8
Currents
October 2018
> continued from page 7
week with a major speech to college students in Illi-
nois. "Listen to that speech," I told my British audi-
ence. "It's all there."
What is "it?" President Obama's fans — and he
has far more than Donald Trump does at the
moment— heard the return of intellectualism, sophis-
tication and style. A Los Angeles Times columnist
described Obama as "Sleek Dog," in contrast to
President Bill Clinton, a.k.a., the "Big Dog."
But Trump voters heard something else in
Obama's speech, which sounded
all too familiar from the years of
his presidency: condescension,
arrogance.
You might think
they're just imagining it, but to the
Republicans who picked Trump,
it's very real.
In Trump's America, where talk
radio and Fox News are a steady
part of the information stream,
Obama's previous, perceived
slights toward them are as well-
known as Hillary Clinton's infa-
mous "baskets of deplorables"
comment. When Clinton made
that remark during the 2016 cam-
paign, many conservative pundits
immediately noted how it echoed
candidate Obama's dismissive
tone in 2008 regarding "bitter"
blue-collar voters in rural America
who "cling to guns or religion or
antipathy toward people who
aren't like them or anti-immigrant
sentiment or anti-trade sentiment
as a way to explain their frustra-
tions."
As Obama spoke in Illinois,
conservatives heard Obama's
characterization of middle Amer-
ica as "basically decent," people
who "get confused sometimes" as
an insult.
"You know, they listen to the
wrong talk radio shows or watch
the wrong TV networks, um, but
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