Mudcat Saunders sure seems proud of his "Metropolitan Opera Wing of the Democratic Party" formulation. Does anyone even go to the opera anymore? It's certainly not a clean stand-in for class, or education, or power, in the way it might once have been. He's as out of touch with us liberal elites as we are with his beloved rednecks. "The Sopranos" watching wing of the Democratic Party might be more apt. Or possibly just the "It's Not TV, It's HBO" wing of the Party, as us liberal elites also like the Wire, because criminals are really good people who deserve our understanding (except Marlo), and Big Love, because it helps us destroy the nuclear family.
Or, if we don't want to search out more demographically sophisticated slurs, I guess Swampland could, as their balance to Dick Armey, bring on liberals who haven't made their careers bashing Democrats for being out-of-touch. A hackish conservative and a anti-liberal Democrat are not, in effect, standing on different sides of the scale.
On a related note, Victorino Matus makes a fairly convincing argument that Tony is dead. On the other hand, you could also interpret the "who's who" of enemies hanging out at the diner as a commentary on how fraught and fearful his remaining days will be. Who knows. Still a bad episode.
