<<Mikey seemed to think income was relevant to elitism. >>
It's very relevant. McCain and his wife enjoy a combined income that dwarfs Obama's and Michelle's. McCain comes from money and Cindy comes from money. BIG money. McCain is descended directly from slave-owning planters. Michelle and Obama come from plain folk, Michelle probably from slaves, maybe even some of them owned by McCain's great-granddaddys or people just like them. The most ludicrous and offensive claim to date is that Obama is an elitist. Anyone with an ounce of common sense and the most tenuous connection to the real world has to laugh.
Home, Er, NodsBy JAMES TARANTO
August 22, 2008Four years ago, a young state senator from Illinois named Barack Obama delivered a very good speech at the Democratic National Convention, the first indication that he might have a big future in national politics. In one week Obama will officially be the Democratic nominee for president, and he owes it to the power of words.
But Obama wants us to judge his opponent, John McCain, by his deeds. And McCain has a lot of deeds--so many that he has trouble keeping track of them all, according to Politico:
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in an interview Wednesday that he was uncertain how many houses he and his wife, Cindy, own.
"I think--I'll have my staff get to you," McCain told Politico in Las Cruces, N.M. "It's condominiums where--I'll have them get to you."
The correct answer is at least four . . .
Well, that's certainly helpful to McCain. The next time someone poses this question, he can say, "At least four," confident that he's giving the correct answer.
All in all, a pretty entertaining gaffe--all the more so because, although McCain is neither haughty nor French-looking, he did serve in Vietnam, and this calls to mind another resemblance to John Kerry*, who also married an heiress and also has vast real estate holdings (or, to be more precise, his wife has them, since the Heinz Kerrys, like the McCains, have a prenuptial agreement). The McCain campaign compounded the humor of the Kerry comparison when spokesman Brian Rogers told the Washington Post: "This is a guy who lived in one house for 5? years--in prison."
The Obama campaign, however, is doing its best to beat the life out of the joke. The Los Angeles Times reports that the candidate himself brought the subject up during a rally yesterday:
"I guess if you think that being rich means that you've got to make $5 million and if you don't know how many houses you have, then it's not surprising that you might think the economy was fundamentally strong," Obama told supporters at a community college in Chester, Va. "But if you're like me and you've got one house, or if you were like the millions of people who are struggling right now to keep up with their mortgage so they don't lose their home, you might have a different perspective."
Is Obama borrowing material from Andy Borowitz? It sounds an awful lot like one of Borowitz's "list of approved jokes" about Obama:
A traveling salesman knocks on the door of a farmhouse, and much to his surprise, Barack Obama answers the door. The salesman says, "I was expecting the farmer's daughter." Barack Obama replies, "She's not here. The farm was foreclosed on because of subprime loans that are making a mockery of the American Dream."
It's possible that Obama was not joking but trying to make a serious point--in which case it was quite the non sequitur. Obama puts the threshold for "rich" at $150,000. By his definition there are a lot more rich people in America than by McCain's.
Apparently in Obama's view, the more rich people there are, the worse the economy is doing.Salon's Glenn Greenwald, who is sort of a less distinguished version of Andrew Sullivan, has a lengthy post in which he recounts the disparaging comments of "numerous leading right-wing pundits"--mostly Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh--about the Kerrys' wealth in 2004.
Although none of the quotes he offers come from President Bush, his campaign, or any other Republican politician or political operative, Greenwald asserts: "This is the kind of campaign the GOP runs every election." Then he adds, "It's good to see the Obama campaign, finally, engaging these issues aggressively."
We'd say Obama lacks the wit of a Limbaugh or Coulter, but hey, de gustibus non est disputandum. When Obama's supporters are cheering him for Coulteresque rhetoric, though, it's clear he's come down a notch or two from his stirringly idealistic 2004 speech. And although Greenwald obviously would never support Ann Coulter for president, what does it tell us about the Angry Left that he seems to view her skill set as a qualification for the job?
Beating a dead horse
