Big Sky Cairn

The campaigns are aflutter with Barack Obama’s latest words of hope.

“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”

Treating middle America like a bunch of weapon wielding, xenophobic, neanderthals aside; I am a bit surprised Obama would say being anti-trade is an irrational reaction to financial struggles. Probably not the best statement to make the weekend before the Pennsylvania primary.

Obama is not doing himself any favor in the rust belt with misguided speeches like this. All you have to do is take a look at the electoral college maps. While Obama opens up avenues in some unusual places (Texas), it is offset by Republican gains in places like Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Isn’t Obama supposed to be Mr. Eloquent? Not the kind of gaffe you’d expect from the Democrat’s Ronald Reagan.

I guess Reagan had the advantage of a platform of optimism in the status quo, whereas Obama’s platform is that the status quo is so crappy that you have have the audacity to change it. One of these lends itself to happy rhetorics and one does not.

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