I know exactly what Elitist is.

[quakerboy]

Elitist is saying "I know what Obama meant, but I don't think those people are not ___(intelegent, informed, aware, choose your own word) enough to get it, so Obama cannot possibly win now".

[goldcanyonaz]

1. Actually, an elitest looks down upon those without while grasping their wallet for dear life.

[maddiejoan]

4. grasping their wallet for dear life.

No.

That was his "typical white" grandma that did that.

[tekisui]

2. Many people in middle America

don't know what an Elitist is. That is why Hillary used it. She thought she could throw a label out, and the unwashed masses would be horrified by what Obama is.

But, they can understand what he says, he communicates just fine.

[JoFerret]

22. I pick up on what he says and does

I pick up what he says very well. And I find much of it - and his reported behavior - patronizing and supercilious. (Forget this latest little misstep - that is just par for the course.)

The examples are legion - each one of them small (or large depending on your proximity and sensibility) and they add up.

[quakerboy]

25. And yet

how many of those are truly "patronizing and supercilious" and how many are innocent but perceived through a lens of prejudgment based on your own prior choices? I don't know, but I offer it up as something worth thinking about, because we are dealing with someone at minimum 51% likely to be our nominee at this point.

[JoFerret]

26. We all see things through a distorted lens

Distorted because we create our own reality and construct it idiosyncratically.
My lens tells me one set of things. Other people have a different lens.

I share what I see and know to be accurate. I understand others have different views.

[quakerboy]

27. Of course we all do

That is being human. The real question is how often we attempt to understand the lens that others use, and how hard we try to bring our understanding into conjunction with actual reality, whatever that may be.

[DearAbby]

3. Did you guys buy the same

crystal ball at the same Mystical shoppe, downtown Boulder? The shoppe the cops raided? Man, you got taken....

[quakerboy]

8. ?

Its been years since Ive seen Boulder. What are you talking about?

[GoldieAZ49]

5. Liberal elite:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_elite

In the US, the term is most often applied to residents of the Northeast (especially New England, New York City and the rest of the BosWash area) and the West Coast (especially the San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle areas), who often hold advanced college degrees and are politically left-leaning.

It is considered a political disadvantage for a campaigning US politician to be associated in the minds of the electorate with the "liberal elite" because they would then seem to be not only out of step with mainstream opinion, but also privileged, and therefore unfamiliar with the concerns of the typical American voter. Thus it is often used by many politicians to apply to their left-leaning opponents if they also live an affluent or upscale lifestyle.

In the United States, the lifestyle of the liberal elite is often considered noteworthy.<1><2> The liberal elite are often characterized as having an affinity for coffeehouses and European cultures, especially the culture of France. French cheeses and wines, expensive coffee<3>, and foreign films are often associated with the liberal elite. This association can be applied to suggest that someone is unpatriotic, and disdainful of American life and culture.

Hipsters are often young, artistic, college-educated people who often come from upscale politically liberal families in well-to-do suburbs. Hipsters are renowned for their love of left-wing politics and social liberalism, showing strong interest and affection for such things as multiculturalism, environmentalism, the gay community, and alternative lifestyles such as bohemianism, as well as partaking in the phenomenon of gentrification. Hipsters are also well known for their strong distaste of conformity as well as their anti-capitalism/pro-socialism stance on issues, making them very reliable contributors to many leftist organizations as well as a large and important part of the liberal elite.

Among members of the country's intellectual elite, most of whom are members of the professional class not upper class,<4> liberalism remains the most prominent ideology. The vast majority of professors, 72% identify themselves as liberals. At Ivy League Universities, an even larger majority of 87% of professors identified themselves as liberals.<5> Additionally those with graduate degrees were more likely to vote Democratic in the 1996,<6> 2000,<7> 2004<8> and 2006 elections<9> than any other educational demographic.

In Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas? the idea of a liberal elite is suggested to be similar to the character of Emmanuel Goldstein in the George Orwell book Nineteen-Eighty Four, the hated enemy of the people who did not actually exist. Frank argues that anger directed towards this perceived enemy is what keeps the conservative coalition together.

[quakerboy]

7. What Emmanuel Goldstein was to Oceana

Hillary Clinton is to the Right. But they are in full gear trying to fit Obama to their evil little mold as well. Why does anyone here want to help them?

[cliffordu]

9. FAIL

Sorry. Specious, Vacuous and, well, wrong.

:shrug:

[davidpdx]

10. Dear god, I must be a liberal elitist then

I lived in Portland and have two college degrees.

[2rth2pwr]

13. Volvo, Subaru or Prius?

[2rth2pwr]

14. Work for University, non-profit or Government?

[Hepburn]

16. LOL....me, too.

I live in the LA area and I have a bachelors, a masters and a juris doctorate!

:hi:

[Leopolds Ghost]

11. But the "Liberal" Elite DOES actually exist on the coasts. They just aren't liberal.

They claim to be, but it's all a lie. They are despicable cowards who
want to destroy the concept of liberalism by proving that anyone to the
left of them is unacceptable, therefore they (the media elite and the
big business elite) must be the TRUE liberals, just like folks like
Coolidge claimed to be the TRUE liberals because Woodrow Wilson was a
segregationist and William Jennings Bryan was a creationist.

The urban elite vote pocketbook down the line (which is why the urban DLC
has so much power in this country) and partake in gentrification,
regressive taxation, and all the rest while collecting their old
ANSWER coalition posters in the attic to show their grandkids someday
when they have made a lot of money training networking technicians
to do business in South Asia. (And god forbid their kids don't get into
a good school... by good we mean expensive, hence the need for continual
upward mobility, a need that is not recognized as a right for anyone else)

Oh, and they spend lots of time attacking people like Obama as
class traitors in all but name for either revealing what they
privately think, or worse, calling them out on it.

[Archnemesis]

6. Obama has fought in favor of the poor in Chicago

How can he then be called an elitist? He wants to tax those earning a certain amount, in order to fund the Social Security. How is that elitist? I do not understand.

[Leopolds Ghost]

12. Because it is considered elitist in the US to fight for poor... genuine poor must aspire to be rich

Therefore attempting to better the lives of the poor, qua poor (qua meaning as such)
is by definition elitist (according to this skewed Horatio Alger Reagan-esque definition)
because the only way to truly help the poor is to aspire them to follow in "our" footsteps --
"us" meaning the privileged upper middle class -- and never mind that actually opening up
the upper middle class to everyone would either involve bringing back
industries we got
rid of or deflating the dollar, or decreasing the wages of upper middle class jobs that
are eventually going to go the way of typists' jobs anyway -- typists and office workers
were once considered privileged, high-tech paragons of the progressive upper class,
people who looked down on the sodding masses and urged them to aspire to keep an office
schedule to their lives and become typists. Now everyone has typing skills so we should
all afford to eat at Starbucks, right? At least Greenspan honestly believes that
mass access to high-speed computing technology is a quality of life improvement that
offsets inflation (no joke -- the Clinton administration used this trick to claim zero inflation in the late 90's and keep the bubble afloat, as
"left-leaning" magazines ranging from Z to the Economist noted) so it must mean
that if we all blog, then we must all be honorary members of the middle class and therefore
calling someone "poor" if they have access to the internet is an insult that only an
elitist would commit! They are not poor they're merely "striving" and "too busy to
waste money on frivolities" that only elitists are willing to pay for, like arugula! And, um, steak! Damn those steak-eating, Cadillac driving inner city elitists!

[Jamastiene]

15. What the hell does "intelegent" mean?

We have a spell checker here.

[TahitiNut]

17. Danke shon.

[hfojvt]

18. you know darn well what intelegent means

but your to elitist to admit it.
I don't think spell check won't fix everything.

[quakerboy]

19. Sorry

the forgetting of spell check strikes again.

[Prophet 451]

20. "Elitist" means....

...an unwillingness to pretend to be dumber than dirt in order to appeal to rural voters. Essentially, it stems from the widely held belief in political circles that rural voters are thick as bricks and will therefore only elect someone just like them. Therefore, politicians talking to rural voters pretend to be dimmer than an early CFL. "Elitist" is a word applied to anyone who treats rural voters as grown-ups.

[bklyncowgirl]

21. I think you've hit on something there nt

[Armstead]

23. Or...."I know what he meant, and I agree. But I'm going to lie about it to confuse these rubes."

[quakerboy]

24. Thats a republican,

not an elitist. Er... you know, following that out, I guess I can't disagree with you, afterall