"If you're lower income," you "don't understand how the systems work"

That's probably true -- if lower income folks did understand how "the systems" work (perhaps too many of them are busy watching the Fox News Channel?), then there would probably be bloody revolution in the streets of New York and citizens with torches and pitchforks descending on East Hampton, where Mitt Romney turned up yesterday to raise cash by the beach-bucket-load, Norrmally I'm not a huge fan of "man-on-the-street"-style articles, but if there's a 2012 Pulitzer Prize in the man-on-the-street journalism category, the Range Rover window reporting of Maeve Reston should win hands down. What's going on inside the head of Romney lovers is even worse than you imagined (this comes by way of Atrios and Digby, the liberal Tinker-to-Evers-to Chance).

A money manager in a green Jeep said it was time for Romney to "up his game and be more reactive." So far, said the donor (who would not give his name because he said it would hurt his business), Romney has had a "very timid offense."

A New York City donor a few cars back, who also would not give her name, said Romney needed to do a better job connecting. "I don't think the common person is getting it," she said from the passenger seat of a Range Rover stamped with East Hampton beach permits. "Nobody understands why Obama is hurting them.

"We've got the message," she added. "But my college kid, the baby sitters, the nails ladies -- everybody who's got the right to vote -- they don't understand what's going on. I just think if you're lower income -- one, you're not as educated, two, they don't understand how it works, they don't understand how the systems work, they don't understand the impact."

Wait a minute -- nail ladies now have the right to vote?! When was that passed? Actually, all kidding aside, a lot of "common people" know exactly what's been happening in this country since around Jan. 20, 1981, give or take a day or two. They've watched Romney and the rest of the kleptocracy increase their slice of the American pie, even as that pie dramatically shrunk. And if they blame Obama for anything, it's for not doing enough to right that wrong. But you don't need a Range Rover to know which way that road's going.