You know, why must we over-analyze everything?

So here we have a Reuters piece about how Hillary’s gas tax holiday business was a big gift to Obama in Indiana and N.C. - which it undoubtedly was. The trouble begins when Reuters attempts to tell us why:

The fight, which dominated the final days before the North Carolina and Indiana contests, gave him an opening to talk about the economy with working-class voters and helped Obama at least temporarily bury the controversy about his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

How about this: The gas tax holiday idea is inane, and people understood that. They understood that we’d be de-funding our infrastructure, they understood that the oil companies would just jack up prices and benefit anyway, they understood that 18 cents off $3.65 a gallon simply isn’t a game changer.

They understood that this was a cheap ploy, and they didn’t take the bait.

But this is the sort of flip side to the “elitism” nonsense. There’s this assumption out there - certainly on the part of the press and pundits, if not some of the candidates themselves - that Americans, on the whole, are dipsticks (I’d use a different word but for the fact this is a family newspaper, a family blog, etc.). That the “typical” American just has no clue whatsoever, that he/she is easily distracted with flash and bang, shock and awe, his or her opinion shaped by campaign messages as carefully crafted as any Super Bowl ad. I mean, we’ve seen it - the express allegation that anyone who actually uses his or her noggin is an elitist.

Maybe Obama’s success earlier this week means, simply, we’re more “elitist” than either the campaigns or those who cover them assumed. And thank God for that.