Obama and condescension

Abe Greenwald better beware. He dared to point out that Obama has a rather condescending attitude towards average Americans. They're always getting fooled by some nefarious "they" who causes them to do or think things against their best interests.

Take this from Obama’s speech yesterday to the Urban League:

This election is about the couple I met in North Las Vegas who saved up for decades only to be tricked into buying a home they couldn’t afford.

Really? Is this election about protecting adults who don’t bother to read, or don’t understand, the fine print in their mortgage and purchasing contracts? And if you are not one of those adults, do you really want a presidential nominee addressing you as if you were?

For Obama, the answers are apparently “yes” and “yes.” And that doesn’t apply exclusively to Americans of color. Here he is infantilizing another audience in Philidelphia this past May:

Think about it. The top mortgage lenders spend $185 million lobbying Congress, and we wonder why Washington looked the other way when they were tricking families into buying homes they couldn’t afford.

There’s no question that sub-prime lenders are an unsavory bunch, but is there no responsiblilty to be borne by grown-ups looking to purchase homes? It’s as if Obama thinks the father of our country is P.T. Barnum and this is suckernation.

Obama’s concern for gullible Americans covers issues large and small, and extends both to civilians and those serving in uniform. He doesn’t even give U.S. troops credit for choosing what they want to watch on television. Obama noted on his recent trip abroad that American troops often watch Fox News. “Why is FOX always on?” he asked Fox’s Major Garrett. “They make the choice,” Garret said. Obama’s reply: “Is that the commander in chief’s choice?” That’s it: they were “tricked into” watching fox.

This is all of a piece with Obama’s views of the working class that came to light back in April. He knew why Americans clung to guns, God, and xenophobia better than they did. He saw that they’d been “tricked into” believing in those things after another (the U.S. government) let them down.

Of course, this is of a piece with how Democrats view people in general. It's not that people made their own choices; it's that someone tricked them into those choices. And if the results are adverse, then the government should step in and help them out. And if Kansans vote Republican, they were probably just tricked into it by playing to their cultural prejudices. They couldn't have made up their minds on their own.

So, is it racist if we regard that as condescension? Or would David Gergen just think that that was code for "uppity"?