oIn all this craziness surrounding the "contest" between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the last person (or at least in the back of the line) to correctly surmise a ridiculous political situation would be serial-campaign loser Bob Shrum. However with him on the sidelines thus far, his commentary concerning the "elitist" remarks were spot on. He calls out the Republican BS and not surprisingly, the way Hillary has gone right along with the crap coming from the GOP.
From The Huffington Post:
Obama's not running for Sociologist-in-Chief. But there is a powerful element of truth in his comments. Starting in the elder Bob Casey's 1986 campaign for Governor, and again and again since, both James Carville and I have heard or read -- from focus groups or polling reports -- the frustration, anger, and yes, sometimes bitterness of people in depressed towns in the Keystone State who've had politicians promise them help that too seldom comes. Even in the Clinton years, when Pennsylvania gained jobs, the hollowed out economies of once-thriving blue collar communities were largely bypassed.
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.
Hillary Clinton has seized happily on Obama's words as a way to distract attention from the latest flight of one of her husband's misguided missiles. Just as the video that irrefutably confounded her tale about sniper fire at the Tuzla Airport was being returned to the network vaults, President Clinton's ill-timed and inaccurate account of the episode rewound and replayed the tapes. Then Obama's talk gave her the chance to push the pause button. But now she has to be careful not to push the "elitism" attack too hard. The Clintons haven't lived in the real world for at least twenty-five years; they've been in a bubble surrounded by aides moving from one mansion to another. This doesn't mean they don't care or can't empathize. But it does make it awkward to damn the guy who was a community organizer helping laid-off steelworkers as someone who is out of touch.
It really is amazing that those who live the "elitist" life can so ambly paint others as elitist to score political points. Maybe not so for Republican candidates, but it is always a sad sight when a Democratic challenger does it to her own. She'll do whatever it takes to get the bad press away from her camp (justified as it is) even when the attack is unwarranted. She could distract people with issues and something to boost her own character. Instead she continues to try and drag Obama through the mud when he was simply pointing out a simple fact of life for so many Americans in this country who are sick and tired of politics as usual.
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