In an effort to increase their “regular folk” bona fides, the Obamas have been trying to convince us they were of modest means until recently. Michelle talked this up yesterday, as did her husband.

This tactic has already gone awry. For starters, that one-bedroom condo Obama said he lived in until 2005? Turns out, according to two separate news accounts, that it was three bedrooms. Not very modest, by most Americans’ standards. It also sold for $415,000 as part of the Obama’s move to the home adjoining the Tony Rezko lot. The average home in Chicago in 2005 sold for $254,000; the nationwide average was $190,000. (2005 would be the year the Obamas earned $1.6M.)

But his income, in fact, has nothing to do with the mess he has gotten himself into. He is drawing a simple and false equivalence between his economic standing and his political outlook. First, it was “Being unemployed makes you cling to guns and religion.” And now it’s “I can’t be a condescending snob because I wasn’t wealthy most of my life.”

He’s repeating his original gaffe with these attempts at explanation: economic determinism. It is not his income which is at issue, but whether he resorted to disparaging rural Americans in order to ingratiate himself with a group of California urbanites. It is not his wealth which is troubling, but his apparent lack of appreciation for the role religion, irrespective of economics, plays in people’s lives. Obama talks a good game of unity in public. But he seems to perpetuate Red vs. Blue divisions in private. (Then there is his amusing claim that protectionist views are the result of ignorance and fear–when people other than himself hold them, that is.)

Once again, it appears that someone will have to explain to Obama why what he said was wrong and insulting. He still doesn’t get it.