Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
McCain's "elitist" attack just gets more idiotic by the moment. His new ad actually includes this line about Obama:
"Celebrities don't have to worry about family budgets. But we sure do."
Well yes, John McCain has to worry about his family budget. That budget, by the way, includes $273,000 a year for "household help." That's $50,000 more every year just for servants, maids and gardeners than the median value of a family house in this country. But Obama, son of a single mother who sometimes went on welfare who had to work his way through college, he's the elitist.
Seriously, how fucking stupid do you have to be to buy this bullshit? How could someone stupid enough to swallow such nonsense even manage to own a television set to watch the commercial that contains it? And why aren't intelligent voters pissed off as can be at McCain for insulting their intelligence thinking that they're stupid enough to fall for it?
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Why should anybody be surprised by this type of Rethuglican tactic. Anybody remember the Swift Boat attacks against Kerry in 2004? Anybody remember the same elitist attack against Gore in 2000? Anybody remember the Willy Horton attacks against Dukakis in 1988? The fact is that this has been going on since Richard Nixon and his hatchet man, Murray Chotiner used to attack their election opponents as soft on Communism. For instance, during the 1962 gubernatorial election in California, bumper stickers were issued by the Nixon campaign asking, "Is Brown Pink." Why do they do it? Because it works and the mainstream media lets them get away with it!
Posted by: SLC | August 23, 2008 9:29 AM
Ed - The ad is actually much worse than you make it out to be. McCain is lying in that ad and outrageously so. As you watch the ad, McCain frames the audience as those who are stuggling with their budget, that is who he speaking to in that ad. At the end, McCain tells you that Obama's response to the problem of a weak economy is to raise taxes. In fact, Obama proposes to cut taxes to those whose income puts them at risk of budgetary problems (the target audience for this ad); while McCain proposes the same, Obama's proposed cuts are greater than McCain's.
There is no doubt McCain has gone over to the dark side.
Posted by: Michael Heath | August 23, 2008 9:30 AM
McCain's campaign has been giving racists a long list of reasons (albeit harebrained ones) that they can use to delude themselves that this is not a racist campaign.
The 'celebrity' angle implies that Obama is big news only because he's a celebrity, like black movie stars or black sports stars. Racists despise black stars.
Remember the 'too exotic'? That's a show-business term for 'too black'.
McCain is playing the racist game because the Southern Strategy worked and still works. The way to break the stranglehold the Democrats had on the South was to make the GOP the party of bigots, and it's been winning them power since Nixon's first campaign.
Posted by: Ken Shabby | August 23, 2008 9:39 AM
Not to mention the "dogwhistle" side of the entire "elitist" claim being made. "Elistist" has been turned into a slur implying that they (the alleged elitist) think they are better than you are.
Posted by: Kurt | August 23, 2008 9:39 AM
Yes the ads are lies and hostile but they work. Which is why they use them. The question is what will Obama do? (hold it - isn't that a bumper sticker?) Obama needs to dig down and attack back regardless of promises to take the high road (anyone who fall for that pitch is already ticked at Obama for other reasons by now). One of (many) Kerry failings was he didn't directly and forcefully attack the allegations (and windgliding during the election cycle didn't help either)
(at this juncture I can really take or leave either candidate)
Posted by: yoshi | August 23, 2008 10:10 AM
Well, to be fair, it's that woman who says "we" (it's gotten to where I have a conditioned reflex to the sound of her voice). One could argue that McCain isn't worried about his budget, but he's not a "celebrity" - because he was a POW, dammit!
Posted by: The Ridger | August 23, 2008 10:17 AM
Sadly, in Oklahoma the ads do work. Why? The only reason I can figure out is because they are said by a Republican, and anything a Republican says is taken as gospel.
The last presidential election, my neighbor kept ranting about how Kerry was a liar...despite the evidence that Bush couldn't open his mouth without prevaricating.
Posted by: Mobius | August 23, 2008 10:23 AM
And why aren't intelligent voters pissed off as can be at McCain for insulting their intelligence thinking that they're stupid enough to fall for it?
Because they're intelligent, which implies a degree of pattern recognition.
Two plus two is four. The sun rises. The sky is blue. Things fall towards the ground. Creationists deny reality. Politicians say stupid things to get elected.
These things just are.
Posted by: schism | August 23, 2008 10:56 AM
Last night when the news interrupted Total Recall to announce that Obama picked Biden as his VP, they also noted that McCain was on vacation and that he was spotted coming out of a... STARBUCKS!
So, who's the elitist now, mad the swine?
Posted by: jpf | August 23, 2008 11:31 AM
Would YOU buy a used car from 'honest' John McCain? -DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | August 23, 2008 11:32 AM
It's more subtle than just money; McCain is tapping into the whole culture wars ideology when he uses that word "celebrity." Many people will immediately think of Hollywood and the ad will still resonate, even if they see through nonsense about family budgets.
Most Americans envy, but don't resent, the rich. McCain, with more money than he knows what he's done with, still seems less alien to them than a "celebrity." No matter how much people laugh about the budget angle, McCain gets what he wants out of the ad.
Posted by: Scott Hanley | August 23, 2008 11:38 AM
Speaking of Total Recall...
This has always puzzled me. Right wingers hate Hollywood, yet, has there been a successful celebrity-turned-politician who wan't a Republican? Regan, Schwarzenegger, Sonny Bono, Clint Eastwood, Fred "Gopher" Grandy, Fred Thompson... Republicans love it when a celebrity is running.
Posted by: jpf | August 23, 2008 11:53 AM
Posted by: llewelly | August 23, 2008 12:01 PM
The "Straight Talk Express" needs to be renamed the "Bum's Rush Express." Demo strategists, I recommend harping on this endlessly.
A McCain first term will be a third term for Karl Rove, and a fourth term for Lee Atwater, Rove's deceased mentor. In America, we do elect the dead.
If elected, McCain will be kept sedated except for times when the Rove team need a figurehead, pretty much the same way Reagan was kept as an addled scriptreader for Meese and Deaver.
Demo strategists, use this one too. George W. Bush sinned for your deaths. The McCain industry (McCain himself, quite frankly, is no more, having sold his immortal soul to Rove-think.) is now his prophet.
It's probably too late now to impeach Bush. My only consolation is that we have the rest of his life to indict him for war crimes (Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, Card, Feith, and Wolfowitz, too. As of Inauguration Day, none of them should plan to go abroad, ever again.).
Posted by: Farb | August 23, 2008 12:04 PM
No, see, Obama eats arugula--which only 25% of salads include. His lettuce is more bitter and flavorful than our lettuce, and so he is not like us. That's why he's an elitist.
Posted by: Lucas | August 23, 2008 12:49 PM
You almost have to respect the effort and how well it works. I mean really, the Republicans have Obama portrayed as a Muslim member of a crazy Christian church; a marxist celebrity who wants to raise their taxes and doesn't care about their problems; an unqualified elitist.
I mean really, the juxtaposition of the arguments that Joe-Schmo American is being bombarded with, and many are accepting are mindbogglingly stupid yet are swallowed part and parcel by so many.
It really helps one to understand how something as obviously vapidly empty and idiotic as "creation-science" is still perceived as a viable explanation for the natural history of the earth.
Posted by: dogmeatib | August 23, 2008 1:17 PM
You folks seem to be missing the obvious. Every rightwinger is of two minds, and both of them are batshit crazy. The two argue with each other. And both win.
Posted by: Serjis Werking | August 23, 2008 2:52 PM
Obama and Biden are going over-the-top in their criticism of McCain's financial situation. Today Biden said that McCain doesn't have to worry about paying bills, as though Biden DOES have such a worry. I mean, give me a break. I don't even have to worry about paying the bills, and Biden probably makes 20 or 30 times as much as I do.
Posted by: Matthew | August 23, 2008 6:04 PM
"This has always puzzled me. Right wingers hate Hollywood, yet, has there been a successful celebrity-turned-politician who wan't a Republican? Regan, Schwarzenegger, Sonny Bono, Clint Eastwood, Fred "Gopher" Grandy, Fred Thompson... Republicans love it when a celebrity is running."
Two of the funniest recurring bits on Fox News:
1, Articles about how Republicans are persecutred and black-listed in hollywood - with accompanying stock footage and soundbites from Charlton Heston; Chuck Norris; Bruce Willis, Schwartzenegger; Stallone; Eastwood ...
2. Grovelling arselicking sessiosn with the likes of Gene Simmons - rock stars who pretty much represent everything Fox claims to despise but who support the Republican Party.
Posted by: Ian Gould | August 23, 2008 6:43 PM
Posted by: Herod the Freemason | August 23, 2008 7:02 PM
They believe it because it flatters them to believe it, and because they'd rather see their "team" "win" than do what's right for this nation and vote for someone different who, at the very least, hasn't already been failing at his role as legislator for years on top of years.
McCain should be an unpalatable candidate if only for the fact that he's been Bush's lapdog for the last 8 years.
Posted by: Julian | August 23, 2008 7:03 PM
Ed, you're in denial: Half of the US is *that* stupid. It's been proven in 2004, and is proven by current polls.
You're an elitist if you think people that stupid can't possibly own a tv. :-)
Posted by: Gerald | August 23, 2008 7:29 PM
Funny man, that McCain, talking about budgets, when it's well known that Cindy McCain doesn't let him get near her $100 million. Yeah, he can live in her houses and travel in her planes, but that's about it - she holds her purse strings very firmly. So, if Cindy McCain can't trust him with her piddling (in comparison to the American economy) $100 million, why should America trust him with the $13 trillion or so economy?
Posted by: BC | August 23, 2008 7:52 PM
If this 'arugula' comment had happened in the spring, I would be personally sending McCain's campaign headquarters a batch of home-grown, home-canned arugula.
Just to watch some heads explode.
Posted by: DaveL | August 23, 2008 10:02 PM
It doesn't have to be honest, it doesn't have to be logical, it doesn't even have to make any sense at all. It just has to give people an excuse to vote against Obama.
Posted by: BaldApe | August 23, 2008 10:11 PM
Say, I wonder how the energy consumption on McCain's three or foru principal residences - including the household staff's energy use - stacks up with Barack Obama's single home?
I mean it was a perfectly fair and reasonable question to ask about Gore and Bush and McCain is a prominent advocate of action on global warming, right?
Now all we need is someone to violate McCain's right to privacy and steal copies of his power bills.
(Of course, that makes him a one-world-government socialist neo-pagan liar according to a good part of his support base. funny how they never mention that.)
Posted by: Ian Gould | August 23, 2008 10:29 PM
Re: SLC's comments on Nixon. Nixon's attacks went back even farther, to his 1950 campaign against the beautiful, and very intelligent, Helen Gahagan Douglas, who Nixon smeared as a commie, alleging that she was "pink right down to her underwear." Apparently, only Lyndon Johnson knew for sure.
Posted by: James Hanley | August 23, 2008 10:56 PM
We're talking about a man who goes in front of union workers and tells them that American workers wouldn't pick lettuce for fifty dollars per hour because the pay is too low and the work is too hard. This is not a man who understands money the way normal people understand money. This is a man who clearly hasn't had to worry about money for a long, long time.
The part that surprises me is that his campaign staff is coming up with this stuff. He pays people to make him look like an out-of-touch idiot? Doesn't he realize that there are plenty of people out there that are perfectly willing to do that for him for free? We're clearly talking about someone with more money than sense here.
Posted by: NonyNony | August 23, 2008 11:27 PM
Posted by: James Hanley | August 24, 2008 12:32 AM
"This is a man who clearly hasn't had to worry about money for a long, long time."
He's NEVER had to worry about money. His dad was an admiral, his grandfather was and admiral. McCain has lived a sheltered life, minus his stint in Hanoi.
Any respect I had for the man evaporated when he sold his convictions to the nutcase right.
Posted by: Ian Kennedy | August 24, 2008 2:07 AM
Matthew:
FWIW, Biden doesn't have the sort of cash that McCain or many other US Congresscritters have. He makes his senate salary and, if his disclosure forms are correct, not a lot else. He's a long way from being my favorite human being, but his personal net worth is not one of the things about him that bothers me.
I find it amusing/infuriating that some of the MSM is comparing his being picked as Obama's VP as, somehow equivalent, to Cheney's self-selection as Bush's. I must have missed the part where Joe B. was part of a group that eventually settled on himself as being the best man/cyborg for the job.
I don't mind beating a dead horse on this issue. All of this hand wringing and soul searching over what a bad choice Obama and Biden represent is making some people FUCKING BLIND to the reality of what four more years of Bushcorule will do to this country. Be pissed, be disappointed, be in the booth in November and vote for the lesser of two evils.
Posted by: democommie | August 24, 2008 6:39 AM
Of course McCain has to worry about his family budget. After all, the government only gives him about $53,000 per year in disability.
Posted by: mark | August 24, 2008 9:11 AM
Re James Hanley
It goes back even further then the Douglas campaign. In his first fun for Congress against incumbent Jerry Voorhes, Nixon and his hatchet man, Chotiner, put out an ad stating that Voorhes was obviously a subversive as he had voted some 300 time the same way as a reputed pro-Communist New York Congressman, Vito Marcantonio, neglecting to point out that in most of those votes, he was in the majority.
Posted by: SLC | August 24, 2008 9:16 AM
Oops, sorry, my mistake--McCain's disability check is $58,358/year (tax exempt).
Posted by: mark | August 24, 2008 9:18 AM
McCain sentence structure unveiled:
A noun, a verb, and P.O.W.
Posted by: Don O'Treply | August 24, 2008 2:22 PM
Don O'Treply:
Yes, with Kevin Nealon in the little balloon off to the side, going, "War Hero, HOT SEX; War Hero, HOT SEX..."
Posted by: democommie | August 24, 2008 6:31 PM
It's heartening to know that Senaturd McStain is able to defray at least part of his uninsured domicile expense with his 100% military disability check.
Posted by: democommie | August 25, 2008 7:10 AM
The sad fact is that, no matter how you choose to measure it, at least 50% of all human beings are below average.
As Einstein reportedly said, "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not so sure about the former."
Posted by: Mike Austin | August 25, 2008 5:28 PM