Saturday, April 12, 2008

John McCain and Hillary Clinton: the Real Elitists

It is mind boggling to me how Barack Obama is portrayed as an elitist by John McCain and Hillary Clinton. This is like Alice in Wonderland. I hope the people of PA. see through this. If you have not heard this yet, Obama remarked to a question that folks in Pa. are bitter because of government. Here is the full text:

"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 going to regenerate and they have not," he went on. "And it's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

"Everybody just ascribes it to 'white working-class . . . don't want to vote for the black guy,' " Obama said at the fundraiser.

"Here's how it is: In a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long. They feel so betrayed by government that when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn't buy it. And when it's delivered by -- it's true that when it's delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama, then that adds another layer of skepticism."

Somehow McCain and Clinton are painting Obama looking down at Pa. voters and as an elitist. McCain and Clinton (I tie these two real elitists together) are of the same stripe, they don't get what working class voters go through and how hard it is to live fucking paycheck to paycheck. Obama, by his comments (and being raised by a single mom) does get it. And this exploitation of the working class voter to vote against their economic interests is as old as the country. I hope Obama succeeds here.

See CNN reporters who see it for what it is. Good for all of them.

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