"You know, if I was living out on a farm in Iowa, I’d probably want a gun, too."

"When somebody just drives up into your driveway and you’re not home, you don’t know who these people are, you don’t know how long it’s going to take for the sheriffs to respond, I can see why you’d want some guns for protection."

Obama, quoting Michelle (or purporting to quote Michelle), showing some understanding of principles of federalism related to the way people have different needs and different policy perspectives in different parts of the country.

Rereading the quote, I said: Why Iowa — of all places where people might have a preference for guns? Why Iowa and not, say, Idaho? Vocalizing the question made me instantly see the answer: They had to go to Iowa to campaign. Iowa's the big early caucus state. They know Iowa, but they don't know Idaho. Why would they?

By the way, how long does it take the police to respond in Chicago? They know Chicago....

I assume Obama likes to graciously acknowledge that there are some parts of the country — unsophisticated places — where people cling to their guns because that's all they've been able to figure out so far in their limited little lives. Show a little respect for these rubes before you proceed further, to school them on the need for gun control. But drag in Chicago, and it gets complicated. Chicago is the very place where he thinks the gun control is needed, the very point that must be explained to the blinkered farmers.

If you concede that you might want a gun when somebody comes up to your door in Chicago, it's no longer clear what the sophisticated people are supposed to think.

Bill Clinton says: Do not look down on the bitter clingers.

"Do not patronize the passionate supporters of your opponents by looking down your nose at them..."

"A lot of these people live in a world very different from the world lived in by the people proposing these things... I know because I come from this world."...

"A lot of these people … all they’ve got is their hunting and their fishing... Or they’re living in a place where they don’t have much police presence. Or they’ve been listening to this stuff for so long that they believe it all."

He feels their pain...



He feels their pain, which includes feeling that they are getting looked down on, so don't let them notice, he's saying, even as he lets the big Democratic donors see that he knows just as well as they do that the bitter clingers are a bunch of losers.

Don't look down you nose at them. Whenever you eyes are trained on the bitter clingers, project feel-your-pain empathy. Save your condescension for the off-camera, off-mike back rooms.

"Is 'God, guns, and gays' losing its peril for Democrats?"

A strange way to phrase a question, in this Greg Sargent column. What does this stunning lack of parallelism reveal about the Mind of Sargent?

Indeed, I’m cautiously hopeful that this time around, Democrats will overcome their typical skittishness on guns. ... [T]he politics of this issue have changed: Democrats are less reliant on conservative, rural, gun-owning voters than at any time in the history of the party, due to Dem gains among socially moderate suburbanites, and ongoing demographic shifts that continue to boost the vote share among minorities and young voters  — all voter groups who may not see “gun rights” as a potent issue.

You know those "rural" folk, who cling to their guns and religion. Maybe they can be ignored by Democrats who have other blocs out of which to build victories. But to throw "gays" on the list... well, that's not something those horrible peasants cling to like guns and religion. It's something they're supposedly repelled by, perhaps something like the way those socially moderate suburbanites are imagined to have an aversion to God and guns.

I guess Sargent might love alliteration. GGG. But someone ought to tell him that — coming from a very conspicuous gay guy — GGG stands for "good, giving, and game":  ("good in bed," "giving equal time and equal pleasure," and "game for anything — within reason'").

And some people think "Guns, God and Government" — the work of a not-quite-earless guy with a lady's name.

What does GGG mean to you? I'm thinking, for me, grammar, graphomania, and...

Is Obama a man of "meaningful action" when it comes to gun control?

Let's go back to December 30, 1999, an article in the Chicago Tribune:

In a surreal day of political maneuvering, even for Springfield, [Senate President James "Pate" Philip] defied [Gov. George Ryan] for the third time this month, leaving the governor glowering and vowing to make passage of the [gun control] bill his priority when the spring session begins Jan. 12. ... Ryan began the day confident his last-minute push across the state had won him enough votes to prevail over his chief Republican nemesis.

But then the governor discovered that two senators who had promised to vote for his compromise bill — Barack Obama (D-Chicago) and Kathleen Parker (R-Northbrook) — had decided to remain on vacation instead of returning to the capital for the third special session since the original law was struck down on Dec. 2.

Furious, Ryan tried to track them down, hoping to send a state plane to whisk them back to Springfield. But no one was in Parker's office, and aides to Obama, who was in Hawaii, refused to tell the governor's staff how to find him....

Here's Obama's version of the story from "The Audacity of Hope" (which I was searching for evidence of his opinion on gun control):

[D]uring the Christmas holidays, after having traveled to Hawaii for an abbreviated five-day trip to visit my grandmother and reacquaint myself with Michelle and then-eighteen-month-old Malia, the state legislature was called back into special session to vote on a piece of gun control legislation. With Malia sick and unable to fly, I missed the vote, and the bill failed. Two days later, I got off the red-eye at O’Hare Airport, a wailing baby in tow, Michelle not speaking to me, and was greeted by a front-page story in the Chicago Tribune indicating that the gun bill had fallen a few votes short, and that state senator and congressional candidate Obama “had decided to remain on vacation” in Hawaii. My campaign manager called, mentioning the potential ad [incumbent Democratic Congressman Bobby Rush] might be running soon—palm trees, a man in a beach chair and straw hat sipping a mai tai, a slack key guitar being strummed softly in the background, the voice-over explaining, “While Chicago suffered the highest murder rate in its history, Barack Obama…”

(For what it's worth: Rush's son had been shot to death in October.)

Is Obama a man of "meaningful action" when it comes down to real gun-control legislation? I'm betting no. He'll talk about guns when plying liberals with lines like "cling to guns or religion" and while performing in the Theater of Grief after a momentous massacre, but when it comes to actual action, he's more the man in the beach chair and straw hat sipping a mai tai .