Hillary on Sunday:

When asked to name a credible economist who backed her idea to use a windfall profit tax against oil companies to fund the suspension of a tax on gasoline, Clinton responded, “I’m not going to put my lot in with economists”… Clinton added that the tax holiday would work “if we actually did it right.”

She continued the line of attack, criticizing more generally “this mindset where elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantage the vast majority of Americans.”

I know lots of people who are smart. I know a few people who are pretentious. I know people from all over the economic spectrum who think their opinions are always correct. I even know a couple of rich people. But I don’t know anyone I’d consider “elite.” When I hear the word “elite,” I think of someone who looks like this:

Is this what others picture when they hear the word “elite”? And is there a percentage of Americans who believe this guy is controlling the government? And that he is nefariously working to “disadvantage the vast majority of Americans” by burdening them with high gas prices?

By using the word “elite,” Hillary is pandering to the uneducated, and I don’t see how one could argue otherwise. You could argue that it’s just politics, you could even argue that it’s a smart strategy, but I don’t know anyone dumb enough to believe that Hillary Clinton really hates the rich, the educated, or economists. For my part, I find it sad and depressing that the person who is ostensibly running to represent my ideals as president of the United States (a person who, I might remind you, has a better education than anyone reading this blog), feels comfortable appealing to anti-intellectual hatred to get a few votes.

I know, I know, it was supposed to be a secret slam on Obama. Because he’s the elitist, snooty, nose-in-the-air rich kid fighting against the scrappy, streetwise Clintons. I don’t even want to begin to analyze how that meme found its way into the public consciousness.

It’s not elitists who are the problem, and by pretending they are, Hillary is falling into the perpetual Democratic trap of allowing Republican, Fox News-created language to dominate the political debate. And now I finally get what Obama means when he says he wants to change the terms of the debate. Because we can’t win on these terms. We’re not going to win by setting up a contest between the intelligent and the stupid, because Republicans handily win the stupid vote. I don’t believe the best course of action is to trick the stupid into believing that we’re just as stupid. After all, they may be stupid, but they’re not that stupid. I think the best thing for our country is to convince the stupid that it’s not so bad to be smart.