Some things just go together. Peanut butter and chocolate. Fireworks and the Fourth of July. Elections and charges of Democratic elitism. It comforts me greatly to know that, in these ever-changing times, we can still count on politicians to get all faux-indignant when someone dares to opine that some of our neglected fellow citizens are kind of grumpy and may be channeling that grumpiness at the gay couple down the street or the guy at the Kwik-Mart with the funny accent.

Obama’s phrasing was clumsy, but that doesn’t discredit the observations he was making. The megachurches that dot the suburban landscape are booming because they offer a one-stop support network that is replacing the old civic infrastructures, like neighborhood organizations and labor unions, that have been decimated by economic stress and upheaval. And some of those churches do preach uplifting messages of social justice and tolerance, but many of them encourage a kind of exceptionalist thinking that breeds contempt and suspicion of those who are different. This wasn’t as much of a problem when people lived in homogenous little towns, but that isn’t the world we live in now. “Those people” are now neighbors and co-workers. Obama isn’t criticizing anyone; he’s giving an oversimplified, reductionist explanation of a social trend. But it is a real and persistent trend.

Some of you may be getting tired of my political commentary, but I can’t help it. It’s just too interesting for me to ignore.

Much is being made of Barack Obama’s difficulties in appealing to white, working-class voters. Being a stereotypical Obama backer (young, educated, relatively affluent) and a couple generations removed from my working-class roots, I have a hard time understanding this trend. Race is almost certainly a contributing factor, although I’m not convinced that voters wary of Obama’s race are any more likely to vote for a woman in a general election. And this all might be so much media hype. Pennsylvania is in the spotlight and the news networks are looking for an angle to keep people interested in the horse race. Once this primary is over, the press will be stumbling all over themselves to find a new angle.

Except that this particular race, barring something truly unexpected happening, is over. And Obama will have plenty of time to win over lunchpail Democrats, Hispanics, grandmothers, rural folks, and all the other demographic subgroups that are supposed to resent him.

My trusty HeadMaster, the device I use to type these blog posts, check e-mail, play Scrabulous, and generally get my geek on, is no longer being manufactured. I learned this fact a few months ago and ever since then I’ve had a low-level anxiety that my existing HeadMaster would fail. Fortunately, they’re designed to last. The one sitting above my monitor has been in use since circa 1996 and I don’t think it has ever failed to do its duty. And I do have a spare sitting in a desk drawer, which provides some additional insurance. By the time I need to think about a replacement technology, perhaps I’ll be able to get one of those oft-predicted neural interfaces implanted inside my melon.

The odd bits of tech that we gimps use can sometimes assume talismanic qualities. We know and trust them. They’re predictable. They may have their quirks and eccentricities, but we can navigate those without much conscious thought; what matters is that they do not fail us. And when market forces make our devices obsolescent or unavailable, we are forced to put our trust into the unfamiliar and (frequently) the untested.

Every political observer in Minnesota anticipated that the governor would probably take his red pen to portions of the recently passed bonding bill, but I don’t think anyone imagined that he would cut funding for the planned Central Corridor light rail line. After all, he included the funding in the original bonding proposal he sent to the Legislature. The remarks he made to the press today make it clear that he’s using the project as a bargaining chip to reassert his waning power. If the DFL doesn’t bend to his will in budget negotiations, he’ll deny them a much-anticipated public works initiative.

It’s an interesting gambit and perhaps Pawlenty sees this as an opportunity to boost his conservative street cred. After all, his name is probably on McCain’s short list of veep picks. Still, letting this project go forward might do more to solidify his legacy as governor. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem like the kind of person to take the long view on things.

Time for another peek at the singles on heavy rotation here on the 19th Floor:

“Send a Little Love Token” by The Duke Spirit: A propulsive rocker of a song by a British band whose pretty blonde lead singer sounds an awful lot like the pretty blonde lead singer from The Sounds. If this song was included in a movie soundtrack, it would be played during the scene where the hero walks into a rough-and-tumble bar, orders a shot of whiskey, hits on the saucy-looking woman standing next to him, and then gets clobbered over the head with a beer bottle by her skinhead boyfriend.

“Feel the Love” by Cut Copy: This sunny electronica-tinged number induces waves of Eighties nostalgia. The whole album is quite listenable, in fact.

“Dead Sound” by The Raveonettes: Continuing the theme of bands fronted by pretty blondes, this single from the Denmark duo’s latest album is drenched in feedback. Is it me, or is the whole feedback/distortion thing making a comeback? The Magnetic Fields did something similar in their most recent effort.