Obama's Billionaires

Speaking at a fund raising event among the very richest of San Francisco elite progressives, Obama made the following statement. Can you imagine the POTUS saying something this tasteless about the Chinese or the Italians or the Saudis?

[T]he truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

The event occurred on what's known as "billionaire's row," probably the most expensive block in the world! The funniest part is that Hillary really can't jump on this because she lost her claim to authenticity a long time ago. Though with this kind of audacity, even Hillary would be allowed to call him a hypocrite.

Blogger Zombietime has lots of links to reactions, but it includes a photo essay of the mansions on billionaire's row. Nice job, actually.