Reply #147: Have you seen the West Wing episode "20 Hours in America"?

[Hippo_Tron]

It basically does a great job of re-iterating exactly what you just said. To sum it up, two senior advisors to the President (who is a liberal Democrat) find themselves stranded in rural Indiana with one of their assistants. These two senior advisors are the very definition of the "liberal elite" and the whole time they are trying to figure out why people in Indiana are stupid enough to vote for the President's opponent. In the last few minutes, the assistant (who is much more down to earth) says that she wants to bang their heads together. In all of their arguing about political strategy they never stopped to realize how kind the people had been to them and how nobody had even brought up politics except for them and hinted that maybe the reason that they don't win votes in rural Indiana is that they try to tell people what is best, they don't listen to them because they think that they are stupid.

And BTW you are absolutely right about Clinton. He knew how to talk to people, not down to them.