Posted by:
steve benson
(
)
Date: April 25, 2017 11:54PM
As reported by the "Washington Post":
"In April 2008, then-senator Barack Obama, a relative upstart Democrat from Illinois, was locked in a presidential primary with then-senator Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.). Pennsylvania's important primary was less than two weeks away, making Pennsylvania the temporary center of the political universe.
"Then, the candidate whom some reporters were already describing as almost preternaturally aware of the American voter psyche made what just about everyone considers a mistake. At a San Francisco-area fundraiser, Obama took a shot at explaining the mostly white voters in those hard-scrabble and once-booming Pennsylvania industrial towns. He was speaking to a largely wealthy and well-educated California audience, and these Pennsylvanians were people that, in the minds of many liberals living along the nation's coasts, seemed to be voting against their own personal interests.
"They seemed angry and politically confused, casting their votes with some regularity for conservatives who support, without modification, the trade deals, labor practices and shrinking wages that were making these voters' lives so hard. These are the people the 2004 book "What's the Matter with Kansas' was talking about. An unpaid 'citizen-journalist' and Obama supporter following and writing about the Obama campaign for the 'Huffington Post'--at her own expense--was at the fundraiser and, to her credit, reported precisely what Obama had said:
"'You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.'"
(Source: "Obama Revives His ‘Cling to Guns or Religion’ Analysis--for Donald Trump Supporters," by Janell Ross, in "The Fix," published by "Washington Post," 21 December 2015,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/12/21/obama-dusts-off-his-cling-to-guns-or-religion-idea-for-donald-trump/?utm_term=.ac2003a7c62e)
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/26/2017 12:02AM by steve benson.