THE DAILY GRINDER : Rick Santelli's Cel-Webrity

Thursday morning, Rick Santelli was an almost-anonymous financial reporter for MSNBC. That afternoon, broadcasting from Chicago, he was asked about President Obama's new housing recovery plan. Santelli basically lost it; saying the plan rewarded "losers" and, eventually, calling for a "Chicago Tea Party" to protest. CNBC put the video of Santelli online to massive acclaim, and a YouTube star was born.

Some wrote that Santelli is an authentic expression of populist rage; others that he's a self-seeking buffoon. We figure the truth is a bit of both. But his motive isn't as important as the chord he struck. The rant got so much play that the White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was asked about it, responding dismissively that Santelli "doesn't have his facts straight." It was a little galling, really, to see the Obama administration simply brush off Santelli's rant.

Maybe he doesn't have his facts straight, who knows? The plan includes more low-interest loans from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, new powers for bankruptcy judges to modify bad loans, and cash incentives for lenders to modify loans at risk of foreclosure. For all we know, it could be sheer genius or raw idiocy. But the viral popularity of Santelli's tirade isn't about "the facts" or the relative merits of using cash incentives for home loan lenders to renegotiate. Most of the time, Santelli didn't even seem to be talking about the new housing plan specifically. That was just the last straw. The speech was more of an all-purpose, Howard Beale-ish lashing out over the government's handling of the whole financial mess. All of it: the bank bailouts, the loans to car companies, the economic-stimulus package changed in secret, the housing rescue and news of a budget that will, of course, raise taxes to pay for it all.

Read any message board to the right of Huffington Post. People are mad. They wonder if this is what "spreading the wealth around" looks like? A redistribution of wealth from people who have worked hard, saved money and lived within their means, to people who have screwed up or stolen; whether in Washington, Detroit, on Wall Street or Main Street.

Santelli's rage, authentic or not, touched a nerve that Obama would be unwise to ignore. Today, it feels like the president swept to victory on cloud of inevitability, but history always feels inevitable in retrospect. Roughly speaking, the country split 53/45 for Obama, with the rest going to third-parties or write-ins; despite an erratic, lackluster campaign from the Republican challenger. With these sweeping economic measures. Obama has basically bet his entire presidency on how the economy does over the next year. If things aren't better by Christmas, that "permanent Democratic majority" we heard about last fall? It won't last beyond the elections of 2010.