Madfloridian's Journal - Oh, how sad. Krugman paraphrases Begala's "eggheads and African Americans"

I wonder if Paul Krugman is aware that he is paraphrasing the talking points used by Paul Begala on CNN this week?

Paul Begala on "eggheads and African Americans.

Video included.

“We cannot win with eggheads and African-Americans,” Begala warned, which got an animated rise out of Brazile, yielding laughter and applause from those in CNN’s studio.

CNN host Campbell Brown chimed in, saying of Obama, “Why hasn’t he been able to yet?”

Responded Brazile, “Do you think that Barack Obama would be leading in the pledged votes, the delegate votes, the money, if it was simply because somehow or another black people … became the majority? Barack Obama has won the hearts and the minds of white voters as well as black and Hispanics.

Now today I was reading Paul Begala's column. I saw the same thought that the Clinton campaign has been pushing this week....that Barack Obama is "unelectable" among a certain class of whites. Krugman pushes this theme. He uses different words than Begala, but they are the same thing.

Thinking About November

Ironically, much of Mr. Obama’s initial appeal was the hope that he could transcend these divisions. At first, voting patterns seemed consistent with this hope. In February, for example, he received the support of half of Virginia’s white voters as well as that of a huge majority of African-Americans.

But this week, Mr. Obama, while continuing to win huge African-American majorities, lost North Carolina whites by 23 points, Indiana whites by 22 points. Mr. Obama’s white support continues to be concentrated among the highly educated; there was little in Tuesday’s results to suggest that his problems with working-class whites have significantly diminished.

Discussions of how and why Mr. Obama’s support narrowed over time have a Rashomon-like quality: different observers see very different truths. But at this point it doesn’t matter whose fault it was. What does matter is that Mr. Obama appears to have won the nomination with a deep but narrow base consisting of African-Americans and highly educated whites. And now he needs to bring Democrats who opposed him back into the fold.

Paul Krugman just played the race card. He used the very same talking points that the Clinton campaign used when they played the very same race card.

He used the term "highly educated whites" in that same little snide way that her campaign uses to refer to "working class voters."

Somewhere along the line it became perfectly okay for Democrats to use the race and class cards against each other. Krugman and Begala used different terms, but they said the very same thing.

Very organized, guys. Way to go.

Dean supporters were called elite last time around. There was a Pew Study done counting only 11,000 online. It declared that Dean supporters were well-educated and had higher incomes than most. It was used to make us look "elite", and it was used against Howard Dean by the media.

There is really not much one can say now that stuns me. Someone in a thread today said I was posting from emotion. Yes, I most surely am......but it is true passion. Why are not the rest of you angry that the educated and enlightened are being treated as less important than others? Why isn't everyone angry at the putting down of intelligence and thoughtfulness.

As I said months ago this is my second time around as a "cultist", "elitist" and "kool aid drinker."

I was considered elite and a cultist when I supported Dean, and it is the same thing now that I support Obama.

Did you know the word "elite" was used freely in the 04 primary?

"Elitist" is used by the party's power people to keep upstarts in their places.

Do these words sound familiar?

As founder of the DLC, From has been pushing the Democratic Party to the right for nearly 20 years. He was in tall cotton, philosophically speaking, when an early leader of the DLC, Bill Clinton, was elected president in 1992. As Clinton's domestic policy guru, Reed pushed New Democrat ideas -- such as welfare reform -- that were often unpopular with party liberals.

"We are increasingly confident that President Bush can be beaten next year, but Dean is not the man to do it," Reed and From wrote. "Most Democrats aren't elitists who think they know better than everyone else."

And even more, they included three candidates among the elite who could not win because they were elite. Think about the inanity of this argument.

However, while support among educated elites may be responsible in part for Obama’s excellent fundraising, it will not necessarily translate to electoral victory. Gallup points out that in the previous three election cycles the democratic candidate receiving the most support from the most educated -- Howard Dean in 2004, Bill Bradley in 2000, and Bob Kerrey in 1992 -- did not go on to win the party’s nomination (despite a boost in fundraising). The last democrat to win the nomination with similar skewing in support by education was Michael Dukakis in 1988.

Dukakis, hmmm..now which Clinton surrogate used that term toward Obama supporters this week negatively? Will have to look it up.

There is not much else to be said now. It is obvious where Paul Krugman got his theme for this column. He played the race card. He just used different words than Begala did.