"Obama's Cup of Tea"

What a klutz. This from the ABC News "Political Radar" blog (via Taylor Marsh via Left Coaster).

"It's that experience, that understanding, not just of what world leaders I went and talked to in the ambassador[']s house I had tea with, but understanding the lives of the people like my grandmother who lives in a tiny hut in Africa," Obama, D-Ill., told a crowd of would-be voters in Coralville, Iowa, on Friday. . . .

"That's the experience that helped inform my opposition to the war in Iraq, that's the kind of experience that's rooted in the real lives of the American people," he said. . . .

But it has all been rough and tumble on the campaign trail. . . .

The candidate recounted told [sic] the crowd how his aspiring first lady told him, " 'You know, in eight years, I'm not sure we'd be the same people as we are now,' " and joked that they are "not doing this again."

Just five years ago, Obama told the crowd, the couple had just paid off their student loads after ten years of law school [?] and hadn't yet set up a college fund for their daughters.

"My wife was still shopping at Target. She still does," Obama said. "And she said, 'You know, eight years from now, we will have lost a little bit of touch with what ordinary families are going through. We'll still be good people, hopefully, but we'll be in a different orbit, in a different circle. Our worries will be different and our concerns will be different. And we're already there, but at least we'll still remember what that was like.' And I thought that that was a wonderful insight."

The candidate, who regularly refers to Senator Clinton and her husband former President Bill Clinton as part of the "Washington establishment", continued, "One of the things that I think I offer in this race is. . . the way (Michelle) put it is, 'We still remember what it's like to be normal.' But I think that's part of what happens when you're in Washington for a very long time -- you lose touch with that."