McCain's Fabulous Life, Day 2

McCain's house gaffe made probably every major paper this morning, and was featured on every nightly newscast. A good example is this USA Today piece, featuring one of the best paragraphs ever:

McCain, who has portrayed Obama as an elitist, is the son and grandson of admirals. The Associated Press estimates his wife, a beer heiress, is worth $100 million. Obama was raised by a single mother who relied at times on food stamps, and went to top schools on scholarships and loans. His income has increased from book sales since he spoke at the 2004 Democratic convention.

Hilarious. Among the other developments: the DNC put out a funny video asking random folks if they remember how many houses they own:



Josh Marshall notices that the McCain household staff budget went up 50% last year to $273,000 a year. Inflation's tough for everybody.

And even a fount of conventional wisdom like Chris Cillizza gets why this matters:

In politics, there is nothing worse than appearing out of touch.

From time immemorial, a candidate who is effectively portrayed as forgetting about the "little" people, of having "gone Washington," of living higher on the hog than voters, loses.

Class remains a powerful motivator for many voters in the country. Politicians are forever trying to cast their candidacies as closely rooted in the communities from which they sprung -- a purposeful attempt to ensure that voters know that the candidate "understands the problems of people like you." Put simply: The worst thing you can call a politician is an elitist.

And so, seen through that lens, it makes perfect sense why Democrats have picked up on John McCain's comment that he wasn't sure about how many houses he and his wife own -- comments made to Politico's Mike Allen and J-Mart -- and why Republicans have fought back so quickly and so hard.

By the way, the progressive movement needs to take a little credit for this one. We harped on McCain's comment at the Saddleback Forum that $5 million dollars connoted being rich, which Obama connected to the current controversy yesterday. Brave New Films and the AFL-CIO have teamed up to drive the "McCain is the real elitist" angle hard, and they put a video out on Wednesday about his many houses. That clearly prompted the Politico writers to ask the question to McCain, leading to that priceless moment.

And I have to say the Obama new media team has been very solid on this in providing information. This is what can happen when everyone works together.

...I forgot to mention the 9-car entourage to Starbucks for a latte yesterday. McCain is not doing himself any favors. And of course this is ticky-tack, but as I've constantly said, this is how the media works in the modern age, and anyway McCain started this whole "elitist" thing, and being out of touch with what's happening in the world and the economy actually does matter.