[The Urban Sombrero]

He says Obama is the most admired person in America as he is writing the book and goes even further to say Obama probably still is. There are more but I am on a mobile device. Also can't read a pm a very esteemed poster sent me but I will when I get home.

Not sure that Vance was advocating for Obama in that passage as much as observing cultural trends and phenomenons. If you read after Vance, he pretty clearly states and evidences a dislike, if not disdain, for leftist cultural elitism.

However, in my view, it is not "liberal mush" to observe that some folks are not so much born into the world as doomed into it by a very adverse environment. I do not think Vance is suggesting that only government programs can assist, as his own grit coupled with several people who cared certainly lifted him from very difficult circumstances.

I also do not think Vance was tooting some kind of "been there and done that" Ivy League horn, as if going to Yale somehow separated him from all things poverty and all things Appalachia. I did not read it that way at all.