Much has been written and discussed about Hillary's "hardworking Americans, white Americans" comment.

Politics has long been divided by subsections of the population. That's why Mark Penn has a job. It's an unfortunate reality of pollsters. I'm sure there's a rationale for this. Although I can't claim to understand it. But it seems Americans are obsessed with labels. They give us identities of culture, a sense of belonging. But they also make it too easy to pit one group against another. What is ultimately wrong is the simplistic way this approach describes Americans.

I
accept that people use these so called demographics as a monitor of
public opinion and perception. I have not known a time when the media
has not used these "classes" in political reporting. I would not have
had a problem with Clinton using them in some form, but she took it one
step too far.

The transcript of her statement to USA Today can be open to various interpretations. Listening to the audio narrows those interpretations considerably. Tone and inflection can make inferences not ascertainable in the written word. This is her mistake: equating hard working Americans as white Americans. This is insulting on so many levels it made my stomach turn when I heard her utter these remarks.

Currently there is more spin than a carousel on the subject. She was misquoted (hello, there's audio?), she was only quoting someone else (thereby removing any responsibility since they weren't her words), she was just being honest (everyone knows you can't win without these voters),
some surrogates say she didn't mean it that way (only to then go on to explain why it really is that way), lastly, she regrets it. This one is not very popular, although I did actually find a source for it:

http://sableverity.wordpress.com/...
Within this article is yet another source for her regret.

But her regret is for all the wrong reasons.

We are all far more complicated than these labels allow. Mr. Begala quoted two such groups on CNN: African Americans and Eggheads. Why are they mutually exclusive? Are minorities not "hard working Americans"? If you're educated and white and buy your coffee at Starbucks are you automatically elite? And by elite we mean snobby, which is not the true definition of the word but that's not the point.

My 13 year old daughter asked me a question yesterday. "Do you think I'm preppy, or a Tom Boy? Or am I a girly girl?" I didn't blink an eye, "You're all those things, and more" I said.

We had a nice talk about it.  It got me thinking.

Labels. They define us, but divide us.  We ascribe ourselves to them, but ultimately they limit us.

What is lost is that all Americans have more in common than not.

This is what the politics of unity is supposed to be about.

Seeing that part of ourselves that we have in common when we see each other.