Beautiful.
The “clinging to their guns and religion” comment HAS to be made into an ad and ran in OH, PA, and MI. ASAP.
You've got that right, especially since all the hunting gear is hitting store shelves!!
So, it depends on where you are, but I think its fair to say that the places where we are going to have to do the most work are the places where people feel most cynical about government. The people are mis-appre I think theyre misunderstanding why the demographics in our, in this contest have broken out as they are. Because everybody just ascribes it to white working-class dont wanna work dont wanna vote for the black guy. Thats there were intimations of that in an article in the Sunday New York Times today - kind of implies that its sort of a race thing.
Heres how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, and they feel so betrayed by government, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesnt buy it. And when its delivered by its true that when its delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama, then that adds another layer of skepticism.
But so the questions youre most likely to get about me, Well, what is this guy going to do for me? Whats the concrete thing? What they wanna hear is so, well give you talking points about what were proposing close tax loopholes, roll back, you know, the tax cuts for the top 1 percent. Obamas gonna give tax breaks to middle-class folks and were gonna provide health care for every American. So well go down a series of talking points.
But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when theres not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of 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 nothings 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. So its not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who arent like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
Um, now these are in some communities, you know. I think what youll find is, is that people of every background there are gonna be a mix of people, you can go in the toughest neighborhoods, you know working-class lunch-pail folks, youll find Obama enthusiasts. And you can go into places where you think Id be very strong and people will just be skeptical. The important thing is that you show up and youre doing what youre doing.
If you really want to twist the knife, here's Senator Clinton's response the next day:
Senator Obamas remarks are elitist and they are out of touch. They are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans. Certainly not the Americans that I know - not the Americans I grew up with, not the Americans I lived with in Arkansas or represent in New York.