The story you are about to read is true.  The names have been thinly disguised to protect the guilty [cue the Dragnet theme...].

This story concerns a 60 year old woman named Billary.  Billary is from an upper middle class suburb of Chicago, the product of a solid family and some excellent schools, including Wellesley College and Yale Law School.  While a student at Yale, Billary met Slick Willie, a Rhodes Scholar and native of Arkansas.  The two of them eventually married and settled in Little Rock, Arkansas.  Billary worked in Little Rock's most prestigious law firm, while Slick Willie established what would become a very successful political career.  He became the governor of his state, and then launched what seemed at the time to be a long shot campaign for the 1992 presidential election.    

With the combination of his high intelligence and his "Aw shucks" charm and southern accent, Slick Willie demonstrated that he was probably the most gifted American politician of his generation, and that political opponents underestimated him at their own peril.  Slick Willie had just one weakness: the inability to keep his pants on.  Rumors about Slick Willie's philandering could have wrecked his presidential campaign, but his own charm, and Billary's public support, got him through.  However, Billary did not have Slick Willie's common touch.  While talking to reporters in early 1992, she indicated that she intended to be a politically active First Lady, in contrast to the then-current First Lady and most of her predecessors.  Billary added some sneering references to the Tammy Wynette song, Stand by your Man, and to staying home and baking cookies.  There were some observers who thought that Billary's comments sounded downright "elitist." 

It was not a fatal error, and Slick Willie was elected president, and then reelected four years later.  The eight years in the White House were filled with many personal highs and lows for both Slick Willie and Billary.  To a large degree, those years were characterized by peace and prosperity.  Slick Willie enjoyed general popularity both inside the U.S. and internationally.  On the other hand, his personal popularity did not translate into strength for his political party in Congress.  Two years into his presidency, the other party made huge gains in the mid-term elections, and controlled Congress for the remainder of Slick Willie's presidency.  In the second term, a sex scandal nearly brought down Slick Willie's presidency.  His denials of having sex with a young White House intern seemed credible at first, but DNA evidence eventually made those denials hard to swallow.  He survived the impeachment, largely due to the widespread perception that private misconduct was an improper basis to impeach a president.  Meanwhile, it was a humiliating time for Billary, who in spite of the song had "stood by her man." 

Billary decided to launch her own career as an elected public official, by running for the U.S. Senate as her husband's presidency was approaching the end.  There were no attractive opportunities in her original native state of Illinois, nor in her long time adopted state of Arkansas, so she established residency in New York, where the carpetbagger image is not a serious deficiency, as Robert Kennedy had demonstrated in the 1960's.  Billary was elected to the Senate in 2000, and gained a seat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, where she could establish her national security credentials for an eventual presidential run for herself.  Senator Billary was reelected in 2006, and it soon became apparent that she would seek the presidency in 2008.  Meanwhile, Slick Willie was now a private citizen, and discovered that in the first seven years following the end of his presidency, he could earn over $50 million in speaking fees, which would make a nice little supplement to his lucrative book deals.  In particular, he received nearly a half million dollars for a speech in the U.K. for a charity fundraiser.  Some spoilsports suggested that he could have done much more for that charity if he had taken only a tiny percentage of that speaking fee for himself, leaving the remainder for the benefit of the charity he was pitching.  Then again, such complaints probably come from people who are bitter about charities having high expense ratios, and who cling to the idea that money raised for a charity ought to be overwhelmingly be used on behalf of the charity's intended beneficiaries rather than the celebrity endorser. 

As the 2008 campaign was well underway in 2007, all indications were that Billary was an overwhelming favorite for both her party's nomination and the general election for president.  Senator Billary and Slick Willie were so confident of the eventual result that they seriously underestimated a challenge from young Senator Gray (the name meaning a blend of black and white) of Illinois, Billary's original home base.  At first, Senator Billary tried to remain above the intra-party bickering in order to project confidence and look presidential.  When that did not work, Senator Billary and Slick Willie both decided that a new campaign strategy was in order.  Senator Gray's optimistic tone, articulate and witty speeches, and his message of hope were resonating with voters.  In spite of his apparently thin resume, he became the front runner. 

To combat this trend, Senator Billary, with the enthusiastic help of Slick Willie, focused on tearing down Senator Gray's presidential efforts.  Senator Billary, sometimes speaking directly and other times acting through surrogates, implied that Senator Gray was a Muslim and emphasized his Muslim-sounding middle name.  They repeatedly suggested that he was not qualified to be president, even to the point of publicly suggesting that voters should choose Senator Warhero, the nominee of the opposition party, over Senator Gray, in case he managed to win the nomination.  They reminded the public of Senator Gray's admitted drug use when he was an adolescent, and even dug up a kindergarten paper of Senator Gray as evidence of his longstanding presidential ambitions.  To bolster her own credentials, Senator Billary fabricated a tale of dodging sniper fire (perhaps using her own daughter as a human shield, judging from the videotape) while visiting Eastern Europe while First Lady.  Friends of Slick Willie and Senator Billary have been loudly labeled as "traitors" if they dared to endorse Senator Gray.  The notion that Senator Billary is "entitled" to the endorsements of all their friends might be regarded by some people as elitist, but that is just conjecture.

None of those claims by the Billary campaign made much impact, but Senator Gray's campaign has not been trouble free.  His association with the pastor of his church became an embarrassment, although that storm has largely passed.  Then, Senator Gray made some remarks in San Francisco that were taken by some observers as condescending toward working class people, especially those from small towns.  Senator Billary (and Senator Warhero) immediately labeled Senator Gray as an "elitist."  How well with this pejorative label stick?  That remains to be seen.  In order to reinforce her own common folk image, Senator Billary has been conspicuously seen in recent days drinking whiskey and beer with the Regular Guys, and has talked up her gun toting experience and her religious faith.  Some people have called that pandering to a stereotype of small town working class voters. 

Senator Gray is from a modest background, raised by a single mother with help from his grandparents.  Upon graduation from law school, Gray could have easily accepted a high paying job at the law firm of his choice, but instead took a low paying job as a community organizer, living and working with people with very limited resources and prospects.  Senator Billary is from a relatively affluent background, took on high paying jobs in the private sector following law school, lived in the White House for eight years while Slick Willie was president, brags about having traveled to eighty countries, and has become extremely wealthy since the end of Slick Willie's presidency.  There has been an implied assumption by Senator Billary that it is "her turn" for the presidency, and she has strongly suggested that young Senator Gray has plenty of time to establish better credentials to run for the presidency in some future year. 

So, the big question is: who, if anybody, is the elitist in this campaign?