ties there. For many years it has hovered around 20%.

I have been told that the town was a terminal point on the Underground Railroad.

Mt. Vernon has a significant African-American population. In the 2000 census it was 60% African American.

Attacks like Geraghty's are always fun to take apart, but I think they also reflect an important difference in the ways that liberals and conservatives approach politics.

When Democrats criticize John McCain for (say) supporting the ban on gays in the military, they don't usually claim that McCain hates gay people. When they argue that his tax proposals are too regressive, they don't usually claim that he hates the working class. When they complain about his failure to support the Lily Ledbetter equal-pay legislation, they don't usually claim that he hates women. Granted, there are people on the left who *do* make those assertions, as a kind of reflex -- but I don't think that's the norm.

Conservatives seem to prefer a different approach. They don't really try all that hard to persuade voters that Barack Obama's policies are morally wrong, or that Obama's policies will harm their interests -- either of which would entail focusing on the policies themselves.

Instead, the standard strategy is to attack the policies through the candidate, rather than the candidate through the policies. They start by persuading specific groups of voters that liberals feel hatred and contempt for people like them, and then argue that *for this reason*, it goes without saying that their policies will be bad. One predictable side effect of this strategy (could it be intentional? who knows?) is to reduce the incentive for voters to examine policy differences on their own merits.

I think you can see this, for example, in the way many conservatives talk about climate change. They start with the premise that liberals are consumed with irrational hostility towards people who work in the oil industry, middle-class suburbanites who drive to work, and pretty much everyone else who doesn't wear Birkenstocks and use a compost toilet.

If this is true, of course, it implies that liberals would probably support drastic government measures to reduce fossil-fuel consumption *even if global warming weren't real* -- just because it would make life worse for people who prefer the hated red-state lifestyle. It wouldn't rule out the possibility that global warming *was* real, of course. But if liberals are so deranged that they support inflicting misery for its own sake, is it really worthwhile to examine their arguments in detail?

I think there's been a reversal of roles here over the last few decades. There probably was a time when Democrats were quicker than Republicans to bring out the heavy artillery ("You're a racist!", et cetera) against people with legitimately different policy views. Nowadays this seems to be a conservative specialty.

We can't all be touted as secular messiahs, surrounded by adoring throngs. Very few us get crowds chanting our name on a regular basis. Scarlett Johansson doesn't e-mail us, and Jennifer Lopez doesn't visit our offices.

Yep, that's why Obama became a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, and then ran for the Illinois State Senate, so that Jennifer Lopez could visit him. Nothing more glamorous than those jobs.....

Hey, Randy,

Thanks for pointing out New Rochelle's role in the Underground. Found some interesting history about Westchester on the web. Doesn't explain about African Americans in the 1960s and 70s, but the history is sure there. See the explcit mention of New Rochelle.

It's interesting that New York State, primarily farms in the Hudson Valley, was home to more slaves than the state of Georgia until the turn of the 19th century. Slaves in some parts of the state accounted for 10% of the population at that time. This is rom http://www.fergusbordewich.com/blog/archives/2005/07/the_underground_1.html:

"WE KNOW the Hudson Valley was one of the main arteries of the Underground Railroad.
We know that large numbers of fugitives were sent from Philadelphia to New York City, and up through the valley to Albany and Troy. Between 1842 and 1843—fugitives—virtually all, probably, from New York City. Most of them were sent onward to Central New York, Vermont, or Massachusetts . . .

The land route

So let’s come back to the question I began with. We know fugitives traveled through the valley in big numbers. But how did they do it?
In the early decades of the century, fugitives were assisted by the tacit alliance that formed the nucleus of the underground in many parts of the county: Quakers and free blacks.
But: Bear in mind that in this early period many of the fugitives handled by the underground were not coming from the South, but fleeing from slavery right here in New York State, or from New Jersey, or Connecticut.
The main route—as best as I have been able to determine it—ran more or less due north through a chain of Quaker communities that extended from New York City to Vermont. Families and meetings were intertwined. Quakers could travel from New York to Burlington without ever sleeping beneath a non-Quaker’s roof. So could fugitives.
In the 1830s, fugitives were dispatched northward by underground men like David Ruggles and Isaac T. Hopper. Ruggles—who had connections in Poughkeepsie—was the founder of the New York City Vigilance Committee, the first black-operated underground unit in the country. Hopper was, in a sense, the “father of the Underground Railroad.” He began doing underground work in Philadelphia as early as the 1790s.
Fugitives dispatched from the city found protection at three Quaker-owned mills, and possibly at the Colored Peoples Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, in New Rochelle, and among Quakers in Mamaroneck and Scarsdale.
The route continued north to the homes of Joseph Pierce at Pleasantville, and John Jay Jr. at Bedford, in northern Westchester. The Jay family included some of the most important, if underappreciated heroes of the abolitionist movement. His grandfather, also named John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, was a founder of the New York Manumission Society (though a slave owner himself). His father, Judge William Jay, was one of the most prolific pamphleteers of the abolitionist movement. His son, William Jay Jr., reportedly forwarded fugitives out of New York City while he was a student at Columbia University. (I’ll come back to the Jays later.)
Fugitives probably also found refuge, or at least assistance, in an African-American settlement known as “The Hills,” near the town of Harrison.
From northern Westchester, fugitives continued on through Brewster, in Putnam County, and into Dutchess County to the Quaker stronghold known as Quaker Hill, near Pawling. Many, if not most, found shelter at the home of a Quaker farmer named David Irish.
Dutchess County had the largest concentration of Quakers outside Philadelphia. The eastern portion of the county was densely settled with Quakers. The Oblong Meeting of Quaker Hill was was the first in the country—in 1769—to free slaves as an official action of the body.

Geraghty makes a rather eloquent case for the dignity and importance of the 'common person' but why in the process did he need to denigrate the those who choose a different path?