Big Nurse

"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them...And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising 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."

Much has been -- and will be -- written about Senator Obama's astonishing condemnation of broad swaths of the American electorate (including those like the senator who oppose free trade, presumably for reasons disapproved by the Ministry of Right Thinking) as angry, ignorant rubes. That it was delivered to a small group of San Francisco elitists -- whom an Ohio auto mechanic would find as alien as Senator Obama finds Middle America -- provides exactly the proper seasoning for this deliciousness.

A story in its own right is Obama's "explanation" of what he really said, and what he really meant. He implicitly confesses that he thinks ignorance and illiteracy are among the failings of the great unwashed, since for anyone who's taken the time to read the original statement, the "explanation" is laugh-out-loud hilarious. The worthy Victor David Hanson does an excellent job pointing out the various omissions, deceptions and lies employed to dismiss this "misunderstanding."

What is interesting to us is how clearly this statement reveals Senator Obama to be a standard issue, hard left Democratic politician, masquerading as some sort of post-partisan rock star, far above the old conflicts. It shows him to be precisely as racist, internationalist, anti-sovereignty, anti-religion, anti-gun as the rest of the Democratic Left, including Mrs. Clinton when she's not running for President.

More important, however, is that it shows him to be among those -- common on the Democratic Party Left -- who not only hold views on political issues at odds with most ordinary Americans, but who also cannot understand how anyone could possibly disagree with them. Thus, differing with Senator Obama with respect to immigration policy must have its roots in some pathology -- only mental defect or disease can explain why voters wouldn't do the right thing, and vote the right way.

If I think of you as a mental defective, it's most unlikely that I'll take your views into account in setting national policy, that I'll lead in a direction you find tolerable, that I'll listen intently and sympathetically to your psychotic ramblings.

Doctor knows best. It's time for exercise out in the yard, and then Big Nurse will have your medication.