Obama's Comments Aren't Controversial?

I guess you just have to get inside the minds of contemporary leftists to really understand their thinking. I mean, for the deep activists of the Democratic Party, folks like Jeremiah Wright are just speaking truth to power.

Sure, some commentators like Lanny Davis get it (bigotry and hate are "pretty much a staple" of the left nowadays, he says), but most of the lefties remain clueless.

Enter Ezra Klein (stage extreme left), via Memeorandum.

Klein's got a new post up suggesting that the content of Obama's San Francisco "bitter" speech on working class Pennsylvanians is uncontroversial:

I'm not really sure what the big deal over Obama's comments in SF is supposed to be....

As far as I can tell, few actually find the argument underlying Obama's statement controversial. It's a pretty standard thesis, and has been delivered, in various forms, by everyone from John McCain to Bill Clinton. It's that the way Obama phrased it is politically damaging, particularly the inclusion of guns and religion (though I think the crucial ambiguity in his comments is that he's talking about guns and religion in their role as conveyors of political identity and social unrest, rather than in their more natural roles of shooting at things and believing in God).

Perhaps Kein hasn't seen "Primary Colors." Bill Clinton's certainly not without his personal pathologies, but few people could speak more accurately on - let alone identify with - the plight of the downsizing industrial working classes. (Of course, Klein was only 7 years-old during the pre-primary phase of Clinton's 1992 presidential election bid.)

Victor Davis Hanson's more accurate when he says that Obama's statements are controversial, because they

...suggest both hostility and a certain us/they contempt for a slice of America that the Obamas apparently know very little about—but for the first time in their lives are rapidly discovering.

Klein adds further that all of this is a media frenzy designed to drive reader interest. Oh sure, a point all the more interesting coming from Klein, who's feted as an up-and-comer in the liberal establishment press (where the media vultures are always hovering over the next Abu Ghraib or Scooter Libby scandal).

But hey, Klein's at least got a reputation as a "respectable liberal blogger."

See also, TPM Election Central, "Geoffrey Garin: Obama's Small-Town Comments Would Damage Him In General Election - And Super-Dels Should Consider Them."