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Something about Barack Obama's manner bothers Margaret Cowan. "There's something egotistical about him," the Sheridan, Colo., retiree said. "It's the way he struts around." Many swing voters here and throughout the country consider the presumptive Democratic nominee distant, pompous, arrogant, even elitist. "It's a big issue that he needs to address," said Eric Davis, a professor emeritus of political science at Middlebury College in Vermont. Obama has Ivy League degrees from Columbia and Harvard universities. He's extraordinarily articulate and exudes self-confidence. Those credentials and qualities combine to strike some people as arrogant. He counters by reminding voters that he was...

LITTLETON, Colo. — Something about Barack Obama's manner bothers Margaret Cowan. "There's something egotistical about him," the Sheridan, Colo., retiree said. "It's the way he struts around." Many swing voters here and throughout the country consider the presumptive Democratic nominee distant, pompous, arrogant, even elitist. "It's a big issue that he needs to address," said Eric Davis, a professor emeritus of political science at Middlebury College in Vermont. Obama has Ivy League degrees from Columbia and Harvard universities. He's extraordinarily articulate and exudes self-confidence. Those credentials and qualities combine to strike some people as arrogant. He counters by reminding voters...

WASHINGTON - One of the first images prime-time viewers will see of the Democratic National Convention next week is that of Michelle Obama, who will begin the four-day introduction of her husband, and her family, on her terms. Like everything else at the orchestrated gala, that is by design. Democrats face a number of imperatives at their convention, none trickier than making more voters comfortable with the prospect of putting a candidate with a most unusual background — the son of a black Kenyan father and a white Kansan mother, who grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia — and his...

The sea of shining, hope-filled faces that routinely flood Barack Obama's rallies would be an alien environment for the grizzled features and tobacco-stained temperament of Dave “Mudcat” Saunders. His preferred habitat is up a tree gunning down deer or on the mud flats — which lent him their name — catching catfish, part of an endless struggle with Appalachian wildlife. Along with his Confederate flag bedspread, the stag heads on his walls, his preference for profanity over punctuation, he would horrify what he calls the “northeastern elitist, Metropolitan Opera wing of the Democrats”. But, as one of the party's few...

Michelle Obama: Barack Is No Elitist Potential First Lady Weighs In on McCain Campaign Ad Aug. 6, 2008 — First lady hopeful Michelle Obama says that a recent John McCain campaign ad characterizing her husband as a self-involved celebrity on the order of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears has it all wrong. "It's funny to have anybody characterize Barack as an elitist," Obama told "Good Morning America" co-anchor Robin Roberts during an exclusive interview. "You know, this is the kid who was raised by a single mother, who didn't have access to many resources, who, you know, has walked away...

Barack Obama’s new campaign plane is nothing short of grand. Well, for the candidate that is. Obama’s section of the plane rivals that of any first class. Recently the front cabin of the Boeing 757 was retrofitted to install four individual chairs that resemble La-Z-Boys. They are free-standing and made of plush leather with pockets on the sides. There is also a booth which seats four for a meeting or a meal. His chair has his name and campaign logo embroidered on the back top -- “Obama ‘08” on one line and “President” underneath. To one side is a small...

PRINCETON, NJ -- Barack Obama has by far his greatest strength among voters with postgraduate education, while John McCain has his highest level of support among voters who have a college degree but no postgraduate education. Obama wins overwhelmingly among blacks across all educational levels. An analysis of the vote by education among whites (with blacks and Hispanics taken out of the equation), shows McCain does much better against Obama among whites in general than he does among nonwhites. The presumptive Republican nominee in fact "wins" in each educational group of whites except those with postgraduate education

Maybe...if you buy the sort of earrings the wife of a US Senator who makes a big salary because her husband got her boss a big, fat earmark would wear. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s wife, Michelle, complained the government’s $600 economic stimulus check was only enough to buy “a pair of earrings” while stumping for her husband. “You’re getting $600 - what can you do with that?” Mrs. Obama said in Pontiac, Michigan last week. “Not to be ungrateful or anything, but maybe it pays down a bill, but it doesn’t pay down every bill every month. The short-term...

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s wife, Michelle, complained the government’s $600 economic stimulus check was only enough to buy “a pair of earrings” while stumping for her husband. “You're getting $600 - what can you do with that?” Mrs. Obama said in Pontiac, Michigan last week. “Not to be ungrateful or anything, but maybe it pays down a bill, but it doesn't pay down every bill every month. The short-term quick fix kinda stuff sounds good, and it may even feel good that first month when you get that check, and then you go out and you buy a pair...

The sophisticates at The New Yorker have come up with a cover that is sure to get the magazine a lot of attention. Negative attention. From their friends. An illustration by Barry Blitt depicts Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and his wife Michelle in the Oval Office, revealing their "true" selves: Michelle is in full revolutionary garb, an enormous afro making her look like a millennial Angela Davis, holding an automatic weapon and wearing military pants. In the cartoon Michelle is giving dap, or fist-bumping, with her husband who is wearing a turban and is dressed in garb perhaps more appropriate...

Mr. Gilmore called Mr. Warner an "elite limousine liberal," a "knave" on foreign policy, and a "piranha" hungry for tax money. Mr. Gilmore repeatedly hit Mr. Warner, his successor as governor, for breaking a 2001 campaign promise by raising taxes $1.4 billion.

The same day a John McCain surrogate dismissed economic woes from a nation of "whiners," Barack Obama's wife quipped that the $600 tax stimulus check could be used for a pair of earrings.

Presumptive Republican presidential nomine John McCain criticized his Democratic rival Thursday, accusing Barack Obama of having "elitist" gun views. The comments came after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the District of Columbia's 32-year-old ban on handguns and ruled that Americans have the right to own guns for self-defense and hunting, The Financial Times reported.McCain hailed the ruling as a "landmark victory" for gun rights. Referring to remarks Obama made during the primary campaign, McCain said Obama is out of touch with Americans on gun rights. "Unlike the elitist view that believes Americans cling to guns out of bitterness, today's ruling...

In a statement reminiscent of Howard Dean’s controversial statement from 2005 about the RNC and "people of color," Time magazine columnist Joe Klein blasted Karl Rove’s recent slam of Barack Obama on Monday’s "Election Center" program on CNN. "I just think that the image is kind of hilarious when you think about it: Barack Obama at a country club sipping a martini. It's kind of a parody of the Republican view of the world. Everybody belongs to -- since when [did] we start letting people like Barack Obama into Republican country clubs?" "People like Barack Obama"? That sounds like Dean’s...

Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama will appear at Carnegie Mellon University Thursday, hosting a round-table conversation on competitiveness and the world economy. The morning panel discussion, which will be closed to the public, includes speakers from industry, labor and the academic world.The participants are to include: Lael Brainard, vice president of the Brookings Institution; Eli Broad, founder of the Broad Foundation; Geoffrey Canada, president and CEO of Harlem Children's Zone; Steve Case, chairman and CEO of Revolution Health and former chairman and CEO of America Online; Susan Hockfield, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Federico Pe??a, former U.S....

Tonight on CNN's Election Center, Joe Klein spewed the following while engaged in a group discussion about a comment made by Karl Rove.......BLITZER: Let's turn to another hot topic right now from the campaign trail today, Karl Rove seriously blasting Barack Obama. We have got some of the smartest people here to talk about that, Joe Klein, Leslie Sanchez, Candy Crowley. Candy, here's the quote from Karl Rove at a breakfast, a Republican breakfast today -- quote -- "Even if you never met him, you know this guy. He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date holding...

ABC News' Christianne Klein reports that at a breakfast with Republican insiders at the Capitol Hill Club this morning, former White House senior aide Karl Rove referred to Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, as "coolly arrogant." "Even if you never met him, you know this guy," Rove said, per Christianne Klein. "He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by."

The other day in southwestern Fresno County, a poor part of Central California, I talked with a number of folks at a rural gas station. Most drove second- and third-hand pickups, large cast-off sedans or used SUVs. Their general complaint was twofold: They didn't have the cash to buy a new fuel-efficient Honda or Toyota. And they were now spending a day or two of their wages just to fuel their cars for their long rural commutes. But I also fill up three hours away on the San Francisco peninsula near Stanford University, where I work. High-priced hybrid cars and...

Watch this video where Chris Matthews displays his utter lack of class with Keith Olbermann. While almost every other journalist and blogger on both sides of the political spectrum are giving condolences and highlighting Russert’s deserved credit of being one of the most fair and unbiased journalists of today’s media, Chris Matthews used the opportunity to go off on an anti-war rant. He added insult by comparing him to the “American people” in the sense of being fooled by the Bush administration into supporting the war. Besides displaying how opposite he is than Russert on the subject of bias, he...

Hollywood's gone green — or so everybody says. Whether they're driving hybrid cars, shunning bottled water or making do with just one square of toilet paper, A-listers from Natalie Portman to Brad Pitt are joining the eco-chic bandwagon. But who's really green, and who's just an imposter? Laurie David, producer of Al Gore's Oscar-winning global warming documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" and estranged wife of actor/writer Larry David, has become one of the most widely known environmental activists. But Jackie Mendez-Diez, David's neighbor in celeb-popular Martha's Vineyard, Mass., told FOXNews.com she's a hypocrite. "I normally wouldn't care, it would just be...

NANCY CHEMTOB, a divorce lawyer in Manhattan, has found that her days have become crammed seeing clients, all worried about how an economic downturn will affect their marriages.< >THEIR spouses could leave them when they discover that their net worth has collapsed to eight figures from nine. Friends and business associates could avoid them as they pass their lunchtime tables at Barney’s or the Four Seasons. And these snubs could trickle down to their children.< >

Elite Democrats Lose By Salena Zito When it comes to racial issues, the 2008 Democrat primary has been lowered to the most politically correct campaign in history. So low that it has smudged the lens in the way we look at both of the Democrats' candidates. Political correctness or "PC" -- a clothesline tool typically used as a wedge issue against Republicans -- has backfired. To steal a phrase from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, PC is "coming home to roost" for Democrats.

In my ignorance, I once held hopes of gaining entrance into a club more exclusive than any country club or nightclub. Having been educated in public schools and therefore exposed to only one form of thought, I thought this club represented intellectualism. My first exposure to intellectual thought was a shelf filled with dime store Golden Books. One of the American “ladies� had heard about the cleaning abilities of a Slovenian immigrant woman who was laid off from her job in a factory. So this lady picked my mother and me up and drove us out to her big house...

Barack Obama's problem winning votes from working-class whites is showing no sign of going away, and their impression of him is getting worse. Those are ominous signals as he hopes for strong performances next week in Indiana and North Carolina primaries that would derail the candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton, his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination. Those contests come as his candidacy has been rocked by renewed attention to his volatile former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and by his defeat in last month's Pennsylvania primary. In an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll in April, 53 percent of whites who...

In the past few weeks, Barack Obama has learned the political perils of condescension. His Philadelphia speech on race was filled with it. --snip-- Obama's response, I believe, provided a justification for Wright's media campaign to describe black liberation theology. Wright may be a camera-seeking egotist. He is certainly a showman, enjoying his moment. But his main argument seems to be: "No, Barack, I actually hold these theological convictions. You may need to attack me for political reasons. But don't you dare dismiss me as a batty uncle." It is a tribute to the power of the Christian message that...

If this weren't enough to make right-wing hearts flutter, Hillary has another brand-new advantage: She is hated on all the right fronts. The snots and the snark-mongers now all despise her, along with the trendies, the glitzies; the food, drama, and lifestyle critics, the beautiful people (and those who would join them), the Style sections of all the big papers; the slick magazines; the above-it-all pundits, who have looked down for years on the Republicans and on the poor fools who elect them, and now sneer even harder at her. The New York Times is having hysterics about her. At...

I saw this on yahoo today.... At a news conference, Obama also disputed suggestions that he is an elitist. "In fact, our lives when you look over the last two decades more closely approximate the lives of the average voter than any of the other candidates," the Illinois senator said. "We've struggled with paying student loans. We've tried to figure out whether we have adequate daycare. I've actually filled up my own gas tank." Obama and his wife Michelle reported income of $4.2 million last year, much of it in book royalties. But he often tells campaign audiences that until...

Northwestern rescinds honorary degree offer to Rev. Wright 21 minutes ago Northwestern University has withdrawn its offer of an honorary degree to the former pastor of Democrat Barack Obama. A university official says the school had offered the Rev. Jeremiah Wright an honorary Doctorate of Sacred Theology. But vice president for university relations Alan Cubbage now says the offer has been rescinded because of the controversy surrounding Wright. He also says the school wants "to ensure that the celebratory character of commencement not be affected." Wright is the former senior minister at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. His...

BARACK OBAMA SEEMED to have survived the blasphemous rants of his preacher and remained relatively untarnished by the perceived dissatisfactions of his privileged wife. But he may be less lucky with remarks he made recently about embittered, small-town Americans, who "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." Those words now cling to Obama like Styrofoam packing peanuts. The more he tries to brush them away, the more they seem to burrow into the American psyche. Being effete comes naturally to Democrats...

ABC News' Sunlen Miller Reports: Does having five suits, four pairs of shoes, and being a better bowler than some think make you a common man? It's not every day that a candidate's fashion sense makes its way into a press availability, but today in Indianapolis, Indiana, Barack Obama had to defend his wardrobe choices, making the case that he is not an elitist. The question came from a local reporter, who said he's been looking like the "GQ candidate." And in the wake of the "bitter" controversy, which prompted his opponents to label him an elitist, the timing of...

Flanked by Atlanta business, law enforcement and transportation leaders, Mayor Shirley Franklin Thursday urged Gov. Sonny Perdue to veto legislation that would allow Georgians to carry concealed weapons into state parks, restaurants and onto trains and buses. "This is not about the right to bear arms," Franklin said during a news conference at City Hall. "This is about public safety ... of people who live in Atlanta, live around Atlanta, visit Atlanta or invest in Atlanta." The bill, passed by the General Assembly on the final day of this year's session, would let about 300,000 holders of concealed weapons permits...

Bitter Pill By George Neumayr Published 4/25/2008 Never trust a campaign slogan that ends in a preposition. "Change we can believe in," reads Obama's pompous promise on his website. A quote from Obama hovering nearby seeks halfheartedly to flatter voters by suggesting this change will enlist their genius too: "I'm asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington...I'm asking you to believe in yours." A similar song and dance is contained in his bafflingly arrogant mantra: "We are the ones we've been waiting for." That apparently means whoever appears last is best...

Greg Mitchell ridicules Bill Kristol for insinuating that Barack Obama was a Marxist for saying that residents of economically depressed small towns "cling to guns or religion ... as a way to explain their [economic] frustrations." But of course it was a Marxist thing to say, wasn't it? If Democrats_had delivered on the economy, Obama suggests, all_those GOP cultural "wedge" issues would lose traction. This idea--that the economy trumps culture--isn't new. It's "materialism." The economic "base," Marxists would argue, determines the cultural "superstructure." If the economy changes (i.e. if small town Pennsylvanians get well-paying jobs) then the superstructure will change...

Barack Obama's prospects of sealing the Democratic Party's nomination in Pennsylvania tomorrow have apparently evaporated in the state's ghost towns. In Clairton, a once-thriving community, where The Deer Hunter was filmed in the mid-1970s, the population has shrunk by two thirds in the past 30 years. Jobs at the huge steel mill beside the Monongahela River have steadily disappeared. Mr Obama and rival Senator Hillary Clinton are pursuing blue collar votes in places like Clairton that could decide the primary and the most closely fought nomination battle in living memory. If the young Illinois senator wants to expand his support...

When it comes to racial issues, the 2008 Democrat primary has been lowered to the most politically correct campaign in history. So low that it has smudged the lens in the way we look at both of the Democrats’ candidates. Political correctness or “PC” -- a clothesline tool typically used as a wedge issue against Republicans -- has backfired. To steal a phrase from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, PC is “coming home to roost” for Democrats. Purdue University political science professor Bert Rockman says we need to thicken our skins when it comes to race. “Why did anybody take umbrage...

PITTSBURGH - The Lawrenceville neighborhood, with its car-repair shops and convenience markets giving way to coffee houses and yoga salons, represents both sides of the upscale/downscale electoral coalition that Democrats hope will carry them to the White House in November. But Lawrenceville, like many Democratic precincts, is increasingly divided in its politics along class lines. Last week, while 27-year-old Bronwyn Loughren, co-owner of an art gallery called La Vie, was expressing disgust over Hillary Clinton's hardball political tactics, beautician Jenny Skrinjar, 53, of the Style North Hair Salon was fuming about Barack Obama. "He looks down on people," she said....

Polls show Clinton holding a stubborn lead over Obama and, if she wins, she will have staved off political death one more time. Yet if Clinton wins by a narrow margin - even after an unusually bad stretch for Obama, including his foolish observation about 'bitter' small-town voters and a horrendous debate on Wednesday - her victory will be underwhelming. In the next two primaries, on 6 May, she trails badly in one (North Carolina) and has surrendered a one-time lead in another (Indiana). Even some Clintonites say they will pressure her to drop out should she lose both those...

To urge the white working class to vote on the basis of economic policy is itself considered an act of elitism.... But nobody's challenging the validity of caring more about your religion, or even your right to hunt, than your income. The objection is whether it makes sense to vote on that basis. There are...stark differences between the two parties on economic matters. Republicans do want to make working-class voters pay a higher proportion of the tax burden, restrain popular social programs, erode the value of the minimum wage, and so on. Democrats, on the other hand, have no plans...

Our lesson today comes from the songwriter Frank Loesser: "Praise The Lord And Pass The Ammunition." Or as Barack Obama and his San Francisco pals would put it: God and guns. Loesser got the phrase from Howell Forgy, a naval chaplain at Pearl Harbor, who walked the decks of the USS New Orleans under Japanese bombardment, exhorting his comrades. When the line came to Loesser's ears, he turned it into a big hit song of the Second World War: "Praise the Lord and swing into position Can't afford to sit around a-wishin'…" – which some folks sang as "Can't afford...

The dirty little secret about Barack Obama's indictment of flyover country is that he said what liberals, including Hillary Clinton, believe. Sufficient proof of this can be found in the liberal outrage at Wednesday night's Democratic presidential debate, where Obama was pressed both by the moderators and Clinton to explain Bitter-gate, Wright-gate, Ayers-gate and Flag pin-gate. Consider the uncannily similar reactions of columnists Tom Shales and Stephen Silver. Shales expressed indignation that ABC News moderators Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos would dare ask Obama to justify his insulting remarks about small-town Americans and his relationships with certain anti-American people. Shale's...

I'm not writing this just because I grew up in a house with a gun, a strong Catholic faith, an immigrant father, brothers with anti-immigrant sentiments and a passion for bowling. (My bowling trophy was one of my most cherished possessions.) My family morphed from Kennedy Democrats into Reagan Republicans not because they were angry, but because they felt more comfortable with conservative values. Members of my clan sometimes were overly cloistered. But they weren't bitter; they were bonding. They went to church every Sunday because it was part of their identity, not because they needed a security blanket. Behind...

EVANSVILLE, Ind. (AP) - Michelle Obama said Wednesday she is a product of a working-class background and rejected characterizations of her and her husband as elitist. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has tried to deflect criticism of his comments that people in small towns cling to religion and guns out of bitterness over their economic plight. Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republican John McCain have called the remarks elitist. Obama said it was a poor choice of words to describe the economic insecurity many face. "I am a product of a working-class background, I am one of those folks...

Well, he's done it again. Barak Obama has inadvertently parted the curtain and allowed us to have a peek behind his carefully crafted stage persona. Yet he even outdid himself this time, when he showed his disdain for people of faith as well as gun owners, deriding both groups as "bitter" while clearly characterizing them as weak and misguided. Starting in the 1960's the Democratic party abandoned its roots as "the party of the working man." It is now run by arrogant elitists like Michel Moore who see people who actually go to church as rubes, and gun owners as...

Perhaps the greatest lesson to be learned by Democrats from this week’s “bitter” brouhaha is that when you get advice about how to hook rural, white, blue-collar voters from a guy named Mudcat, you’d best listen. Dave “Mudcat” Saunders—Democratic strategist, bluegrass enthusiast, and general pied piper of the “Bubba vote,” as he calls it—had a little-noticed fight with liberal bloggers back in June 2007 that perfectly presaged this week’s controversy. “I have bitched and moaned for years about the lack of tolerance in the elitist wing of the Democratic Party, or what I refer to as the ‘Metropolitan Opera Wing.’...

Maybe Barack Obama felt he couldn’t afford to give the correct answer. He was asked at a fund-raiser in San Francisco about his campaign’s experiences in the run-up to next week’s Democratic primary in Pennsylvania. One of the main problems, of course, is that he hasn’t generated as much support as he’d like among white working-class voters. There is no mystery here. Except for people who have been hiding in caves or living in denial, it’s pretty widely understood that a substantial number of those voters — in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and elsewhere — will not vote for a...

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama, accused of being elitist for remarks he made about small-town American voters, said on Tuesday the slap at his background is amusing and signals a nation in the midst of "political silly season." The Democratic senator, campaigning in Pennsylvania, dismissed the charges of being elitist and out of touch by fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton and by Republican John McCain as unfounded, given his background. "I am amused about this notion of elitist, given that when you're raised by a single mom, when you were on food stamps for a while when you were growing up, you...

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama, accused of being elitist for remarks he made about small-town American voters, said on Tuesday the slap at his background is amusing and signals a nation in the midst of "political silly season." The Democratic senator, campaigning in Pennsylvania, dismissed the charges of being elitist and out of touch by fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton and by Republican John McCain as unfounded, given his background. "I am amused about this notion of elitist, given that when you're raised by a single mom, when you were on food stamps for a while when you were growing up, you...

Guns are expected to be a focal point in Wednesday’s debate between Democratic rivals Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.), which is set for Philadelphia just days after controversial comments by Obama about gun owners. Campaign news over the weekend was dominated by recently surfaced remarks by Obama that painted small-town gun enthusiasts as “bitter.” Clinton repeatedly criticized her rival for the remarks, and favorably mentioned hunting outings she took with her late father. Clinton and Obama now face a balancing act of promoting what Democrats call common-sense gun control regulations, which are important to urban and...

Maybe a few years ago, had Barack Obama said something as stupid as he did in San Francisco last week, his defense focusing on the least objectionable part of his remarks may have fooled the media into following suit. So far, though, Obama has had no such luck. Mainstream journalists have focused on the entire statement, and like John Dickerson at Slate, can’t see any way to spin his comments — and Dickerson gives it his best shot: Obama has not helped himself in his efforts at damage control. First, he said he was just telling the truth, but edited...

Having grown up in one of those small Pennsylvania towns Sen. Barack Obama sneers at, I know what really makes people there "bitter." It's slick-talking politicians who look down on their beliefs and values. Small-town people get doubly "bitter" when those pols have the gall to ask for their votes while demeaning their lives. See, even hicks don't like being played for suckers. When they accused Obama of being out of touch for saying small-towners "cling to guns or religion" out of frustration, Sens. Hillary Clinton and John McCain were too kind. Snob-ama is not just out of touch. He's from...