Video: Obama on the economy and John McCain’s house(s)

In a speech in Chester, VA, today, Barack Obama laid into John McCain with a volley of punches directed at the Arizona senator’s dubious connection to the lives of today’s working-class Americans. From McCain’s statement that America has made great economic progress under George W. Bush (“Who is he talking to?”) to today’s revelation that McCain isn’t clear on how many houses he owns — answer: seven — his critique was relentless. Obama started with McCain’s reply to a question by Pastor Rick Warren at the Saddleback forum about how he defines “rich” and went on a tear from there:

He thought about it for a second, I don’t know. Maybe if you make $5 million. $5 million, then you’re rich. Which means, I guess, if you’re only making $3 million a year then you’re middle class. I guess that’s what he meant.

His top economic adviser said the other day that Americans should stop complaining; they’ve become a nation of whiners. That all these economic problems everybody is talking about is just a mental recession. And if you would just change your mind, everything would be okay. Somebody’s been laid off, their plant’s closed and gone to Mexico or China, change your mind. It’s all good.

Then, yesterday, he was asked again, what do you think about the economy? He says, Well, I think the economy is fundamentally strong; said the economy is fundamentally strong. Now, this puzzled me. I was confused as to what he meant.

But then there was another interview – this is yesterday, same day – where somebody asked John McCain, how many houses do you have? And he said, I’m not sure. I’ll have to check with my staff. True quote. I’m not sure. I’ll have to check with my staff. So they asked his staff, and he said, at least four. At least four. Now, think about that. I guess if you think that being rich means you’ve got to make $5 million and if you don’t know how many houses you have, then it’s not surprising that you might think the economy was fundamentally strong. But if you’re like me, and you’ve got one house, or you are like the millions of people who are struggling right now to keep up with their mortgage so they don’t lose their home, you might have a different perspective.

And by the way, the answer is John McCain has seven homes. So there’s just a fundamental gap of understanding between John McCain’s world and what people are going through every single day here in America. And you don’t have to be – you don’t have to be a Nobel Prize Laureate economist. You just have to have a little bit of a sense of what ordinary people are going through to understand that we can’t afford eight more years or four more years or one more year of the same failed economic policies that George Bush has put in place.

Mark Ambinder of The Atlantic likens McCain’s house gaffe to George Bush, Sr.’s infamous incident in which he allegedly seemed surprised by how a supermarket scanner worked. (Snopes.com says the scanner event isn’t as advertised.)

Related: A nice photo of John McCain’s “$520 Ferragamo loafers.”