George Will Knows the Working Class?

George Will knows blue collar America? Probably not, Jonathan Chait writes in the New Republic, but the "fabulously wealthy, bow tie-wearing, pretentious" pundit still blasted Barack Obama for saying rural voters "cling to" firearms and religion. And Will is not alone—US leaders have long treated blue collar workers as "a victim-hero class" with "moral superiority" they don't have.

Will and other conservatives have slammed Obama for telling workers to care more about bucks than other values, which "diminishes their convictions," read a Wall Street Journal editorial. But Obama is daring to tell them that money matters: "The process of trying to persuade others to reconsider the nature of their self-interest is not some Marxist exercise," Chait writes. "It's what we call 'democracy.'" (More Barack Obama stories.)