Update: Many thanks to Ace and Hot Air for the links. And don’t miss Ace taking me all the way back to square one and reminding me that in the first set of remarks, Obama didn’t say a damn thing about family; he said “antipathy to people who aren’t like them” and then tried to spin it into meaning dependence on family and the community (“community,” lest we forget, one of the nauseatingly repeated trend words of the left) … and it still comes out as a bad thing in his lexicon. Because it’s what he really thinks. Well done, Barack. But it’s all part and parcel of the new left idea that only the family you choose for yourself matters … thus it’s honorable and decent for Barack to stand by the pastor whose rhetoric is abhorred by so many millions of voters, but “cling” to your family? That’s only because you’re in distress and oh yeah, it’s also raaaaaaaaaacist.
There are two main things that allow you to get along with other people in life: Making sure that what you say and do publicly are acceptable to enough people and making sure that how you really believe and act are acceptable to people important to you. Obama just let voters know how he really believes.
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Keep digging, Barack. Dig yourself all the way to China, where they already have communism, and see how you like it, jackass.
Original remarks:
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 to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
Got that? You can’t be frustrated about illegal immigration or anything else that matters to your ideas about how this country should operate or who should have to obey the law, really, you know you can’t. You’re just pissed that a factory shut down and took your job away so you have to have some outlet for that anger. Whereas (presumably) if you vote for Barry he’ll have your factory job back in a heartbeat so that you never have to consider moving, consider going where times are more prosperous, consider how you might alter your life to adapt to changing circumstances, changes that might actually end up being for the better.
Spin in Indiana Friday night, insulting the intelligence of my fellow Hoosiers, though judging by the applause, those present were begging to have it insulted:
They don’t vote on economic issues because they don’t expect anybody’s gonna help them. So people end up, you know, voting on issues like guns … issues like gay marriage … take refuge in their faith and their community and families, things they can count on … so here’s what’s rich. Senator Clinton says, “Well, I don’t think people are bitter in Pennsylvania …” John McCain says, “Oh, how can he say that? How can he say people are bitter?”
No, jackass, “bitter” was not the damning epithet. I’m pretty disgusted and bitter my own self at having to choose between an open-borders guy and a couple of socialists, one with racism thrown in for good measure. Saying people only care about religion, the right to bear arms, their families and communities (code, by the way, for they embrace only their own and despise, perhaps even violently, all other comers, out of this same bitterness), that was the damning bit. And sensible people in Indiana and elsewhere are hearing it, reading it, and knowing it. Keep digging.
Spin in Indiana Saturday morning:
I said somethin’ that everybody knows is true … people don’t feel like they’re being listened to. So they pray, and they count on each other, and they count on their families … you know this in your own life. And what we need is a government that is actually paying attention … fighting for workin’ people, [blah blah blah blah socialist code words up to and including American Dream].”
Once again, you’re not supposed to count on your family or your faith, you’re supposed to count on your government. He simply cannot fathom the concept that people do not believe this is the proper role of government, that nobody in their right mind wants to count on government for their needs and wants. So he says “I could have said it better,” but then goes on to say the same damn thing in the same damn way because he simply cannot believe it couldn’t be the truth.
This is the real Barack Obama, believe it. People counting on their families and God is not appropriate; these things are merely the refuge of the bitter. This is why his chosen church and his mentor/married-him/baptized-his-kids pastor are not about God but about race and class–because that’s all he believes in. People don’t vote their class identity not because they don’t believe this is an appropriate basis for choosing a government, because they believe individual rights are a better foundation, but merely because they’re embittered and don’t believe voting on class would change the class structure. There is nothing in his world but class structure and how he can alter it so that we’re all supposedly on the same basis, which in his mind means lack of inequity but in reality will result in nothing but lack of opportunity, lack of will, lack of ambition, lack of work, lack of achievement.
Keep digging, Barry. Hey, maybe there’s a silver lining: If you need to count on God and your family if your government doesn’t make your life turn out the way you want it to, then perhaps we’ll have a lot of converts to Christianity and family trust after you pull down the life edifaces of America’s wealthy.
And PS–if all the people you talk to are “bitter,” did it ever occur to you that these might be the only ones (not all of the populace or, it is to be hoped, even a majority) who want the government to put a bandaid on them and make it better, who might think it’s a swell idea to whine to a politician about how bad they have it (really, often, not that bad at all)? Seek out some ordinary folks without an axe to grind and then see how well your vision holds up.
