Shorter Eli Saslow: Real people don't think that Obama's a real man. The article is called: Despite his roots, Obama struggles to show he's connected to middle class. The evidence for the claim? Obama is the president, also:
[N]early two-thirds of Americans believed that his economic policies had hurt the country or made no difference at all; almost half thought he did not understand their problems.
In response to the empirical data: (1.a.) Another way of saying "almost half" is "over half." Saslow very cleverly hid a normative claim in a speciously positive one: if he wanted to deliver it straight, he would have given the actual number, which he didn't.
(1.b.) Saslow has, probably intentionally, not put this number in context. Surely the same question has been asked about other presidents, so why not give those numbers. If the number has any significance, then Obama's must be different than others (note, it's only a necessary, not sufficient, condition for significance).
(2.a.) The second piece of empirical data--that nearly two-thirds of Americans believed that his economic policies had hurt the country or made no difference at all--is only evidence for the claim that Obama isn't connected to the middle class if you make a number of other assumptions, viz. Obama doesn't care that his economic policies haven't accomplished much or something to that effect. Indeed, it isn't hard to imagine that people might feel "connected" to Obama but not think his policies are working.
(2.b.) The best explanation for the phenomena that a large segment of the population doesn't believe that Obama's economic policy is working is that The economy is in the shitter. This explanation doesn't require any auxiliary (and murky) assumptions about the mindset of the people polled.
But the real problem with Saslow's article isn't the misuse of data; it's twofold: (1) the fallacy of equivocation with the term "connected" and (2) the tacit--and, I might add, normative--assumption that the "middle class" (which is hardly an homogeneous block, and I take issue with his use of the term, but I digress...) finds it to be a problem that the President of the United States of America isn't behaving like he lives in the suburbs.
To elaborate: (1) It's equivocation because the sense of 'connected' that makes sense in policy and non-identity political terms is something like understands the problems of. It would seem that, if indeed Saslow is trying to write about that, he would present evidence relating to that sense of 'connected.' Instead, Saslow switches gears away from that sense of 'connected' when he gives evidence; what he does give evidence for is that Obama isn't connected to the middle class in the sense that he isn't--and doesn't behave--like he is middle class. Saslow talks about how Obama gets flown around on a plane and lives in house with personal staff and whatnot. The reader is supposed to think that Saslow has presented evidence for a claim about one sort of 'connected,' and instead he presents evidence for another--textbook equivocation: exploiting the ambiguity in a term to make an argument seem valid when it isn't.
(2) Now, Saslow might object that he wasn't equivocating, that he is, in fact, arguing that Obama isn't 'connected' in the sense that he does not behave as though he is middle class. But, that's obvious and trivial. Obvious because the man is the President of the United States: Of course he gets ferried around in a jet. Of course he has personal staff. Of course he doesn't act like an "Joe Average" who lives in three bedroom house in the suburbs. It's trivial because that's inherent to being President and everyone already knows that.
I also find it hard to believe, just on principle, that Saslow doesn't live in a bubble as much as Obama. The man writes for the Washington Post and the middle class signifiers that he obsesses over (dropping the 'g' at the end of words that end in 'ing,' etc. Seriously, Saslow actually catalogs how many 'g's Obama dropped in a town hall) don't speak at all to the middle class experience. Shorter: how is it that the Washington Press Corps got to be experts on middle class behavior?
They talk about bowling and arugula, brush clearing and beer, and we're supposed to accept that that is what the middle class experience is? None of those things are necessary or sufficient conditions, and, more importantly, none of those things are even close to being a part of some kind of "family resemblance" description of the term "middle class." (Obviously, I've moved away from Saslow, this specific article doesn't make all of these claims, but it is indicative of a class of narative often employed--especially against Democrats.)
Of course, the whole obsession with these sorts of political traits is just stupid beyond belief. It's lazy journalism mixed with the worst kind of pseudo-anthropological mumbo-jumbo, and it says nothing--nothing--about the policy, which is what actually effects people, Obama will pursue.
No one would have mistaken Ted Kennedy for a middle-class, Average Joe, but the man, with few exceptions, fought for policies that would have greatly improved the lives of the majority of Americans. And even if you're a Republican and don't think his policies would have helped, you'd be hard pressed to say that he didn't try.
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