I have to admit, when I first heard the “Breaking News” concerning Barack’s “condescending” remarks towards the people of small town Pennsylvania, and the responses of the Clinton and McCain campaigns, my first though was, “Oh no, Barack, you finally slipped up. You’ve done a pretty good job of staying out of trouble so far, had a little issues with Rev. Wright, but you covered that pretty magnificently, but now you’ve gone and done it.”

Then I got to thinking, and thanks to a long conversation on the topic with a friend, I came to realize that this isn’t a slip up at all. Barack doesn’t feel that way either. What he said is exactly right. The American people (and if Pennsylvania is really as bad as they say, then particularly Pennsylvanians) are frustrated with the economic situation. We’ve seen the American economy deteriorate over the last few years for a number of reasons. Obviously this neo-conservative idiocy about cutting taxes for the wealthy and increasing spending simultaneously while ignoring the little guy has a lot to do with it. But the Democrats are at fault too. The Clinton Era indeed was an age of peace and prosperity unseen in America since perhaps the 20s, but it was not exactly a progressive era. We made no real move forward, or at least not any that couldn’t be very quickly undone by a new administration. People are frustrated and bitter, I don’t think this is a false statement or a bit of elitism at all. It’s honesty we have not seen in ages (perhaps Jimmy Carter? then again, I wouldn’t know, I wasn’t alive then, but it certainly hasn’t happened since 1980). Whether Barack can actually bring any real change or not is another matter, but certainly neither of the other two can, and he at least talks the best game of the three.

Now, to address the other half of the statement, that “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.” Again, not much to complain about here. He hits it right on the head. People frequently turn to faith in times of trouble because they feel there needs to be an explanation for something, and they put their trust in God. Or they try to project the cause of their problems onto others, immigrants, academics, foreigners, etc. This was a true statement. What he describes is merely human nature. It was perhaps not the most diplomatic choice of words in deciding to use the word “cling,” but for one, no one except for Chris Matthews will make a big deal of something so small, and secondly, I think this probably indicates that Barack understands the nature of the relationship people have with their guns and religion. The thing is, people do not like when someone else understands them better than they do, and perhaps it would serve Barack well to hide this fact.

Barack should get out and make a point of the fact that people turn to their faith in times of hardship. He should talk about how he understands how important faith is to people in times of difficulty, and use this to bolster his Christian image. I know I just wrote a post about how annoyed I was that the two of them were going to sit down and talk about religion this weekend, and know I’m sounding a bit hypocritical right about now, but the truth is that no matter how much it disgusts me, the prospect of dealing with four years of McCain is so utterly terrifying, and I’m so sick of Hillary, that I’m ok with just about whatever Barack needs to do to get elected. I always have been a fan of politics…

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