Give ‘em what they want

Speaking in San Francisco, Obama made this now famous remark:

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.

Bush and Clinton each failed to exercise his regenerative presidential magic in the small towns of Pennsylvania. The helpless townfolk turned bitter, and surrendered to the lure of religion. Washington failed them, so they turned to older gods.

Here is Obama speaking in Nelsonville, Ohio.

“I am a Christian. I am a devout Christian. I have been a member of the same church for 20 years. I pray to Jesus every night.”

The qrator adapts the message to his audience.

Posted on April 12th, 2008 by pwyll
Filed under: politics, religion

One Response to “Give ‘em what they want”

  1. Paco Malo, on April 13th, 2008 at 9:40 am Said:

    Politics, despite the contemporary spin, has long been considered a very low profession. This is just another example.

    Senator Obama’s credentials as a “new kind of politician”, an agent of change, are slowly but surely dissolving. I hope his supporters are noticing.

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