On Bitter: Obama tells it like it is and Clinton may use it to elect McCain

By Hal Brown | April 13, 2008

I am so angry I scream inside the more I read about how Clinton is casting Obama as a snob for the "blue collar voters are bitter" remark. When I see her and her surrogates making an issue of this in televised comments I have all I can do to stop from throwing something at the screen.

Must we elect the candidate who is the most adept at talking down to voters who don't have the stellar IQ which they do without seeming to be talking down to them? I wrote about this in my previous column but now I feel compelled to write this follow-up.

If Hillary Clinton, who no doubt is as much an intellectual as Obama, convinces enough blue collar voters he's an elitist, and worse, a snob, and he runs against McCain with his war hero and regular guy image, she could be handing the election to a Republican.

If this wasn't such a repugnant political tactic, one which may assure four years of McCain and a Republican administration, it would be ironic and even amusing that the Clintons are calling Obama a snob. After all, Hill and Bill regularly schmooze with the Hollywood elite and corporate billionaires.

If Obama wasn't a classy guy running a classy campaign I'd urge him to start calling his opponent "Hollywood Hillary".

It is a sad state of affairs that a candidate has to behave like a schoolteacher who feels that he'll alienate the lower level students in his class if his language is too complex. Obama presented a reasonable opinion as to how bitter voters may focus on issues they can get a better handle on.

We're being told that his words come across as insulting to the intelligence of the average American. I really don't know if this is true. He wasn't talking to a group of average Americans when he said it.

If you talk to a college educated audience, a California fund raiser in this case, are you supposed to choose your words so they'll be readily understood by high school graduates?

Maybe average Americans should start admitting they are average and that those who were C students in school are now C adults who can learn a great deal from an A student who is now an adult.

Hillary is telling audiences that Obama's remarks are kind of "elitist and out of touch", and far worse jumps to the conclusion that "American's don't need a president who looks down on them."

She is saying that a candidate from her own party looks down on Americans!

Think of all these videos of Hillary lambasting Obama being included in McCain commercials.

Perhaps Obama needs to have a heart to heart talk with America, a kind of quiet fireside chat, during which he explains that yes indeed he is an intellectual. "I was an A student just like Hillary Clinton," he could say. He could add that it would be the most egregious insult of all to pretend to be otherwise if he scripted his words to present a false impression.

He could say that it would be disingenuous to pretend to be average. To do that, he could say, would be the deepest insult to the voter's intelligence. He could ask the voter to judge for themselves whether he, a young Harvard Law graduate who choose to work on the streets of Chicago as a community organizer, is out of touch with people who are struggling to make ends meet and realize the American dream.

And if making these remarks some people had to look up the meaning of the words egregious and disingenuous perhaps that would be a first step to recognizing that they ought to welcome a president that challenged them to think at a deeper level than they're used to about complex issues.