Obama speaks simple truth – gets hammered

The irony. Barrack Obama makes some honest and intelligent observations and he’s treated as if he has personally cursed the voters as morons. The offending quote:

“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,” he said.
“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,” he added.

This is not just unarguably correct but shows that he has some political and social awareness. Obviously the last qualities that you want from a President…..

The irony is the condescension of Hillary Clinton’s attack:

Mrs Clinton said her rival’s comments had been condescending and suggested voters in Pennsylvania did not “need a president who looks down on them”.
“I was taken aback by the demeaning remarks Senator Obama made about people in small-town America,” she said on Saturday.
“Senator Obama’s remarks are elitist and are out of touch. They are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans, certainly not the Americans that I know.”

So, it’s demeaning to the voters to understand what motivates them but not to flatter them? Obama is elitist? She hangs around depressed small-towns around America with the long-term unemployed. She props up the Sports Bar or eats in Hooters or hangs round the gun club, then?

McCain obviously jumped on the populist “Obama is elitist bandwagon”

An adviser to Mr McCain, Steve Schmidt, said his candidate believed the statement was “nothing short of breathtaking”, and that it was “hard to imagine someone running for president who is more out of touch with average Americans”.

No, “breathtaking” is when you realise the contempt that political candidates really do have for the voters. Politicians who treat voters as pawns to be manipulated for their votes, to get the big bucks their backers will pull in after the election – while assuring them they really love and respect them – are acting in a way that would be seen as “gold-digging” in the private sphere.

Poor Obama has had to rephrase his speech but he does seems to have stood by its content. I doubt that “regime change” will make much difference to the US. Still, I’m increasingly daring to hope that Obama could actually achieve something.

3 thoughts on “Obama speaks simple truth – gets hammered

  1. Pingback: Information Village » Blog Archive » Obama speaks simple truth - gets hammered

  2. Out of touch? Who’s out of touch? Clinton lies and exaggerates and distorts her experience to prove she has the common touch. What does that make us commoners – liars? Clinton was a fucking corporate lawyer for Wal-Mart, for chrissake – Wal-Mart, the company that refined the screwing of minimum wage employees to a high art. McCain is so out of touch he has to ask his staffers what his positions are, and if he didn’t have Mark Salter putting words in his mouth and writing his books for him, he would be revealed daily as the ignorant, incompetent, grubby, bumbling little liar and panderer that he is.

    Obama, for whatever faults he may have, is the most authentic, honest, and whole person among the three of them.

  3. Right…big news headline: Politician speaks ‘truth’ to Voters, Gets Lambasted

    Well, I AM a Pennsylvanian and have been to every corner of this state (also a PSU grad). I don’t presume to speak for all PA’ers but I with those I know, Obama ‘nailed’ it EXACTLY. There IS bitterness, folks WILL cling to topics and traditions which impact them. What the heck did he say that got everyone all heated ? The MSM blew this one (way out of proportion), big time. Hillary, I felt, was condescending and patronizing in her response, and indeed, the contempt for ‘ordinary people’ (as Neil Young would say) is palpable with her. If the MSM had been doing their job, they would have been reporting that most Americans are ‘WAY (way!) past ‘bitter’ at this point’, and his comments would have shocked no one.

    Indeed, Obama is the most ‘in touch’ Pol we’ve seen in many years.

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