JAMES TARANTO: Revenge Of The Nerds? The political dangers of an intellectually superior attitude. “This sort of know-it-all attitude is useful to a pundit like Krugman, whose readers share his sense of superiority. It might have been useful to Barack Obama when he was a state senator from a college town. But for someone who actually needs to persuade tens of millions of people to vote for him, making a show of one’s presumed superiority can be hazardous. . . . What got our attention about this exchange as reported by Cantor is the president’s threat to take his case ‘to the American people.’ Would those be the same American people who aren’t paying attention and don’t understand all this complicated stuff? This seems to us an empty threat not least because since his election, Obama has a poor track record when it comes to taking his case to the American people–who still overwhelmingly oppose ObamaCare, give him poor marks on the economy, and think the debt limit shouldn’t be raised even though it pretty much has to be.”