When Mike Huckabee came to Cornell last night, he joked that “Q&A stands for questions and avoidance” on the campaign trail. Barack Obama forgot this golden rule when speaking to a group of wealthy San Francisco benefactors last week. The Democratic favorite fielded a question regarding the difficulty his campaign has been having wooing blue collar voters in Pennsylvania. Senator Obama said that working class Americans “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them” because they are “bitter” about their economic lot in life.

This shocking quote reveals the bitterness that Barack Obama and the Far Left have towards people that do not think like them. According to Obama, the working class people, like other “typical white people,” revert to religious superstition and bigotry because of economic plight.

Obama’s dogmatic classification of working class Americans is typical of the Democratic elite. For the last half century, the Democratic Party has marketed itself as the party of the little guy; the party that will stand up to corporate interests and economic behemoths to defend the working man and the impoverished. The liberal elite see themselves as the champions of the common man. Consequently, they see the blue collar worker as their natural constituency.

The main problem afflicting the Democratic Party is that they fail to really connect with this constituency. Rather than attempting to understand why these voters support traditional morality or the Second Amendment, Obama and the Far Left dismiss them as backward. The Far Left is bitter toward the very voters that it is trying to woo. Cornell alum and atheist liberal darling Bill Maher ’77, for example, insults Catholics when he refers to Pope Benedict XVI as a “cult leader” of a “child-abusing religious cult.” Time magazine contributor and Democratic strategist Dave Saunders pointed this out in a scathing critique of his liberal colleagues in 2007 when he said that “these are the people that talk of tolerance but the only true tolerance they ever exhibit is for their own pseudo-intellectual arrogance.”

Like it or not, the Democratic Party is built upon the assumptions that the elite have about Middle America. When they look upon members of the working class, they see them only through the lens of economic plight. They ignore the fact that members of Middle America may have serious moral qualms with the Democratic Party platform. So, when Obama fails to reach these rural or blue collar voters, it is construed as no fault of his own; rather, it is the working class people’s own false consciousness that leads them astray. As Hillary Clinton rightly pointed out, “instead of looking at himself, he blamed them.”

Democrats are bitter toward the “religious gun nuts” that populate Middle America because Democratic candidates have been unsuccessful at attracting their votes. Democrats have no need for these working class citizens if they are unwilling to blindly accept all aspects of the Democratic agenda in the name of their personal economic interests. Obama and the far left look at these citizens as Karl Marx looked at the proletariat: “the working class is revolutionary or it is nothing.” Obama and his supporters see working class and rural citizens as voters that can carry them into power or Bible thumping, superstitious gun nuts, unable to appreciate his greatness.

Former Governor and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is one of the “bitter” blue collar citizens to which Obama refers. Huckabee said that in the abstract he “should be a Democrat;” he is from a state that has been Democratic since Reconstruction and comes from a poor working class family. Huckabee, however, became a Republican as a teenager. The former governor said that he was attracted to the Republican Party because of the American ideal that one does not have to be “stuck where you started … [even if you had] to work harder than someone else” one could still succeed. Ideals of American exceptionalism and self reliance are what led Huckabee to conservatism.

Perhaps it is this line of thinking that chases working class and rural Americans away from Barack Obama’s campaign. The gun racks and traditional morals could be just secondary reasons for their rejection of Obama. The freshman senator’s campaign is built upon telling blue collar America that they cannot succeed without the help of Obama’s administration. A 2006 University of Maryland political science study conducted by James Gimbel and Kimberly Karnes about rural populations demonstrated that Obama’s campaign message is at odds with the beliefs of Middle America. The study concluded that the “individualistic ethic and legacy of self-employment and home-ownership inclines [the rural populace] to adopt the self-image of the independent entrepreneur and property owner rather than that of the laborer in need of state regulation and protection … Republican emphasis on personal effort, limited government and free markets fits comfortably within this self-image.”

Barack Obama and his supporters generally dismiss conservatives when they liken his campaign to a messianic candidacy for the left. It is becoming increasingly apparent, however, that Obama and the Far Left see themselves as philosopher kings for the masses. They sincerely believe that if it were not for Middle America’s religious and moral beliefs that these citizens would flock to the Democratic Party and Obama’s campaign. Once in power, Obama would be able to awaken the consciousness of the masses and lead them to the utopia that his campaign embodies.

Sadly for the Far Left, Middle America has only awakened from the false consciousness that leads supporters to believe that Barack Obama is a moderate, religious candidate who is deserving of their vote. If Jeremiah Wright’s bitter “religious” (read: hateful communist) teachings did not convince them, perhaps Obama’s San Francisco fundraiser will.

Bill McMorris is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be contacted at bmcmorris@cornellsun.com. Heartless, Not Stupid appears alternate Wednesdays.