Hillary Clinton supporter Larry Johnson on the evils of Chesapeake and Potomac voters:

Okay. Then if he is the candidate of change fighting Washington, why did a majority of the Washington, DC and the government employees in the surrounding suburbs and those pesky lobbyists and their spouses and employees, vote for Barack? You see, I believe that people act in their own interest. So, when the folks who live inside the beltway, vote in large measure for Barack, then maybe he is not what he claims to be.

What a stupid argument.

Hillary Clinton's daily life has been within 500 yards of the Washington Mall for the last 15 years. The idea that the refusal of local Democratic voters to choose her over Barack Obama last night is a sign of Obama's, well, "insider-dom" is ridiculous. Obama's strongest areas through Virginia, Maryland and DC were NOT the neighborhoods and precincts run by millionaire lobbyists such as Hillary's donor base, rather Black and Latino neighborhoods where the residents are more likely to be middle management civil service or lower in many (hardly all) cases. Johnson's rant does not explain Baltimore, it does not explain Richmond or the rest of Virginia wherein Obama won in 10 out of 11 Congressional Districts including many majority-white districts far away from the hated Beltway.

The vast majority of Democratic voters last night, even in the Washington area, even "inside the Beltway" (someone get this jackass a map, please), are not lobbyists or federal government employees. Granted, the federal government is the largest employer in the metro area but not the majority employer, by any stretch. But even if they were, the idea that Barack Obama prevailed on a platform of "I got your GS-13 paycheck's back, Mrs. Bladensburg resident" is ridiculous. Being too lazy to find out (or too cowardly to admit) why Obama prevailed, he goes ad hominem against his fellow Democrats for having refused his underperforming candidate's entreaties. Had she prevailed in that effort, this article would have looked a bit differently.

Larry believes that people act "in their own interest" - an interesting philosophical point worthy of a few thousand doctoral theses in philosophy as much as in political science. What does "in their own interest" mean? Does it mean being proud of one's country or being willing to sacrifice for it, wanting it to be a better place? Do conscience and moral aspiration and community pride factor in? Does it mean shaving a few points off of one's tax bill or getting effective government for a somewhat higher price? How do things like religious fervor, such as what motivated a lot of Huckabee's support factor in? What is the self-interest of, for example, abortion politics for the anti-abortion side? Why do liberals in wealthy blue states vote fairly consistently to raise taxes on themselves to send net cash flows to poorer, right-wing red states? Self-interest?

There's no doubt that the symbolism of Barack Obama is a major factor in his appeal, but he's no different from anyone else in public life in that regard, only more effective. Last night, I got to hear Bob Ehrlich crawl out from his cave and give the standard Euro-American "complement to the Negro" - that Obama is "articulate", meaning probably that Obama speaks better than Mushmouth. No, Obama is stunning in his effectiveness as a communicator, while his primary opponent has been losing market share through her ineffectiveness. My mother, for one example - an "over 50" Euro-American woman making moderate income as an RN, a homeowner in exurban red Carroll County, Hillary's theoretical target audience - notes that the more she heard Hillary speak, the more that she was looking forward to voting AGAINST her. That fact, not Johnson's infantile whining, explains her slow descent into second place for the Democratic nomination.