'This Is a Hard Decision for Me Personally Because Frankly I Don't Like Him'

Maybe Barack Obama can trot out Lincoln Chafee again to offset this defection from the DNC Platform Committee.

Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a prominent Hillary Clinton supporter and member of the Democratic National Committee’s Platform Committee, will endorse John McCain for president on Wednesday, her spokesman tells CNN.

The announcement will take place at a news conference on Capitol Hill, just blocks away from the DNC headquarters. Forester will “campaign and help him through the election,” the spokesman said of her plans to help the Republican presidential nominee.

Forester was a major donor for Clinton earning her the title as a Hillraiser for helping to raise at least $100,000 for the New York Democratic senator’s failed presidential bid.

In an interview with CNN this summer, Forester did not hide her distaste for eventual Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

“This is a hard decision for me personally because frankly I don't like him,” she said of Obama in an interview with CNN’s Joe Johns. “I feel like he is an elitist. I feel like he has not given me reason to trust him.”

Obama did little to dispel the elitist image last night as he partied at two Hollywood soirees with a pack of elitist snobs, including major Clinton supporter Barbra Streisand.

Barack Obama partied with Hollywood celebrities Tuesday night and with the help of Oscar-winning singer and actress Barbra Streisand raised an eye-popping $9 million for his presidential campaign and the Democratic Party.

The night was split into two glitzy events, a reception and dinner costing $28,500 each at the Greystone Mansion, followed by entertainment by Streisand at the nearby Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel. About 250-300 people were expected at the dinner and about 800 at the entertainment, which cost $2,500 a ticket.

Dinner guests seen by reporters, or noted by waiters, included Will Ferrell, Jodie Foster, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Lee Curtis and DreamWorks founders Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg.

Obama spent more than an hour before dinner getting his picture taken with guests. He said later that people had encouraged him to be tougher and had questioned why he was so calm in a close race against Republican John McCain.

"I'm skinny but I'm tough," he said. "I'm from Chicago and we don't play. Just keep steady."

Sure, you don't play. You just stifle free speech.

In an absolutely mind-boggling piece of spin, Obama hack David Axelrod cried poverty compared with John McCain.

A night earlier, McCain was with deep-pocketed donors in Florida and raised $5 million, a fact noted by Obama's campaign.

"I don't know who showed up down in Florida where he raised $5 million but my guess is that it wasn't a lot of nurses, firefighters and police officers," Obama's senior strategist, David Axelrod, told reporters. "The whole corporate lobbying community is rallying to his side. We're going to have to struggle to keep pace. You can't challenge that group and not expect them to have a lot of money."

Cameras were barred from the Beverly Hills mansion where Obama delighted the elitists on hand.

Obama told the crowd that there was "enormous work to do because of the enormous resistance out there -- resistance because people have been fed cynicism for a long time."

"So when my opponent and the operation that they've put together start feeding into that cynicism and start feeding into that resentment, it's not always clear which way things are going to tip," he said.

But Obama said he was "confident about winning because I've looked at John McCain, I've looked at Sarah Palin, I've looked at their agenda, and they don't have one."

The crowd laughed.

Why did they block cameras?

Lest anyone be diverted by the Hollywood spectacle Tuesday evening, Obama's campaign denied TV crews access to the mansion and hotel events -- perhaps mindful of the political damage wrought by TV images of celebrities at Democratic nominee John F. Kerry's fundraisers in 2004.

We don't need to see the images. We know you were there.

Today he returns to the campaign trail, pretending to be a man of the people.