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Rachael, I wholly agree with 50 percent of what you say. Obama’s message about our tendency to hunker down behind extreme identity differences (religious, ideological, racial) would have been better delivered directly to the group he was addressing. Just as U.S. Rep. Geoff Davis, R-Ky., might have been better off talking to the 3Ls at Harvard when he said of Obama at a fundraiser last Saturday night, “That boy’s finger does not need to be on the button.” Davis went on to compare Obama to a “snake oil salesman” who “probably doesn’t understand normal Americans” because he went to Harvard. (Hat tip to Steve Benen.) (Davis has since apologized.) 

It can’t possibly be true that Obama’s biggest sin—like Davis’—was simply that he addressed a like-minded audience. Unlike Davis, whose audience evidently LOVED his insights about out-of-touch private-school liberals, Obama is being clobbered for the extra sin of elitism. That’s because it’s only condescension when liberal intellectuals reduce groups to stereotypes. When salt-of-the-earth blue-collar Americans like Davis or Bill Kristol or Rush Limbaugh skewer Harvard grads, it’s heroic anti-intellectualism. Me, I’d rather live in a world where we stop caricaturing both pro-gun groups and pro-choice groups. But my point is that it’s equally reductive and mean-spirited in both directions, and whether you choose to call it “condescension” or “sham populism,” it’s still just misdirection.