SInce some commenters are too stupid to get it, Betsy Newmark writes that this may have been Barack Obama’s “macaca” moment:

For those on the left who think that this whole story is about Joe’s personal background, let me put in in terms they should understand. Think of Joe as a symbolic construct whose situation is “fake but accurate.” The left always seems to like that sort of approach to what they regard as underlying truths. Think of him as the left thought of Rigoberta Menchu, the Guatemalan writer who won the Nobel Prize for literature with her autobiography of how, as an indigenous Mayan, she and her family had suffered at the hands of the Guatemalan army. Except it turns out that many of the details in her autobiography were fabrications. That didn’t matter to the left or the Nobel Prize Committee because they regarded her story, true or not, as an essential expression of suffering that could have been true.

It doesn’t matter if Joe is secretly a multimillionaire plumbing magnate or an apprentice plumber with unrealistic dreams. What matters is how Obama answered his question and what it revealed about his approach to redistribution of wealth. We’re not about to elect Joe the Plumber.

She has another thought:

I would have thought that Democrats would have learned the dangers of going too far in sliming an opponent or anyone who doesn’t support their guy. They helped promote Sarah Palin to a phenomenon by their relentless pursuit of anything that could be used against her. Questioning whether or not she was really the mother of her baby and if she could serve as vice president with a Down Syndrome infant set her up not only for a backlash among ordinary people but helped innoculate her against more substantive criticisms.

Obama suffered some of his biggest setbacks in the primaries after he was taped describing Pennsylvanians as bitterly clinging to their guns and religion. Now John Murtha is having to backtrack after calling his own constituents in western Pennsylvania racists because they might not support Barack Obama. And Obama’s followers are now all outraged that a guy asked the senator a question that evoked a revealing answer when Obama popped into his neighborhood for a photo op. It wasn’t Joe’s question that was so important, but Obama’s answer.

Are they trying to demonstrate that they have actually no real care for ordinary people unless those people are falling in line to vote for The One? They really ought to be more careful not to let that mask slip before the election is over.

The thing is, they never learn. Smearing and sliming comes naturally, and is always their first resort. And of course, like their lies and racism and generally fascist tendencies, they project it on their political opponents.