James Taranto on Katie Couric

From the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal:

They Have Indoor Plumbing Too
Howard Kurtz, who recently moved from the Washington Post to The Daily Beast, has a report on "CBS Evening News" anchorman Katie Couric, which includes this howler:

That's why Couric has spent recent weeks in Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and New Brunswick, New Jersey. She is touring what she calls "this great unwashed middle of the country" in an effort to divine the mood of the midterms.

"This great unwashed middle of the country"? Do you think you could be a little more condescending, Katie?

Moreover, although Chicago at least is in the Midwest, in no other sense are any of these cities in the "middle." Politically? All four cities are in counties that went overwhelmingly for Barack Obama, giving him, respectively, 76.2%, 83%, 76.9% and 60.2% of the vote.

A probably apocryphal quote attributed to Lyndon Johnson has it that if he's lost Walter Cronkite, he's lost Middle America. Barack Obama doesn't need to lose Katie Couric. She's lost Middle America all by herself!