Payne: The Natalie Portman gap

A picture of Hollywood actress Natalie Portman campaigning for Barack Obama anchored The Detroit News poll this week that finds President Obama with a commanding lead among Michigan voters. The post-Democratic Convention bounce is credited in part to Portman and a parade of women extolling Obama’s female-friendly policies – the poll found a gaping, 20-point advantage among women (married women favor Mitt Romney, but single women overwhelmingly favor Obama) who credit the president with his empathy for the middle class compared to a wealthy Romney who is out of touch with the working man.

But Natalie Portman tells a different story.

Worth $45 million, Portman represents an American elite class that has been showered with goodies from Democrats even as middle-class Americans have seen their income erode under Obama by $4000 - $2500 since the recession ended in 2009. While White House regulatory policies have strangled small business and put 1 in 5 Michiganians in poverty, the president has carved out special subsidies for politically-connected corporations (Ford, GE, Solyndra, Beacon Power, etc.) – and multi-millionaire greens like Portman who live Obama-approved lifestyles.

Gender gap? Let’s take a look at the Natalie Portman gap.

An advocate and owner for battery-powered vehicles, Portman has owned a Toyota Prius and $90,000 hybrid Mercedes S-Class - hybrid cars favored by upper-class buyers that respectively received $3500 and $1150 in federal tax breaks before the subsidies died in 2011 under those cruel, uncooperative House Republicans. The gravy train continues, however, for owners of even more expensive electric vehicles. Obama millionaire supporter Leo DiCaprio recently banked $7500 in taxpayer dollars for purchasing a $110,000 plug-in Fisker Karma. And millionaire Michigan Senator Carl Levin received $7500 for his $43,000 Chevy Volt.

Oh, the empathy. This redistribution of wealth to America’s rich even as middle class incomes have shrunk has been exempted from scrutiny by Obama’s MSM allies.

“I think Mitt Romney is for the wealthy,” Jordan Kemmerlin, 25, told The Detroit News. ” I don’t think he understands what the middle class stands for.”

And a millionaire ex-law school prof whose spokesperson is a $45 million Hollywood starlet in a hybrid Mercedes does? Ms. Kemmerlin, meet Natalie Portman.