BRENNAN: You know FEMA has specialized expertise that some of these states just don't have in their arsenal...

VANCE: Oh, Margaret, I wish that they...

BRENNAN: And how will these states who are lower-income states, the Mississippis, the Kentuckys, the Alabamas, be able to do this for themselves without federal help?

VANCE: Well, the president, to be clear, is not saying we are going to leave anybody behind. He's saying that the way in which we administrator these resources, some of which is coming from the federal level, some of which is coming from the state level, we've got to get the bureaucrats out of the way and get the aid to the people who need it most.

Look at the disgust on her face as she calls red states "low-income" hellholes that can't possibly manage themselves without overpaid, useless federal bureaucrats telling them what to do. Notice that she didn't bother to mention California, though, which has shown a lack of ability to effectively respond to natural disasters. Instead, she only sneers at those uneducated rubes in the "Mississippis, Kentuckys, and Alabamas."

That's not an accident. People like Brennan live in a bubble where they truly think credentialism and dollar totals on a spreadsheet dictate competency. For example, calling the above states "low-income" and suggesting that makes them incapable ignores that the cost of living exists. Incomes are indeed lower in Southern states but so are costs, which means the standard of living is not necessarily any worse than high-cost blue states.

Yet, Brennan sees the average income and just assumes everyone in Alabama is an idiot because that's the mindset held by Beltway dwellers such as herself. They can't fathom that other people are not only just as smart as they are but in many cases, are smarter. There's a reason the top states in the country regarding economic growth and employment are almost exclusively Republican-led states, many that Brennan would claim are "low-income."

The reality is that the federal bureaucracies have shown themselves to be the most incompetent entities in the country. If they had "specialized expertise" that simply can't be replicated at the state level, then North Carolinians wouldn't still be living in tents right now.