  Me likee Thomas Frank (I can't stop myself from saying this now, thanks BigBen). He's got a good handle on what's wrong with the Democratic Party, though he still can't figure out why blue-collar working people vote Republican, but then who can? Here, in an urlLink LAT commentary , he discusses how clueless Dems are by trotting out celebs at their events. I agree, who the hell cares what celebs have to say (except for LibraKitty), Ben Affleck's politically astute mind notwithstanding.
The Democrats are today a party that has trouble rallying its historical working-class constituency, losing more and more of its base every four years to some novel culture-war issue invented by the wily Republicans: blasphemous art, Ten Commandments monuments in courthouses, the dire threat of gay marriage. Behind their success stands a stereotype, a vision of liberals as an elite, a collection of snobs alternately permissive and moralistic, an upper class that believes it is more sophisticated and tasteful than average people. It is a pernicious doctrine, and yet there is a grain of truth to it. A grain of truth that get- togethers like this one — where minor stars swap righteousness with lobbyists, politicians and local venture capitalists — magnify into life-sized lessons in liberal elitism.
Now, it is an article of faith among American intellectuals that Hollywood movies are populist products; that they are uncomplicated translations of the public's desires into attractive images; that stars are stars because we love them; and that countries like France that resist Hollywood movies do so because they are snobs, dedicated to some daft mission civilatrice in which they will bring culture — in the form of arty, disjointed black-and-white films — to the masses.
Masses, that is, who yearn in their hearts for nothing but more Hollywood fare. If this were true, the problems of the Democratic Party would be over. After all, as this party makes clear, when Hollywood stars decide to get out there and do their patriotic duty and stump for the candidate of their choice, the candidates they support are usually Democrats.
But somehow it never seems to help. Somehow this glitzy world of risque dresses, pseudo-transgressive stylings and velvet ropes (i.e., the things that make up "creativity") has precisely the opposite effect on a huge swath of the American public. They hate it, and they hate everything that Hollywood has come to stand for. After all, Hollywood stars are as close as America comes to an aristocracy, and being instructed on how to be kinder and better people by pseudo-rebellious aristocrats can't help but rub people the wrong way.
What the stars' Democratic allegiance illustrates for this segment of the public is not the glamour of Democratic candidates but their repulsiveness and shallowness and insufferable moral superiority; their distance from the historical Democratic base of average Americans. For them, Hollywood's superficial leftism only validates the ludicrous claims of the Republicans to be the party of the common man. ( emphasis mine) Word to BigBen's (not Affleck's) mom. 
