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Can you believe he said this?
"You know, he [Bush] wants to divide us over race. I'm from the South. I understand this. This quota deal they're gonna pull in the next election is the same old scam they've been pulling on us for decade after decade after decade. When their economic policies fail, when the country's coming apart rather than coming together, what do they do? They find the most economically insecure white men and scare the living daylights out of them. They know if they can keep us looking at each other across a racial divide, if I can look at Bobby Rush and think, Bobby wants my job, my promotion, then neither of us can look at George Bush and say, 'What happened to everybody's job? What happened to everybody's income? What ... have ... you ... done ... to ... our ... country?'
Oh shoot, my bad. That was Bill Clinton in 1991.
Here is what Obama said:
But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of 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. So it's not surprising then that 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.
For years now, the right has used numerous tactics to find a distraction from the real economic issues that face our country. To wit:
1) The Democrats are going to take away your guns! Vote Republican!
2) The Godless Liberals are going to take away Christmas! And Fox News Channel and Bill O'Reilly are going to tell you (scare you) all about it! Vote Republican!
3) The Godless Liberals/Democrats are going to wipe out your church -Vote Republican!
4) The black people are causing you to pay higher taxes because the are all on welfare! Vote Republican.
5) The Mexicans are stealing your money and health care and jobs! Vote Republican!
The Republicans want people to ignore their economic issues, and use distraction to accomplish their goals. "Ignore that lost job>>>YOUR GUNS and YOUR RELIGION are at risk!
Unfortunately, this works. People voted for the guy that hunts and that you want to have a beer with- the guy that told us that his favorite philosopher was "Christ."
Now, Hillary is no dummy! She was recently photographed doing a shot of whiskey and drinking a beer. She now reveals that she is a hunter, even shot a duck! At least she didn't shoot a 78 year old lawyer in the face (and heart), but I am sure that she wanted to shoot a 50 something year old President of the United States in the face and crotch in about 1998. But her "good ole gal" routine was a calculated attempt to be a redneck, no different than Kerry in his hunting outfit. (And by the way, the Obama "Hillary in a duck blind line today was GREAT!!!)
The Republicans admit that the reason they put "social issues" such as gay marriage on the state ballots is to drive Republicans out to vote. Oh, and while those voters are there they will most certainly pull the lever for all the "R's" on the ballot.
Maybe Obama is just another politician. Maybe he won't change a thing. Perhaps there is no hope to move this country forward, and in a different direction.
But, at least he is talking to us as adults.
Obama Says That Poor People Are Pissed; Everyone Goes Nutzoid:
The thing that's annoying about Barack Obama's statement at a San Francisco fundraiser about bitter small community people turning to guns and God and then hating them some immigrants is not that it was condescending or any such bulls***. It's that it was understating the truth. People aren't bitter. They're f***ing savagely angry or suicidally depressed. Bitter? That's what Hillary Clinton and John McCain have their panties in a wad about? Motherf***ers, the working class passed bitter sometime in about 1986. By 2008, we're lucky that illegals aren't hanging from lampposts in rural America as targets for gun practice while a prayer circle blesses the bullets.
(A Brief Diversion Wherein the Rude Pundit Establishes His Street Cred on Talking About This s***: At the point when the Rude Pundit was a kid and his family was living in a mobile home in a medium-sized Deep South town, the Rude clan was on food stamps while the Rude Dad drove a big rig. The Rude Dad blamed non-whites and rich people for his woes. Rich people more than non-whites, for, indeed, the Rude Dad f***ing hated the wealthy - he resented the s*** out of them, for their luck, for their upbringing, and for his perceived feelings of them looking down on him. In the course of trying to negotiate this devolved class landscape, the Rude Dad tried on different things. He took the family to a Seventh Day Adventist revival meeting, but that just seemed too idiotic. He tried the cult of Amway, but just used up all the samples. And he took the Rude Pundit out with friends to fire guns at s***. The Rude Dad could have given in to any of these as an outlet, but instead, he just simmered in anger and resentment, blaming the powerless for the policies of the powerful, sampling God and guns, but preferring the narcotic effect of TV and cigarettes and, yes, self-loathing bitterness.)
Clinton's and McCain's statements attacking Obama are not just disingenuous, but they are, in fact, the elitist wishful thinking of the privileged class. They want to homogenize the anger, they want to whitewash away the very real differences of class, and they cry the plaintive cry of every wealthy liberal who ever gave money to support a union: "We're all in this together." That's a bulls*** belief. (And Clinton, who has worked really hard for the working class people of New York, f***in' knows better than to say the crap she's spouting.)
Obama wasn't looking down on anyone or disrespecting the workers of America. He was acknowledging something real about small towns where the factories have closed, where the economic centers have been shuttered, and where the people have been told that a tax cut for millionaires is what's going to get them their jobs and economic security back. Obama's giving those people voice and agency: when you are disempowered, you seek other means to have power, whether it's through the gun or through the disempowering of others, or through the comfort of faith, which promises you oodles in heaven for your sufferings on earth.
Yeah, yeah. Now I will accused of "adam" cut and paste. Go for it.
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