He. Cannot. Be. Serious. And yet, he is. If this doesn’t qualify as playing up the intellectually cheap, populist, class-warfare rhetoric, then I don’t know what does. He’s not just decrying ‘tax cuts for the wealthy’ (a.k.a., here, the Bush-era tax cuts) as a paltry route to prosperity, he’s throwing in a steak-and-a-martini metaphor to really classy it up! Sigh. At least he has a good sense of keeping with a theme, I suppose.

“Those of us who have spent time in the real world understand that the problem is not that the American people aren’t productive enough,” Obama said during a fundraiser today, after saying that Romney believes that America “automatically” prospers when the wealthy profit. “[Romney says] his 25 years in the private sector gives him a special understanding of how the economy works, [so] my question is why are you running with the same bad ideas that brought our economy to the brink of disaster?” …

The president also said that Republicans, not Democrats, caused the current budget crisis. “I love listening to these guys give us lectures about debt and deficits. I inherited a trillion dollar deficit!” he said. Obama compared Republicans to a person who orders a steak dinner and martini and then, “just as you’re sitting down, they leave, and accuse you of running up the tab.”

Stay with me here, people.

“Those of us who have spent time in the real world”: No. Spending your early adult life writing a memoir amongst the august circles of liberal academia before rocketing through the political ranks as a cool, hip young celebrity-politician does not make you more qualified on matters of the ostensible “real world” than a high-powered businessman turned state executive. In fact, one might even argue it makes you less qualified. Or, you know, not at all. Hence all of this lovely “on the job training” which you’ve so magnanimously bestowed upon us.

“Romney’s years in the private sector gives him a special understanding of how the economy works”: It does.

Several weeks ago Mr. Obama focused his jobs argument on the company that Mr. Romney founded, Bain Capital. Employment growth is usually a byproduct of a firm’s successful pursuit of profit. But it’s become clear that even by the most conservative estimates, Bain has helped create more than 100,000 jobs by making companies grow.

This is especially embarrassing for the White House because, according to the seasonally adjusted jobs numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics in its household survey, 100,000 is the total net increase in U.S. jobs since January 2009 when Mr. Obama took office.

“I inherited a trillion dollar deficit”: Yeah, you’re darn right the deficit exploded after Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Nancy Pelosi took control of a newly-Democratic Congress in 2007, and did you do anything to try to quell that deficit? No, you not only let it ride; you added to it with bailouts and stimuli, and now we’re sitting pretty with a whopping $5 trillion more added to our debt than when you took office three years ago.

And where was the President while making these grandiose claims of economic acumen and spendthrift? Fundraising. For money. To profit his campaign. That President Obama can so relentlessly deride the economic contributions of the wealthy, and wealth itself, while asking wealthy people, to give him some of their wealth… boggles my mind. Who falls for this pitiful stuff?