Joe Bageant wrote eloquently about how urban liberal contempt of rural voters, Southerners, and Republicans has hurt Democrats hugely. Jonathan Gruber’s condescending comments about stupid voters is simply more proof of the, well, stupidity and mindless hubris of out-of-touch Beltway Democrats and their fellow travelers, who fancy themselves to be mightily clever but in reality lack understanding of the world outside their ivory towers.
Joe Bageant explains why Democrats lose elections they should win
Working class whites, especially in the South, used to vote solidly Democratic. They probably still would except the Democratic Party for years now has basically pissed in their faces, insulted their culture – then was shocked, just shocked when that once-reliable voting bloc turned Republican. Who could have ever imagined if you insult rural whites, allege their family trees don’t fork, that they might ditch you and find new friends. Clearly, this thought never even dented the skulls of urban liberals.
Gruber’s self-defeating urban liberal idiocy confirms conservative suspicions..
“Out-of-touch technocrats?” Check. But I think the real zinger is “stupid,” because Gruber’s words tap into something real about Democrats. If you go out onto Salon, or Kos, or Mother Jones, or any other Democratic tribalist site, you’ll see creative class types calling Republicans a million shades of stupid, all the time. And from “the left” (granted, for some definition of “left”) you’ll hear terms like “sheeple.” So you can see why Gruber’s casual contempt might not be seen as aberrational, but quintessentially Democrat.
It gets worse. The White House touted Gruber’s supposedly impartial findings and did not disclose they were paying him millions for those very same opinions.
[T]he indisputable fact is that Gruber was running around publicly and favorably commenting on the President’s health care plan — while the White House and its allies were centrally relying on him and characterizing him as an “objective” analyst — at exactly the same time that the administration, unbeknownst to virtually everyone, was paying Gruber many hundreds of thousands of dollars. The DNC alone sent out 71 emails touting Gruber’s analysis without even once mentioning the payments.
If a Republican president pulled sleazy crap like that, liberals would be howling in outrage. But I guess it’s ok so long as their team is doing it.