Recommending in hopes of have 5 "bitter" posts in the top ten.

"Curb your enthusiasm." Is Genghis the Larry David of TPM?

G, don't be too virtuous to recommend your own.

Since primary-contest posts dominate by something like 100:1, remind people here that some of this stuff is just downright silly.

Genghis. Sometimes you just rock.

Except here:

I can't wait for someone to say that they were the son of mill worker.

Hey, hey, HEY!

He is, and it just so happens he had the best platform for the rest of us. Unfortunately, the American Public, (like his wife, actually) bought into the GOP spin of him being just a "pretty boy." Elizabeth found out it wasn't so, and folks that read his proposals did, too.

That said, I share your disgust. This is getting out of hand. Now we're down to parsing single words, and nuance, and posture, and knocking democratic candidates for "implying" things that any reasonable person would know is a bunch of garbage.

We don't have anyone else to blame but ourselves, though.

Well, O.K. I don't blame myself. This is what I've been trying to communicate for some time now.

:)

Pity I ain't a great communicator.

I say let's denounce all this nonsense. Obama is no elitist or reverse racist, and the Clintons aren't Republicans and don't think McCain would be a better choice than Clinton.

We're setting ourselves up as easy targets. That won't do.

Thanks for the post.

Finally a voice of reason. One question though. Were was that voice of reason when Hillary made similar gaffes and all the Obama supporters smelled blood and went on a rampage? I don't remember you saying then it was all nonsense.

There is some truth to that, Ghengis. Suddenly nothing matters.

But what if you were a super delegate from a rural, church-going community today? Or, even better, one who had already committed to Obama. What if you were Casey and had to run for the Senate out there. You might be going, oh shit. After all, words matter. No?

Do you remember jibjab? That was fun.

In lieu of simply saying I disgree, is it okay if I return the favor and say "you're full of shit?" Thank you.

I mean do you really think Obama's pollsters told him to to Billionaire's Row, in San Fran, to the house of Ann Getty (yeah, those Gettys, in front of about 100 or other rich white, "elite" educated folks and, when asked about why the so-called "working class" (read that "downscale white voters") aren't embracing him as readily as his opponent say that he thought they were "bitter" and "clingy"? (I know, his actual words were "cling to").

Basically you say whatever you and your pollsters think that working class voters most want to hear (as long as it doesn't obviously contradict your policies). You champion 2 or 3 issues that polls say the working class care about, e.g. mortgages, immigration, NAFTA. You highlight the parts of your biography that pollsters say the working class will most identify with. And then you pretend that the statements, policies, biographical data selected by your pollsters demonstrate that you are the one with the true working class creds. That seems to fit the Clinton and McCain modus operandi to a "T." But I don't think it fits Obama that well.

But that's my take.

Barack's comments:

"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.

And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

What is elitist or untrue about the above? The right wing has made Barack's observation a central point of its campaigns. In the 2004 elections, what were the big themes? Gay marriage, gun control, immigration. The fact is, Washington doesn't do squat for the little guy but when campaign season rolls around, God, guns and gays become the key issues as a smoke screen for the legislated breaks for the wealthiest and the white collar welfare. What many of us Workin' Joes don't catch onto is that while the God, gays, guns drumbeat resonates during the campaign, the pols immediately drop it after election day. What's been done on immigration or gay marriage since 2004? Nothing?

What's refreshing about Obama is that he speaks like an intelligent adult with the belief that his audience is composed of intelligent adults. He is willing to get into the nuances of issues, pleasant or not. This approach is a tremendous opportunity for America, and what we need after 8 years of the biggest intellectual lightweight ever to hold public office.

Rejecting BS is what a do, especially since Cronkite retired and mass media started to ignore its own code of ethics. Just like Hillary blurred the fines between Republican and Democratic tactics, MSM may as well openly sleep with the tabloids and Limbaugh types instead of sneaking around late at night at out of the way motels.

"you are the one with the true working class creds."

Actually, what he meant to reference was the "lumpenproletariat", not the "true working class" because no one in America has had class consciousness *since JFK's inauguration and the subsequent abandonment of men's headgear.(How can you tell the toffs from the toughs when there are no homburgs or caps to help you out?)

What I am groping for, (clumsily) is this:

WTF?? All of a sudden it's ok to reference class (as in, say, "class warfare") as a defining characteristic, as long as you use it to bludgeon the remaining candidate who best promises to vindicate the interests of the producing over the ownership class?

*correction since Debs' incarceration.

NOTE: I mean this good-naturedly. I'm a big fan of your posts, too. And any pissiness I exhibit here is probably driven by secret jealousy.

There are so many reasons to be paralyzed by perspective. Just a few other examples:

-- the cosmos is infinite

-- mortality is inescapable

-- linguistic signifiers are sentimental

-- chicks dig the noumenal realm

-- Obama is TOAST

Seriously though, I suspect a lot of people know they're wandering into a Dionysian orgy when they engage topics like this. But since that's our civic destiny I don't know that there's any harm in taking a break from staring soberly at the unchanging forest to go have a beer . . . er, Chardonay . . . with the trees.

TPM bloggers don't need a Genghis who looks down on them!

But Genghis, this BS is the BS that defines us as a party!

After the traumas of 2000 and 2004, nothing disgusts Democrats more than being out-flanked by smirking oil men masquerading as cultural populists.

Nothing terrifies us more than the suspicion that our heroes can eventually all be unmasked as latte-drinking, college-educated windsurfer environmentalists.

95% of *all* the BS I have read on blogs since 2004 is precisely *this* BS. What's the matter with Kansas? What's the matter with Ohio? What's the matter with f*****g Pennsylvania? How can we finally convince the voters that we're authentic Americans, even though we have ideas and haircuts? Which of us is really really really authentic, and which of us is just faking and letting the side down?

If we stopped arguing about this, wtf *would* we argue about? We'd have to discuss policy or something. And we don't really disagree that much about policy.

I'm bitter about a different kind of bullshit. Hillary's bullshit. What Obama said was perfectly true -- not courageous analysis, but true -- and apologizing for true things said is one of the more dispiriting traits of the Democrats.

Nice work Genghis, really.

But you are still a total, elitist snob, and everybody I talk to on the street--ahem, that would be Main Street mind you--tells me the same thing about that Genghis.

I thought that the reason Obama doesn't connect with the working class is that he's not a good bowler and is incorrect about the manner in which he drinks his coffee.

If you find any of this even slightly confusing then you should email Chris Matthews, who is a working class hero and is very knowledgable on such topics.