Amazing. Had this very conversation with a wingnut yesterday, who claims the economy is not in a recession or, if it is, it’s just because people have shirked the old “culture of personal responsibility” and, you know, gotten cell phones when they can’t afford them.

Not to discount the degree to which “people,” whomever they might be, can make ill-advised personal financial decisions; but this idea that our problems are merely psychological is the biggest bunch of bunk I’ve ever heard.

But I do think that those at the John McCain/Phil Gramm level may very well be insulated from the shock many people who make less money are now feeling. What’s it to them that the price of gas averages over $4 per gallon nationwide? Do they, personally, go to the grocery store to see how prices have risen dramatically over the past couple of months? No. Are they worrying about what heating oil might cost them in the coming winter?

When you make the kind of money these folks made - or marry into the kind of money McCain married into - you simply are not buffeted by the same fiscal winds that Americans on the whole have to deal with. And in that situation, you can either try to “feel their pain” - or tell them it’s all in their heads. McCain but especially his “economic brain,” Gramm, seem to think people are imagining the higher costs they’re seeing at the pump, and as a result everywhere else. Good luck with that election strategy.