http://trainwreckpolitics.com/2008/04/12/two-hundred-millionaires-attack-obama-for-being-out-of-touch/

…follow the money.

” Don’t let all of the blathering about which candidates are “elitist” or “out of touch” distract you from the real significance of “Bittergate.” The issue isn’t really that Obama talked about people who “cling” to guns or religion. The issue is that he got too close to the real Third Rail of politics

Social Security is not the Third Rail, no matter what the media tells you. No, the Third Rail is economic class. Try talking about income disparity in America, what do you get? “You’re engaging in class warfare!” The same cries of protest are sounded whenever one suggests that the Bush tax cuts were mostly aimed at the wealthy, or that doing away with the estate tax was only beneficial to something like the top 1% of Americans. No, we musn’t talk about the working class or the middle class getting a raw deal economically. In other words, we musn’t criticize the real elites in this country, namely the wealthy and the politically connected.”

…

“The most important–and unfortunately the least debated–issue in politics today is our society’s steady drift toward a class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the 19th century. America’s top tier has grown infinitely richer and more removed over the past 25 years. It is not unfair to say that they are literally living in a different country. Few among them send their children to public schools; fewer still send their loved ones to fight our wars. They own most of our stocks, making the stock market an unreliable indicator of the economic health of working people. The top 1% now takes in an astounding 16% of national income, up from 8% in 1980. The tax codes protect them, just as they protect corporate America, through a vast system of loopholes [...]

This ever-widening divide is too often ignored or downplayed by its beneficiaries. A sense of entitlement has set in among elites, bordering on hubris. When I raised this issue with corporate leaders during the recent political campaign, I was met repeatedly with denials, and, from some, an overt lack of concern for those who are falling behind. A troubling arrogance is in the air among the nation’s most fortunate. Some shrug off large-scale economic and social dislocations as the inevitable byproducts of the “rough road of capitalism.” Others claim that it’s the fault of the worker or the public education system, that the average American is simply not up to the international challenge, that our education system fails us, or that our workers have become spoiled by old notions of corporate paternalism [...]”

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/4/17/19152/9087