Obama: He's Just Had It Too Easy

Who was that lady in the last debate who asked Obama about why he doesn't wear a flag lapel pin? To hear the howling banshees of the Left tell it, she was some sort of vicious plant, asking irrelevant questions.

But this is not someone who should be easily dismissed. Margaret Talev of McClatchy tracked her down -- her name is Nash McCabe, and it turns out that her reaction to Obama is both nuanced and visceral, even though she would probably not use those words to explain it.

First, her background: 52, from Latrobe PA, out of work after being the sole bread-winner for her family (she and her husband) nearly all her working life, since he was injured in a coal mining accident early on and has been in horrible health ever since. She's anti-war, anti-McCain (too much like Bush), and as Talev puts it, "On paper, her stances make her as likely to support Obama as Clinton."

So why does she dismiss Obama and support Hillary?

[McCabe's life is] no Hawaiian prep school and Ivy League story, unlike Obama's. It's a slice of working-class Pennsylvania, the core of Hillary Clinton's support there.

In Clinton, she sees someone who has struggled for years, just like her, and has earned the right to be president. In Obama, she sees someone who rose like a rocket, always has a smooth explanation for everything — whether it's about his former preacher or the flag pin — and who makes it all look too easy.

"That's what upsets me about Barack Obama," she says. "He takes everything so nonchalantly."

She may not be likely to vote for McCain now, but her selection criteria puts him a lot closer to her preferred candidate than Obama. It's evident the Dems have to worry that come November, the Nash McCabes of the world are likely to cross party lines or stay home if Obama is the candidate.

Obamaniacs were quick to dismiss the ABC debate as a carnival of trivialities, but that's just more elitism. Intelligent people aren't swayed by flag pins. Intelligent people thing you'd better look at Rev. Wright instead of just dismissing him.

Well, I get the sense that Nash McCabe has more smarts that a Volvo wagon-full of Obama elitists. That's why Obama is a highly divisive force in the Dem party (not Clinton, it turns out!), forcing a split between the snotty-nosed Dems and the salt of the earth Dems, a split that will be difficult to heal before November.