Frank Rich Sun Apr. 20th: Shoddy! Tawdry! Good Read.

[ScarletSniper]

Obama did sound condescending, an unappealing trait that was even more naked in his "You're likable enough, Hillary" gibe many debates ago. But the overreaction to this latest gaffe backfired on the media more than it damaged him. For all the racket about "Bittergate" - and breathless intimations of imminent poll swings and superdelegate stampedes - the earth did not move. The polls hardly budged, and superdelegates continued to migrate mainly in Obama's direction.

Thus did another overhyped 2008 story line go embarrassingly bust, as did predecessors like the death of the John McCain campaign and the organizational and financial invincibility of the Clinton political machine against a rookie senator from Illinois. Not the least of the reasons that the Beltway has gotten so much wrong this year is that it believes that 2008 is still 1988. It sees the country in its own image - static - instead of as a dynamic society whose culture and demographics are changing by the day.

In this one-size-fits-all analysis, Obama must be the new Dukakis, sure to be rejected by white guys easily manipulated by Lee Atwater-style campaigns exploiting race and class. But some voters who lived through 1988 have changed, and quite a few others are dead. In 2008, they are supplanted in part by an energized African-American electorate and the young voters of all economic strata who fueled the Obama movement that many pundits didn't take seriously before Iowa. And that some still don't. Cokie Roberts of ABC predicted in February that young voters probably won't show up in November because "they never have before" and "they'll be tired."

However out of touch Obama is with "ordinary Americans," many Americans, ordinary and not, have concluded that the talking heads blathering about blue-collar men, religion, guns and those incomprehensible "YouTube young people" are even more condescending and out of touch. When a Washington doyenne like Mary Matalin, freighted with jewelry, starts railing about elitists on "Meet the Press," as she did last Sunday, it's pure farce. It's typical of the syndrome that the man who plays a raging populist on CNN, Lou Dobbs, dismissed Obama last week by saying "we don't need another Ivy League-educated knucklehead." Dobbs must know whereof he speaks, since he's Harvard '67.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/opinion/20rich.html?em&ex=1208836800&en=5bcf5ae80526c0a3&ei=5087

[ginnyinWI]

1. That's true. The pundits on TV are a condescending bunch.

I couldn't believe how smug David Gregory was on Tim Russert yesterday. I suppose they all have to seem sure of themselves when they make pronouncements and predictions, but they are singing off-key. They really are out of touch.

I do believe that print media is a little more likely to get it right. It comes from having to think things through before you say something. (Maureen Dowd excepted, of course!)

Frank Rich and Bob Herbert generally speak for me.

[Tatiana]

2. Looks like Rich gets it.

It's typical of the syndrome that the man who plays a raging populist on CNN, Lou Dobbs, dismissed Obama last week by saying "we don't need another Ivy League-educated knucklehead." Dobbs must know whereof he speaks, since he's Harvard '67.

He shoots, he scores!

But here's the part that really sizzles:

At an Associated Press luncheon for newspaper editors in Washington last week, Mr. McCain was given a standing ovation. (The other candidate who appeared, Mr. Obama, was not.) Cindy McCain, whose tax returns remain under wraps, has not received remotely the same scrutiny as Michelle Obama and Bill Clinton, except for her plagiarized recipes. The most damning proof of the press’s tilt toward Mr. McCain, though, is the lack of clamor for his complete health records, especially in the wake of his baffling serial factual confusions about Iraq, his No. 1 issue.

OK, WTF has McCain done that merits a standing ovation? Oh yeah, he invites the reporters over for barbeque and booze.

Another good column from Rich.