Black Box Report

I own how many homes???

So, John McCain can’t remember how many houses he owns...I’m sure you can relate. Happens to me all the time. Lots of people I know have that problem. After all, as Matthew Yglesias points out, it’s a tricky question:

I was wondering yesterday how it is that you manage to spend almost $4.7 million on a condo in Phoenix, and the answer turns out to be that the McCains bought two luxury condos and combined them. The $4.66 million figure is the combined price of his cribs.
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This is one reason why it’s a bit unfair to tag McCain as out of touch for being unable to remember how many homes he owns. When one of your homes is really a combination of two different luxury condos the metaphysical status of your property comes into question.

And that's just his primary residence(s) in Phoenix. Then there's McCain's Hidden Valley Ranch in Sedona. It's just one piece of 15 acre property, but it has 6 houses. Then there's the condo in Virginia, a few in California; some he lives in, some are just investments and...well, you can see it gets hard to keep of them all. Someone should share this link with the AZ senator so he can keep his answer straight. Maybe one of those staffers who he pays good money to worry about these things so he and Cindy don't have to. After all, people of McCain's class have more important things to worry about. So cut him some slack:

We shouldn't judge him too harshly. After all, a man who wears $520 Italian loafers, owns a million dollar parking lot, thinks the baseline for rich is making $5,000,000 a year and whose wife is worth $100M really can't be expected to recall such petty details on the spot.

Besides, Obama eats arugula, drinks gourmet tea and vacations in Hawaii! And even if that also describes your average lower middle class California college student, who cares if John McCain can't remember how many homes make up his $13 million+ real estate portfolio? As we all know, only Democrats are elitist:

He could bathe in rivers of Evian on a platform composed of platinum and rhino bones, and it wouldn’t particularly matter because he likes to look gruff and he’s white and he wants to cut taxes. The fact that he’s entirely removed from virtually all knowledge of his housing situation in the midst of a nationwide housing crisis, however, isn’t room for any concern of elitism because [noun] [verb] [POW].

And right on cue...

"This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years -- in prison," spokesman Brian Rogers told the Washington Post.

That was Team Maverick's response to the Obama campaign's newest ad, which came out, like, minutes after this story broke.

For some reason, Democrats think this could provide an opening to hit McCain on:

McCain has opposed increases to the minimum wage, he opposes universal healthcare, and he blamed the housing crisis on homeowners. At the same time, McCain thinks the economy is strong, that Bush has been a good steward of the economy, and what the nation really needs is more tax cuts for millionaires…It's not about wealth and elitism; it's about being out of touch.

Because not knowing how many million dollar homes you own shows you're a true Man of the People.

Wealthy, out of touch people.