Barack Obama’s Remarks at S.F. Fundraiser
Below is the transcript of Barack Obama’s remarks at the now-infamous San Francisco fundraiser in which he stated that rural voters in Pennsylvania and elsewhere in the Midwest have more difficulty connecting with him.
Here’s the full text of his remarks, from which several lines have been excerpted, played incessantly by the media and over-analyzed. Not Obama’s finest choice of words, but nevertheless, a bit different than we’re led to believe …
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Barack Obama: So, it depends on where you are, but I think it’s fair to say that the places where we are going to have to do the most work are the places where people are most cynical about government.
The people are mis-appre…they’re misunderstanding why the demographics in our, in this contest have broken out as they are. Because everybody just ascribes it to ‘white working-class don’t wanna work — don’t wanna vote for the black guy.’ That’ … there were intimations of that in an article in the Sunday New York Times today - kind of implies that it’s sort of a race thing.
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. They feel so betrayed by government that 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, then that adds another layer of skepticism.
But — so the questions you’re most likely to get about me, ‘Well, what is this guy going to do for me? What is the concrete thing?’ What they wanna hear is so we’ll give you talking points about what we’re proposing — to close tax loopholes, uh, you know, roll back the tax cuts for the top 1%, Obama’s gonna give tax breaks to middle-class folks and we’re gonna provide health care for every American.
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 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.
Um, now these are in some communities, you know. I think what you’ll find is, is that people of every background — there are gonna be a mix of people, you can go in the toughest neighborhoods, you know working-class lunch-pail folks, you’ll find Obama enthusiasts. And you can go into places where you think I’d be very strong and people will just be skeptical. The important thing is that you show up and you’re doing what you’re doing.






April 14th, 2008 at 11:54 am
Despite the Childish Political games Pennsylvania residents reaffirm Obama was right! Newspapers Super delegates also ignore the games and endorse Obama!
These Political children posing as adults stupefy me as they continue their ignorant games while the US and the world are going to hell in a hand basket. To explain Obama’s latest gaffe, currently playing all over the airwaves. Speaking at a fundraiser in San Francisco, the hippie heart of the great 60s Satan, Obama made some casual remarks about the good citizens of Pennsylvania and the Mid-west, suggesting that “they haven’t had jobs for twenty five years, they’re bitter, they cling on to their guns, their religion…”. Mr. Change was speaking loosely, because it was a closed event. Yet of course there are no closed events these days. He was right! It was not a gaffe but by his opponents was made into one to be used in their favor and twisting the truth against him!
As usual, they were not casual remarks little pieces were picked from the whole! They were correct and measured as the words of a politically naive would be. Obama is damn right and it is worse than that. However Hillary jumped right on it and twisted it to use in her favor and against Barack to deflect from her own lies and inequities. Her and McCain have a lot of B’s calling Obama elitist when McCain is worth incomprehensible hundreds of millions and Billary just finally announced her hidden tax returns stating in the last 7 years they have earned $109 million much of it in the middle east more then questionably. I hate the friggen games. I just wish too god instead of buying into the childish same old Political games Obama would reiterate the facts on MSM and force those other idiots to confront the horror really facing us and the world.
http://anaverageamericanpatriot.blogspot.com/