速读测试：美国拉开阶2级战2争大选America’s unlikely class-war candidates


本文作者为英国《金融时报》专栏作家 爱德华·卢斯（Edward Luce） 测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：
zeitgeist时代思潮
recrimination反责，反控
durable持久的，耐用的
resentful厌恶的
America’s unlikely class-war candidates

Class consciousness has always been un-American. Yet there are points, such as during the 1930s, when politics brings it out into the open. If today’s auguries prove durable, 2012 may well be remembered as a “class warfare” election. Indeed, it is hard to see how that will be avoided.

The US is going to the polls in a zero-sum economy where the wealthiest take almost all of whatever paltry growth is being generated. The election is set to break all records, with a group of 30 or so billionaires spending more on the polls than the rest of America combined.

In seeking to brand Mitt Romney as a ruthless elitist, Barack Obama has no better ally than Mr Romney, who insists on hanging out with the likes of Donald Trump. In accusing Mr Obama of class warfare, Mr Romney has an occasional ally in the president.

Voters agree with Mr Obama that the rich should pay more in taxes. But they do not list this as a priority. They would prefer to hear about how growth will be returned to normal – a path that Mr Obama is having a very hard time articulating. Nobody dares admit that this may be about as normal as it gets.

The two candidates thus often feature as their own worst enemies in an election where the zeitgeist will offer far more in recrimination than hope. It is a very long way from 2008. The fact that neither candidate is credible when playing the populist will only deepen the apathy each is trying to overcome in his party base.

Here are three reasons why both will fail and why we should therefore expect a close election with a low turnout. The US’s biggest class divisions are not between the parties but within them. Both candidates represent their party’s elite wing.

In 2008, Mr Obama offended the dwindling number of blue-collar white Democrats when he said they clung to guns and religion. Even after she had clearly lost the presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton continued to hoover up that portion of the Democratic vote. Likewise, it was hard to find a Democrat with a PhD who did not support Mr Obama. Since then the president’s blue-collar problem has only grown worse.

Mr Romney’s story is similar. As recently as the Illinois primary in late March, when it was clear to all that Mr Romney would take the nomination, former senator Rick Santorum took the bulk of the blue-collar Republican vote. More than 90 per cent of those who voted in the Republican primaries were white. The lower their income, the likelier they were to reject the former governor of Massachusetts. Mr Santorum tapped into the resentful white vote by calling Mr Obama a snob for having said all Americans should attend college.

Which brings us to the second key class division: Mr Obama represents the educated elite while Mr Romney comes from its moneyed counterpart. Both will do their best to pretend that they are something else. It is hard to imagine Mr Obama going hunting in Ohio, as John Kerry, the senator from Massachusetts, did in 2004. But we will hear a great deal more about the assassination of Osama bin Laden. And there will doubtless be beer-swigging photo ops in hardscrabble bowling alleys.

Mr Romney, meanwhile, will be playing down his gilded origins and refusing at all points to admit that he speaks French (what is it with politicians from Massachusetts?). He too will seek out moments of sportiness with a Budweiser.

The more the voters see and hear of each candidate, the more apathy there will be. According to a Gallup poll last week, the highest ratio of “undecideds” in the US is in Iowa, which also happens to be the state that has been most exposed to the candidates.

Finally, both will be spending as much time as they can with the very wealthy. Last Friday alone, Mr Obama attended six fundraisers – three in Minnesota and three in his home state of Illinois. Altogether he has now attended more than 200 in the past 12 months – a comfortable record for any sitting president at this stage in an election. The likes of George Clooney, who last week hosted a $15m event for the president, will become very familiar. By November they will be finishing each other’s sentences.

If he is wise and lucky, Mr Romney will by then have ensured that Mr Trump stops interrupting his. In any case, the Republican nominee is already friends with the likes of Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas gaming billionaire, and the Koch brothers.

And so we head into a class warfare election in which the little guy gets to play the starring role in a movie funded by billionaires.

Last week Mr Obama played host to his predecessor George W. Bush for the unveiling of his portrait. Mr Obama could take a lesson from Bush junior about how to play the populist game. Mr Bush convinced Americans he was a regular guy with whom they could have a beer. If the US economy continues to stall, this election will be narrow and such judgments could make all the difference.