Bitter?

Sure.

Kunstler:

Barack Obama caught hell last week for daring to tell the truth about the ragged thing that the American spirit has become. He said that small-town Pennsylvania voters, bitter over their economic circumstances, “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them” to work out their negative emotions. He might have added that the Pope wears a funny hat (see for yourself this week), and that bears shit in the woods (something rural Pennsylvanians probably know). Nevertheless, in the manner lately prescribed for those who slip up and speak truthfully in public (and in contradiction to the reigning delusions), Obama was pressured to apologize for his statements.

Barnett:

As soon as I think Obama's pandering too much on economics, he says something this blunt and wise. Of course people get nasty and scared and cling to old shibboleths when they're feeling vulnerable on economics! That's the entire history of our country.

Comments

[Gunnar Peterson]

Yeah, it is misplaced. Please should stop whinging and get to work

"I tell the students that come out here … they’re living better than John D Rockefeller lived. I mean they’re warm in winter and cool in summer and they can watch the World Series. They can do anything in the world. They literally live better than Rockefeller…. Really getting to do what you love to do every day — that’s the ultimate luxury. And particularly when you can do it with terrific people around you."
-Warren Buffett

[dano]

While I respect Warren Buffet and what he has made for himself and his shareholders, I'm not sure we can go to him for wisdom on the experience of being poor and abandoned by the system.

[James Bowery]

The fatal mistake of guys like Buffet and Gates is that they think children can be replaced by luxuries.

It is a mistake that may get them literally killed.

[Michael Tanji]

Guns, religion and xenophobia . . . that's rural America all right, just one variation of Deliverance after another . . .

"Change" and "Hope" isn't bringing coal back to PA; Detroit can have my money once it builds something remotely close to an Accord or a Passat.

That you can't do the same thing dad and grandpa did is irritating, but you might ask my last taxi driver if he thinks moving to where the food is (literally) doesn't beat a life of suck waiting for the old days to return.

[zenpundit]

Obama didn't get a shellacking because he told the truth but because he told a truth in a way that implied that he held a broad class of Americans in contempt. A blue collar demographic that already rightly suspects elite, ideologically Left, Democratic party bigwigs who attend glitzy San Francisco fundraisers of looking down their noses at them.

Visceral reactions like this tend to stick. Hillary has yet to recover from her "stay home and bake cookies" remark in 1992.

[catfish]

So if you want power in this country you can't be painted as an elitist.

Call me corny, but that's so beautiful I want to cry.