Chicago Daily Observer

I grew to like you over the last year.

I’ve always thought of you as dangerously naive at best. Eloquent, gifted, genuine, yes. But dangerously naive at best.

I couldn’t vote for you—but not because of your funny name or your lunatic pastor. I couldn’t vote for you because you say we should raise taxes (even on the rich, who I’m convinced already pay too much), and because you say we should abandon Iraq (which I’m convinced would be surrendering a war we must win), and because you don’t respect the Second Amendment (which I’m convinced should disqualify any politician from any office).

Still, I’ve liked your message of unity and your ability to inspire. And, since your rise I’ve hunted, quite frantically, for young conservative leaders with your talent. (To my relief, I found Bobby Jindal.)

Huffington Post editors said they confirmed that Fowler had reported Obama’s statements precisely and that their citizen reporter had conducted herself properly

The story was reviewed up the website’s editorial ladder all the way to founder Arianna Huffington. Vacationing on a yacht in Tahiti, Huffington gave her assent.

Rubes. Rednecks. Low-information voters. Beer-track voters. NASCAR man. Bubba. Retro America. These terms have all been used by well-known progressive writers and thinkers to describe white working-class Americans. This familiar litany of contempt provides the context for the firestorm that erupted Friday, when Sen. Barack Obama’s remarks to a closed-door group of rich donors in San Francisco were made public by a blogger for the Huffington Post.

Referring to “these small towns in Pennsylvania,” Obama told his wealthy audience that the views of these voters on a variety of subjects should be understood as responses to decades of economic distress. “It’s not surprising,” he said, “then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” When both Hillary Clinton and John McCain accused him of condescension toward nonelite ... Read More...