Dana Milbank: The defeat of the 1 percent : Stltoday

Dana Milbank: The defeat of the 1 percent : Stltoday

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"Romney would have to draw to an inside straight" at this point, pronounced Brit Hume, who predicted "an awful lot of recriminations."

Some attendees headed to the coat check. "I have a son who has a test tomorrow," one woman explained. "It literally hurts my soul," one man said as he walked toward the exit. Others lamented their wasted labors ("We did so much for him") and fretted about a second Obama term ("I don't want him to feel like he has a (expletive) mandate").

Romney had spent nearly two years, and hundreds of millions of dollars, trying to convince Americans that he wasn't an out-of-touch millionaire unconcerned about the little people — that he was more than a caricature who liked to fire people, who didn't care about the very poor or the 47 percent who pay no federal income tax, who has friends who own NASCAR teams.

He very nearly achieved it: Polls showed him neck-and-neck with Obama in the campaign's closing days. But his final day in the race showed why he couldn't persuade enough working-class Americans that he spoke for them.

On the final flight of his campaign Tuesday afternoon, Romney ventured to the back of his plane for a chat with reporters and discovered that — horrors! — the poor wretches were seated in coach.
"I thought you had bigger seats back here," he told the

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opinion:  little early to discount the top dogs of the nation