Somebody get this guy a latte

Remember Tom Buffenbarger, the machinists' union blowhard who unleashed a hilariously unhinged anti-Obama rant on Hillary Clinton's behalf during her post-Wisconsin-primary rally back in February? I'll refresh your memory:

[During his speech introducing Clinton,] Buffenbarger derisively dismissed Obama as a mere "wunderkind," a "man in love with the microphone," and "a poet, not a fighter." He repeatedly and pointedly called him "the junior senator from Illinois" (as if Hillary isn't the junior senator from New York?). He compared Obama to "Janus, the two-faced Roman god of ancient times." And then he really got going:

"The Barack Show is playing to rave reviews, sold out on college campus after college campus, standing-room-only crowds to hear his silver-tongued oration. Hope! Change! Yes, we can! Give me a break! I've got news for all the latte-drinking, Prius-driving, Birkenstock-wearing, trust-fund babies crowding in to hear him speak! This guy won't last a round against the Republican attack machine!"

... Buffenbarger [also made the] blatantly anti-intellectual argument -- repeated twice -- that Obama can't "fight" for the working class because he was "the editor of the Harvard Law Review." I guess Hillary's stint as an editor of the Yale Review of Law and Social Action establishes her credentials as a real union stiff?

Buffenbarger blustered so buffoonishly that I proposed a new verb to describe his actions: "to buffenbarger," meaning "to engage in an inappropriately vitriolic attack on a member of one's own political party." (TPM Cafe contributor David Schlitt had a similar idea.)

Well, it turns out ol' Tom is still buffenbargering after all these months:

Now is not the right time for the [International Association of Machinists] to endorse Senator Barack Obama... Our members feel the economy squeezing their family finances for every last dime, every single week ... But those meat and potato issues have not found a place in the message frame developed by Senator Obama's campaign. To us, hope and change are not antidotes to the economic pressures blue-collar families face... In the Machinists Union, a predominately blue-collar union, the impression continues to grow that Senator Barack Obama could care less about folks like us.

McCain-Buffenbarger '08! ;)

Comments

[Joe Loy]

waw haw haw :}

Hey, there'll be No dissing the Organized Labor Movement, here ;>....

(Union Goon, trying to Muscle shady circusboss Larson E. Whipsnade:

"Ain't choo nevvuh hoid o' da Wagnuh Ack?"

Whipsnade [WC Fields]:

"The Wagner Act, yesss, they used to Work for me. Had to Fire 'em. Liquor addicts."

~ from, "You Can't Cheat An Honest Man", 1939 :)

[David K.]

Well I do drive a Prius, I'll grant him that, but I don't drink lattes, can't stand birkenstocks, and haven't got a trust fund. Where does that put me in the Buffenbarger hierarchy I wonder...

[Sandy Underpants]

Well nobody ever accused Machinists of being too smart for their profession.

Nader '08.

[Condor]

The problem with machinists is that they're too smart for their profession.