Obama hits McCain on the "house" gaffe:
Nicely done. While millions of American families are on the verge of losing their homes, McCain literally owns more houses than he can count. No wonder he thinks the economy is doing just fine. For him, it is.
McCain strikes back with a kitchen-sink list of attack lines.
"Does a guy who made more than $4 million last year, just got back from vacation on a private beach in Hawaii and bought his own million-dollar mansion with the help of a convicted felon really want to get into a debate about houses? Does a guy who worries about the price of arugula and thinks regular people "cling" to guns and religion in the face of economic hardship really want to have a debate about who's in touch with regular Americans?This is so over the top, it reveals how rattled the McCain camp is over his latest gaffe. They are clearly panicked.
"The reality is that Barack Obama's plans to raise taxes and opposition to producing more energy here at home as gas prices skyrocket show he's completely out of touch with the concerns of average Americans."
A guy who made $4 million last year.
Does McCain really want to snipe at Obama over how much money each of them has? Because if he does, he should be prepared to talk about how each of them came into his fortune.
Obama made millions of dollars over the last few years by writing books that people wanted to buy. He grew up on food stamps, and now he's a self-made millionaire. That's the American dream.
McCain acquired more money than %99.999 of all Americans by divorcing his crippled, disfigured wife and marrying his young, pretty, immensely wealthy mistress whose fortune and family connections gave him his start in politics. He's living a dream. The family he left behind lived a nightmare.
If McCain really wants to have that argument, Obama should say, "bring it."
Does a guy who worries about the price of arugula and thinks regular people "cling" to guns and religion in the face of economic hardship really want to have a debate about who's in touch with regular Americans?
Does a guy who wears 520-dollar calfskin Italian loafers, and who literally owns more houses than he can count really want to have a debate about who's in touch with regular Americans?
Sorry, Mav. No traction on that one.
And, what is a "regular American", by the way? What does that even mean? Somebody should have proofed that statement before hitting "send."
All the rest of it - the allusion to Tony Rezko, the "raise your taxes" canard, the "energy production" line - is just patented McCain/Rove dishonesty, lines so worn out by now that nobody is even listening.
For McCain, it might have been better to take a breath and think before lashing out like this. I don't know what they might have come up with, but it couldn't have been worse than this.
UPDATE
Hilzoy points that by McCain's own standards, Obama is not rich.
I thought that people who only make $4 million a year are still comfortably part of the middle class, according to John McCain.McCain really didn't think this one through very well.
