Bill Kristol — Harvard grad, scion an old elite family, who has spent his life in a cocoon of privilege — says it’s OK if politics is getting vulgar. It’s those salt-of-the-earth common people who have made it so. And, by gosh, in America, they’re in charge! If Peggy Noonan doesn’t like it, she is just being snotty.

Of course, the simple-minded peasants who prefer Barack Obama to John McCain don’t know what’s good for them. But they might change their minds and elect John McCain anyway. And wouldn’t that annoy the media elites! (Kristol, who inherited a magazine from his father and is capping a career of non-accomplishment as a columnist for the New York Times, does not see himself as a media elite. Why not? Media elites prefer Obama. And the McCain campaign has Joe the Plumber!)

I’m not making this up.

Update: It’s what I get for posting something quickly before dashing off to physical therapy (see last post). Bill Kristol founded Weekly Standard; his daddy Irving founded some other magazines.

Update: More stuff to read this morning –

Paul Krugman, “The Real Plumbers of Ohio”

Conor Clarke, “A Philosophical Dead End”

Michael Tomasky, “The Republicans have lifted the lid off their rightwing id”

Jonathan Alter, “We’re Heading Left Once Again”

Walter Shapiro, “Turning Indiana Blue”

Howard Wolfson, “The End of Nixonland”

Taken together, the articles above all say we’re on the edge of a massive political realignment.