Thomas Frank's great book "What's the Matter with Kansas" basically asked why people in many states of our great country, and particularly small town America, continually vote against their own self interests when electing representation.

This is essentially what Barack Obama was saying - and he was right.

Why do people continually vote for elected officials who do not help them? Who add to their bitterness and frustration?

And one very believable answer is that their is a block of the electorate who allow social issues and religious belief to trump good common sense on occasion.

Believing in God is not mutally exclusive to voting for someone who can improve our lives.

Last time we looked; this country did have a separation of church and state. The blurring of this started long ago but after 9/11 we were all looking for reasons "why" and church and synagogie attendence rose to record levels.

It is fact that in hard times people turn to their spiritual lives to help understand/explain why/how life is as it is.

The fact that sometimes there just is no reason for unfortunate events, is just not good enough for some people.

What Sen Obama did was tell the truth. And after all the lies we have been told by our elected officials; we can only hope that people voting in Pennsylvania and the other nine remaining primary states look in the mirror and truly understand they should vote in the best interest of their lives, the lives of their children and the lives of their fellow citizens.

While Sen Clinton's campaign left a litany of much more disturbing issues this week that truly cast doubt on her ability to run a campaign much less a country, than Sen Obama's words could ever infer, the Obama campaign chose the high road. No one in the Obama campaign is talking about Bill Clinton's truly insane speeches this week (if my husband ever said I was old and should be excused for forgeting things - that would be it!), Bill Clinton's being paid over $800,000 by an orgaization supporting the Columbian Free Trade Agreement, Mark Penn and so much more --

The Obama campaign lets voters make up their own minds.
Bill and Hillary Clinton think they can tell YOU what to think.

So now, under the tutelage of Sen. Clinton and McCain, the MSM is trying their best to portray Sen Barack Obama - a man raised by a single white woman in the early 60's, an absentee black father, without means who rose through his own sheer brillance to where he is today - as an elitist.

The contrast to this "elitism"?

On the left we have: "the "middle class" champion who went to Wellesley and Yale Law, lived in a Governor's Mansion since the early 80's and then the White House in the 90's and has been in a Georgetown townhouse and a manison in Chappaqua NY since becoming a US Senator and filed income tax for $109 million dollars for the past seven years.

On the right we have: the "my friends" champion who is the son and grandson of Admirals. Who is married to one of the wealthiest women in the Southwest United States, who supports making the Bush tax cuts for the rich permanent and who has yet to make public either his tax returns for the past few years, or his health records.

If this is the prism on the left and right - who frame Sen Obama as an "elitist" - we run the risk of getting what we deserve next November.