The Discerning Texan

Ah, the woman behind the man; his joy... his inspiration... (these are just highlights--read the whole thing):

By her husband’s logic, Michelle Obama must be a heavily armed xenophobic religious zealot, because boy is she bitter. This C-SPAN video of a speech delivered by Mrs. Obama in North Carolina last Friday is characteristic of her peculiar recent performances on the stump. It is an hour-long talk to supporters who just want something to cheer about, and who get some opportunities at the outset, but then find themselves treated to a profoundly and relentlessly negative vision of American life.

She first offers, as she often does in her appearances, a kind of victim’s history of the 2008 Democratic primary race. In Mrs. Obama’s telling, the Obama campaign becomes not an extraordinary mix of strategy and skill, but a sad reflection on the unfairness of American life. The bar, we are told, is always being raised just as her husband is about to reach it. They said he couldn’t win because he didn’t have an organization. Then he built an organization, so they said he couldn’t win because he didn’t have money. He raised money, so they said he couldn’t win because he couldn’t win caucuses. He won caucuses, so they said he couldn’t win because he couldn’t win primaries.

[....]

Her listeners have to wonder exactly what she has in mind by “regular folks” when Mrs. Obama says that after completing their Ivy League undergraduate and graduate educations, she and her husband “found ourselves in a position like most young couples, with our PhDs and JDs and MPHs and LMNOPs, all those wonderful degrees, all mired in debt. We had not paid off our loan debt until just a few years ago.” But whether you are highly educated multi-millionaires or not, in Michelle Obama’s America, chances are you’re afraid, isolated, and hopeless.

[....]

The candidate of hope, it seems, draws much of his energy from a sense that America is hopeless; and the progressive in the race yearns for the America of his childhood. Let’s hope his opponent can do better.

With rays of sunshine like this, no wonder Obama is so full of "hope"...

UPDATE: While we are on the subject, don't miss this from Christopher Hitchens.