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Snobbery and the resentment of snobbery (and it is really snobbery, and not elitism as such, that we have all been discussing) are always going to exist in societies with significant upward social mobility.  The more opportunities available to people through merit (or at least largely through merit), the more pretensions the arrivistes will put on to demonstrate that they do, in fact, belong in their new status group.  Snobbery may not be limited to arrivistes, which is to say those who have succeeded in making their own way, but I suspect it is most obvious among these people, because they are the ones who most have to prove that they have adopted the mentality associated with their new status and their new peers.  

Evidently, there are a lot of people on the left who find the controversy over Obama’s San Francisco remarks absolutely infuriating because he ”told the truth” and is being punished for it, but for everyone else the remarks were not just condescending–they were insulting because they were false.  More than that, a politician presumed to know why people did or believed certain things, when he probably cannot know their motives and, more importantly, shouldn’t care.  In an election, it is the politician’s motives, his beliefs, that are at issue.  The pol is the one who is supposed to be scrutinised by the voters, not vice versa.