Coming out Roaring

In the last two critical weeks before a contest each candidate had to win, Barack Obama spent most of his time talking about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and why blue-collar whites don’t vote for him.

No one wants to hear about it. Hillary Clinton has talked up her gas-tax holiday and her outrage at everything threatening the middle class, from corporate bail-outs to the high cost of healthcare to the manipulation of energy prices. Everyone wants to hear about it.

“I am tired of sitting here being a patsy, of sitting here, taking it!” Clinton roared from the back of a pickup truck in North Carolina this weekend. You will find no such exasperation from Obama, who opposes gas tax relief on solid policy grounds, keeping good company with the experts, the Speaker of the House, the House majority leader and a majority of voters.

No matter to Clinton — those voters opposing the relief must be in other states that have already voted. She’s as sharp as policy minds come, but Clinton is banking on winning the popularity contest, thank you. She now calls those economists she has listened to all these years “elite” and is giving them the heave-ho.

When Clinton wins Indiana, she will keep roaring. It just may bring some exasperation from Obama , because he just can’t give her the heave-ho.