Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but for weeks Hillary Clinton has been criticizing Barack Obama as an out-of-touch, small town-despising elitist.  You might have heard her say this once or twice.  Like here in Pittsburgh and here at a forum on faith and politics at Messiah College in Pennsylvania and here in Indianapolis and here on Mars and here in Puerto Rico . . .

Obama can’t complain, though, because he handed her the opportunity — when Obama made the biggest mistake of his campaign, saying at a fundraiser in San Francisco that people in small towns in the Midwest are “bitter” about their economic status and, as a result, “cling to” God and guns.

Obama has been paying for those comments for weeks.

So that makes me wonder whether Clinton will pay for comments that aired Wednesday evening in an interview on “The O’Reilly Factor” on Fox News Channel. Clinton and host Bill O’Reilly were talking about the tax rate that Clinton would impose on wealthy Americans, if she were President.  O’Reilly and Clinton were finding some common ground in the discussion, so much so that there were smiles and fun banter about how O’Reilly and the Clinton family were among wealthy Americans.

And then Clinton said, “And you know what?  Rich people–God bless us.”   She didn’t stop there: “We deserve all the opportunities to make sure our country and our blessings continue to the next generation.”

It was perhaps an off-the-cuff comment, not carefully worded, something like saying people in small towns are bitter about their economic positions. But here’s where it gets interesting: A Slate story this afternoon noted this:

On today’s “state of the race” conference call, a reporter asked about an exchange between Hillary Clinton and Bill O’Reilly on yesterday’s show in which Clinton uttered the words, “Rich people—God bless us.”

Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson denied that’s what she said: “She said ‘God blessed us.’ B-L-E-S-S-E-D.”

See if you agree. Watch for the exchange, at the 1:40 mark of this clip.

She did not say blessed, despite what the campaign claims. That’s simply false. F-A-L-S-E. That’s not what she said. And I don’t think it’s what she meant, either, because she followed “Rich people–God bless us” with “We deserve all the opportunities” available in the United States. Let me say it straight: “We deserve” ain’t “God blessed us” language.

It’s arrogant and elitist and out of touch with working Americans.