That's right ladies and gentleman, I promised that you could hear the spectacle for yourself and *drum roll please...* here it IS!!!!
And if you'd rather not listen to the clip yourself, here's what it says!
You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, a lot of them — 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’ve gone 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, and they cling to guns, or religion, or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment, or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
(all of that is care of http://www.zombietime.com)
I would like to point out that Obama made similar comments on Charlie Rose 4 years ago, here's a link to the entire 58 minute segment if anyone is interested. Or if you're like me and prefer short, sweet, and to the point, that can be found here.
The Charlie Rose version says kind of the same thing, less harshly, and better explained.
Did Obama make that now famous "bitter" comment because he was speaking to the millionaires/billionaires of the Bay Area and thought that no press were in attendance? Most likely... Does he alienate a large portion of middle America with comments like these? Most likely... Is any of it true? Most definitely.
I think that is my biggest problem with this whole "scandal", I absolutely agree with him. When times get hard for people, whether they live in Ohio or California, people stick to what they know.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like the huge immigration issue only came up because Americans feel like their jobs are threatened by immigrants. I don't remember anyone touting "Build the Fence" when we needed low-wage workers to work minimum-wage jobs, at best. And certainly no one was calling out for more stringent visa and green card regulations when our families immigrated to the United States. Who are we fooling? Unless you're 100% Native American, someone in your family HAD to immigrate to the United States. Some people argue that the fence will also help keep out terrorists, help "Keep America Safe!", but if that was really the big issue here we'd be building a fence on the Canadian border, not the Mexican border.
But I digress...
Did Obama slip up by saying that comment? Yes. Does it really show that he is elitist and has been pretending and lying throughout his campaign, as many people have said? No. I think it shows that he's a realist. He has accepted the cold hard facts, sees them for what they truly are, and can hopefully ameliorate the issue.
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