A fighter for the non-bitter, "common" man

I guess Hillary's ready to go out and slop some hogs, chew some chaw, noodle some catfish and maybe, just maybe, talk Chelsea into enlisting in the All Volunteer Force because it's such a great job opportunity.

I had the TV on during breakfast this morning and caught the tail-end of some ridiculousness about Hillary Clinton and John McCain's campaign saying that Barack Obama insulted small-town, under- and unemployed Pennsylvanians for pointing out that these people are in fact bitter and cynical after twenty-five years of political pandering, outsourcing, layoffs, tax breaks for the rich and a no-win war where their kids go to die.


It seems the elitist, effete, intellectual Obama had the temerity to say:

Here's how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, and they feel so betrayed by government, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn't buy it. And when it's delivered by -- it's true that when it's delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama (laugher), then that adds another layer of skepticism (laughter).

But -- so the questions you're most likely to get about me, 'Well, what is this guy going to do for me? What's the concrete thing?' What they wanna hear is -- so, we'll give you talking points about what we're proposing -- close tax loopholes, roll back, you know, the tax cuts for the top 1 percent. Obama's gonna give tax breaks to middle-class folks and we're gonna provide health care for every American. So we'll go down a series of talking points.

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.
Mayhill Fowlers, Huffington Post.com April 11, 2008

But these good Pennsylvanians aren't bitter, responds Ms. Clinton. They're just happy-go-lucky "folks" who think that stocking shelves and chasing down shopping carts in the parking lot is the best job in the world, now that the steel mill moved it's operations to Bongo-Congo in order to remain competative in a worldwide "free market" economy. Said Ms. Clinton of these happy-go-lucky "folks":

"It's being reported that my opponent said that the people of Pennsylvania who've faced hard times are bitter. Well, that's not my experience. As I travel around Pennsylvania, I meet people who are resilient, who are optimistic, who are positive who are rolling up their sleeves. They're working hard every day for a better future for themselves and their children. Pennsylvanians don't need a president who looks down on them. They need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them."

Certainly these non-bitter, resilient optimists know how Ms Clinton fought for workers' rights during her six-year tenure as board member and general counsel for Wal Mart. And they must also know she fought her husband, Bill, tooth and nail over the ratification of NAFTA.

That was yesterday. Today this tireless fighter for the little guy, Ms. Clinton said:

"[I'm]taken aback by the demeaning remarks Sen. Obama made about people in small town America."

"Sen. Obama's remarks are elitist and out of touch, they are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans, certainly not the Americans I know, not the Americans I grew up with, not the Americans I lived with in Arkansas or represent in New York."
CNN Political Ticker.com

Now if that kind of crap isn't enough to make one bitter and cynical you're just not paying attention.