I'm completely effete, but I scraped together a living in rural depressed parts of America for periods of time in the past twenty years. So I'm pretty outraged by the outrage, too. None of the candidates have had to scrape a life together the way the folks they're talking about do. And if my experience bears out, the people who're the subject of all the outrage probably won't collectively be fooled by either campaign's rhetoric.

The fact is that many of us 'liberal elitists' look down on the erstwhile blue-collar classes; we believe we're smarter and probably better looking, and call them things like "low information voters." The fight over "bitterness" and "clinging" isn't a fight over the hearts and minds of the voters of Pennsylvania; it's a battle over the fears and dreads of the Democratic Party machinists. The shouting definitely serves someone's interests; it always does. So long as Clinton and McCain are swinging their megaphones, noone can actually have a conversation.

I work in an industy selling and servicing industrial manufacturing machinery. Been doing it for 15 years. In the early, mid 90s, boom times, we put a lot of machines in American plants. In late 90s, following passage of NAFLA (the North American Free Labor Agreement) we saw many of these companies move these machines just over the Mexican border. The US managers down there live in the US, make US wages, commute daily over the border. The workers in Mexico make pennies on the dollar to what the now unemployed US worker made. Now, the machines are moving to China because the Mexicans cost too much.

How does the politician in rural PA or any other Rust Belt dying town rally votes? Guns, God, and gays. That's what Obama is saying. Washington has abandoned the middle-class, the blue collar worker. All that Washington offers economically to the middle class is the occasional drip from the trickle down tax cuts that make the fantastically weathly another 20 percent more fantastically weathly. Politicians drum up votes by concentrating on these sideline, phony "issues" and unfortunately many Workin' Joes buy into these arguments and cast their votes on this basis, even against their own economic self interests. I know guys like this. Apparently, Obama recognizes this behavior.

Obama's statements aren't a slam against the working poor but an expressed realization about the f*$*ing Washington is giving to the working poor and the middle class. Why mention to the proletariat that the world's richest man, Warren Buffet, has a lower tax rate than his secretary or that the Columbian "Free Trade" Agreement will reward a country that has seen 2500 union activists assasinated during the last 10 years when we can instead argue about whether two loving, consenting adults of the same sex can be married?

Obama takes the conversation to a depth the two other candidates won't dare to dive to (Hillary) or don't have the intellect (McCain) to discern. This level of thinking and expression is what we need for the next eight years.

What if Obama told you that Bob Casey was going to be his VP and that his focus would be the Rust Belt and finding ways to get Business to move into these areas with special Gov't incentive's.

Would you still think he wouldn't get the PA, OH, IN etc workers vote?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eDkAG3R0h8

Obama 08

What Obama meant is becoming clearer. The rhythm seems to be that something he does or says is grasped, and the opposition runs with it, only to find it that what they're running with isn't the part people are noticing, remembering, and nodding their heads at.

It's a refreshing non-pandering honesty to point out, like Edwards did, that not everyone in America is happy.

I taught myself to shoot. I'm pretty good at 100 yds with open sights.

You miss the point. Yes, a lot of people are angry. Some of them are bitter. But by condescending to judge their faith and basic values Obama has just given them something else to be angry about. You don't have to parse his words. Just listen to them. Listen to his attitude about millions of people, and ask yourself if he helped the Democratic Party by judging those people the way he did.

I don't cling to guns because I'm bitter or as a way to explain my frustrations. I like to hunt, I think guns are valuable home protection, I have a carry permit. If I were a single issue gun voter I would vote republican. But I'm actually very liberal in most other ways so I have always voted for the democrats.

I don't see where Obama said that people cling to guns because they are bitter. That said, these words alone do not clarify why they "cling to guns." Obama later clarified that economic devastation leads to people clinging to the parts of their culture that give them comfort like guns (camaraderie) and religion.

Additionally, I don't think Obama meant that all people who like guns like them because they are bitter or because they are economically impoverished by Washington's economic policies.