The ploy of casting Howard Dean as an elitist drew enough skeptics to make the corporate media decide to hedge their bets.  After all, even if Dean had affluent roots his family wealth could not equal that of liberal Democratic presidents such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John Fitzgerald Kennedy.  

There was also enormously wealthy W. Averill Harriman, who served a term as Governor of New York while serving many Democratic presidents in a variety of roles in the foreign affairs field.  Governor G. Mennen Williams of Michigan also came from a family of enormous wealth.

All of the aforementioned were classified as liberals and received sturdy support from labor union members.  Then again, this was before Ann Coulter.  Had she been around then could she have convinced the men in the hard hats that they were elitists?

While the elitist tag would be used in instances where gullibility requirements could be met on the receiving end, as Dean's Internet revolution and fundraising knack of collecting small amounts of money from broad segments of progressives throughout the nation persisted, the real elitists who thought that the dollars should come from the corporate sector and be distributed into the Bush camp alone became concerned.