Are People Bitter in Pennsylvania?
We are heading there now to find out. As you have probably heard, there is an uproar over recent comments made by Presidential hopeful Barack Obama about the people who live in small towns in Pennsylvania, and other small towns in the Midwest.
Here’s the quote:
“Our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives,” he said. “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 going to 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.”
Hillary Clinton and John McCain have plenty to say about what he said…
“Pennsylvanians don’t need a president who looks down on them. They need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them,” Clinton said Friday afternoon at a campaign stop in Philadelphia. She said the Pennsylvanians she’s met aren’t bitter, but “resilient” and “positive.”
McCain adviser Steve Schmidt called Obama’s statement “remarkable” and “extremely revealing.” “It shows an elitism and condescension towards hardworking Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking,” Schmidt said. “It is hard to imagine someone running for president of the United States who is more out of touch with average Americans.”
So, this morning, we packed up our cameras and live truck and are heading to Allentown (we are all in the truck now listening to Billy Joel’s song “Allentown” as I write this to get us in the mood….) We are almost to our location – a diner where many locals hang, and are going to talk to them about what Obama said and how they feel about it.
My opening line? “are you bitter?” This should be interesting…. stay tuned
UPDATE: 11:45am. First interview; Thomas Graham who I found outside the Gate 7 diner in Allentown, here’s what he had to say
This is John McGurrin, a retired school teacher, Navy Vet, and former 30 resident of Allentown