Barack Obama and economic elitism

Jane Smiley gets pissed off at the HuffPost over the Clinton backlash against Obama's SF remarks (the stage really was set for something like this, was it not?). Meanwhile, Nico Pitney remembers another snazzy politician saying something similar once.

"The reason (George H. W. Bush's tactic) works so well now is that you have all these economically insecure white people who are scared to death," Clinton was quoted saying by the Los Angeles Times in September 1991.

My personal opinion is that Obama misspoke (or more accurately, he phrased his ideas in a way that is a little too dangerous taken out of context) but did not mean to be condescending. It was reminiscent of Bob Dylan's song Only a Pawn in Their Game - the over-arching theme of which, like most timeless music, fits really well in our current situation, as well as his. "...[T]he poor white man's used in the hands of them all like a tool..." Clinton at least is doing her darndest to ratify that line.

And actually, I think this little summary from Robert Shrum really points out the absurdity of all the fuss:

The political question here, of course, is whether the Clinton and McCain campaigns can exploit Obama's remarks to tag him as an "elitist" -- a label, their focus groups probably tell them, that can really hurt. Ironically, Obama's the one raised by a single mother. He's the one who only recently finished paying off his student loans. He doesn't know what it's like to have $100 million. The opponents who are attacking him are the ones who inhabit that financial neighborhood.

Zing!