Stuart Stevens was the Big Kahuna for the Mitt Romney campaign, and his opinion piece today in the Washington Post is a fitting epitaph, demonstrating again the absolutely tone deaf nature of Romney’s pitch: Mitt Romney: A Good Man. the Right Fight.

Stevens is mainly concerned with shoring up his reputation, as the guy who lost. But the most telling part of the column is when he casually dismisses as unimportant all the voters who make less than $50,000 a year.

On Nov. 6, Romney carried the majority of every economic group except those with less than $50,000 a year in household income. That means he carried the majority of middle-class voters. While John McCain lost white voters younger than 30 by 10 points, Romney won those voters by seven points, a 17-point shift. Obama received 4½ million fewer voters in 2012 than 2008, and Romney got more votes than McCain.

I’m pretty sure there are quite a few Americans who make $50K a year and still consider themselves “middle class,” but even apart from that, Stevens is basically reiterating the infamous Romney “47%” line, and brushing off half the nation.

Oh… and of course, it wouldn’t be a right wing apologia if he didn’t infer that Obama won because he’s black.

There was a time not so long ago when the problems of the Democratic Party revolved around being too liberal and too dependent on minorities. Obama turned those problems into advantages and rode that strategy to victory. But he was a charismatic African American president with a billion dollars, no primary and media that often felt morally conflicted about being critical. How easy is that to replicate?