First and foremost? No, I'd say it's more of a class thing. If went to certain posh colleges and are under a certain age you might identify yourself as a nerd. It happens that most of the people who go to those colleges are liberal, but you can find conservatives who cultivate the same image: Tucker Carlson, Byron York (to judge by the bowties), any number of NR writers. Maybe even ueber-nerd George Will, if he wants to be trendy. Dinesh may not self-identify as a nerd, but he'd qualify too. I get the point, though, that it's mostly liberals who are pushing phony political nerdism and that MSNBC has taken it to a whole new level.
It is no accident that the president has felt it necessary to inject himself into the game: That’s where the cool kids are.
Well, kind of. But there's a lot of irony an confusion involved with just who the "cool kids" are. Are Washington nerds cool kids pretending to be uncool or uncool kids pretending to be cool? And outside of Washington and Ivy League circles elsewhere is anybody really fooled by any of this Washington nerdism?