Better than using incompetence for good.
Given the choice between evil and capable and good and ineffectual… well, I’m not quite sure what I’d choose. But I do know this: competence should be the basic prerequisite for any leadership position. If they don’t have that, then its doesn’t matter how moral, or honest, or smart they are. They’re just an empty suit.
“He never drank a Duff in his life!”
In fact she was born in New Jersey, and her first husband was the last president of the New York City Council. She’s as American as apple pie and baseball.
Her current husband is a knight of the realm, and they live here. And baseball is also British. 
Is it because he isn’t black enough? Is that the problem? Should he talk using only Ebonics? If I were him, I would be so frustrated with this particular criticism.
ETA: I mean the elitist criticism, not the black enough criticism.
Yep. Consider how many people get thoroughly up in arms when they find out their congressman hasn’t been to a lot of votes, but never bother to find out what sort of job their congressman was actually doing…
Are you suggesting that the mother of Sir Winston Churchill wasn’t an American? Being married to a British knight doesn’t cancel your American citizenship.
Suggesting it seriously? No. Agreeing with Really Not All That Bright’s comment that Lynn Forester De Rothschild is superrich and practically British, so nobody’s going to care? Yes.
So the only real problem is that she’s elite – and so elite that she’s at a level where citizenship doesn’t matter much any more.
“Real problem?” The basic irony pointed out in this thread is that, as a Rothschild (even if only by marriage), she is actually far more elite than Obama is. It makes her claim that she “feel[s] like he is an elitist” just plain silly. That’s why I agreed her endorsement is not going to sway anybody, despite the story running on CNN’s ticker that she is a “prominent Clinton backer.”
Racist! :D:D:D Next you’re going to be talking about putting lipstick on the kettle.
Someone had to say it.
There is no one the true elite hate more than the riffraff who come from nowhere and make it to the top of places like Harvard Law. Getting into the club on intelligence and talent is very threatening.
Part of being truly elite is getting your idiot children jobs where they screw things up. Though McCain losing a plane is a lot better than the other example I’m thinking of, where the idiot son of the former CEO trashed an entire country.
This makes Obama nouveau elite, I guess.
That may well be true, and indeed may be the author’s motivation for disliking Obama - I note the snarky tone of the piece. But the issue is whether her analysis is correct - is the way Obama is perceived by voters an issue, or not?
So far I’ve seen posters analysing why the perceptions of “Joe Average” are swayed by jealousy (which implies that the authour is correct) or that the authour is so elite herself that no-one will care about her opinion (which may also be true, but so what? If her opinion is correct, he’s in election trouble anyway, whether or not anyone listens to her!).
The only person tackling the article head-on is Marley23, who said in an aside that the perception is “played out” and replaced in concern with the economy. That may be true as well, but the article is claiming a systemic problem with Democrats as a party over a long span of time: that they tend to talk down to the population as a whole, which then often rewards them by failing to elect their candidates. Being told that the majority of John or Jane Q. Public is simply jealous of Obama’s successes, or is too dumb to appreciate his superior qualities, simply re-enforces the point - to the extent of course that what people post here on this Internet site actually mirror the “message” that John/Jane Q. Public is getting from the Democratic Party [One may naturally reply that evidence supports this view as substantially true, but so what? The Democrats need it to be not true in order to win - or they must somehow change their message].
The comparison with Adlai Stevenson is somewhat apt: during one of Stevenson’s presidential campaigns, allegedly, a supporter told him that he was sure to “get the vote of every thinking man” in the U.S., to which Stevenson is said to have replied, “Thank you, but I need a majority to win.” 
I do not know if the quip is an accurate quote, but it does appear to have contemporary relevance.
“He hasn’t given me a reason to trust him.”
Because (half) black men are dangerous until proven otherwise, right?
Mrs de Rothschild is an ignorant, dishonest piece of garbage.
Well, as long as we’re floating impossible-to-prove, half-baked, straight-out-of-our-asses accusations about the real reason she is defecting to the McCain/Palin camp, I’ll offer my own … and bear in mind, I truly believe this no matter how stinky it is once it’s extracted from my alimentary canal:
It’s the Palin, stupid.
This woman backed Hilary. Now she is backing Palin … because of the love taco factor, as it were. I think she’s just voting the feminist angle, no matter how anti-feminist the feminine in question is.
They do have a tendency to do that, but the Palin-style “I’m just like you, gosh darn it” is also talking down to people, and it’s at least equally phony.
Since the author is endorsing McCain, I can’t help but think her advice is more of a backhanded way of publishing one more version of the GOP take on Obama, and not actual advice.
There is a long tradition of suspicion of “the elites” in American politics as well as scientific and intellectual endeavors (and I strongly suspect this occurs to some degree around the world).
The classic rejoinder of the Dumbass Salt-Of-The-Earth to an intelligent, fact-based statement is “If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich? HAR HAR HAR!!!”
(Of course this doesn’t work so well with Obama, since while he is not fabulously rich he’s pretty well off).
Let’s face it, there’s always a substantial number of people who resent and envy those with more smarts and drive than they have. They see nothing idiotic in the legendary remark by Sen. Roman Hruska of Nebraska, who in response to complaints that G. Harrold Carswell (a Nixon Supreme Court appointee) was mediocre, remarked that there was nothing wrong with mediocrity, that mediocre people needed representation too. :smack:
We also have people who are conspiracy-minded, and/or hone in obsessively on instances where learned opinion has been off base, and conclude that all expert knowledge is to be distrusted or placed on an equivalent level with homespun “wisdom”. This is how Celebrity Mommies like Jenny McCarthy get their inane views on vaccination promoted to the exclusion of evidence-based medicine.
But I don’t believe Ms. de Rothschild seriously thinks that the problem with Obama is that he’s too “elitist”. In her eyes his main deficiency is that he’s not Hillary Clinton, and so she’s whacking him with the “elitist” label because she thinks that’s an effective weapon against him.
No doubt Hillary is just devastated by this turn of events. :dubious:
Sir Evelyn de Rothschild is a mere knight. Parvenu. We could pit his wife against Lady Haden-Guest in a knock down, drag out, Jello wrestling death match, but as HER husband is a Baron it would be unseemly for her to be pulling the panties off someone beneath her.