People focus so obsessively on these working class white voters (see: dummies), but the real swing votes are the well educated whites (particularly the older ones) who still happen to lean towards Hillary. Just because Obama wins 60% of post-graduate degree white votes doesn't mean he can't win 65%! That's where this gas tax pander helped him.

This is STILL a democratic primary, dammit! We're elitist smarty pants and proud of it!

Yes, but there was Obama tonight in his speech pandering on the populist road in his attack on oil companies. Now I pretty much detest the oil concerns and dearly want to see the US get off the petroleum treadmill but the CEO of ExxonMobil is not the reason that oil is around $120 a barrel.

"CEO of ExxonMobil is not the reason that oil is around $120 a barrel."

Maybe not exclusively. But it's a huge industry. And it's not beyond reason to assume that oil industry power (see: Dick Cheney) has set back our progress on pursuing alternative energies and producing cars that are more fuel efficient.

But more than that - the reason why oil is so expensive (besides the growth in China) is because of the war in Iraq, which Hillary Clinton is partly responsible for....

she's still pushing it in her speech, what a gas bag...

I'm a free-markets kind of guy by nature, and I seriously doubt the need for 'excess profits' tax in most situations, unless the market is highly distorted or assymetric for some reason. In general, the market if fairly transparent and clear in oil: the Chinese are starting to drive. 7% own cars now, when they all get cars, the price of oil will be $500/bbl. And we will be extracting it expensively from oil shale and tar pits. That expensive extraction will need a lot of 'excess profits' to fund the effort. OK, so is that where we want these companies spending their money? Or would we prefer them to look at alternatives instead. If so, can we make an argument that the market is 'broken' and isn't properly signally the need to develop alternatives? I think we can because the certainty of the need for alternatives is there, but not the certainty of the payoff for any one effort. So then you can argue that oil companies can be taxed, but only for investment in these new alternatives...exactly Obama's plan. Taxing them to pay for 'reduced gas prices' is pure folly.