Obama was caught in an uncharacteristic moment of loose language. Referring to working-class voters in old industrial towns decimated by job losses, the presidential hopeful said: “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.”
The comments were seized on by his rival for the Democratic party candidacy, Hillary Clinton, who saw in them the hope of reviving her flagging campaign by turning voters in the important Pennsylvania primary on April 22 against what she classed as Obama’s revealed “elitism”.
“I was taken aback by the demeaning remarks Senator Obama made about people in small-town America,” she said on Saturday. “His remarks are elitist and out of touch.” Clinton campaigners in North Carolina handed out stickers saying: “I’m not bitter.”
Obama was right, of course, but it was awful politics and Clinton would be expected to do nothing but jump on it. A lesson she clearly did not remember when she made her also-correct deplorables remark.
Despite an otherwise robust national economy, the analysis shows that a striking number of Trump counties are losing jobs. The AP found that 35.4 percent of Trump counties have shed jobs in the past year, compared with just 19.2 percent of Clinton counties.
Clinton’s problem with the “Deplorables” remark was that she didn’t just own it.
She should have said, “Yeah, I said that some of Trump’s supporters are deplorable. They aren’t all deplorable. I’m not saying you guys are deplorable. I’m saying that you guys are associating with deplorable people, and you shouldn’t, because you’re better than them.”
The people running around with NRA hats or Confederate flags or Immigrant Hunting License bumper stickers are never going to vote for a Democrat, so why bother trying to tiptoe around them? Call them what they are. Deplorable, racist, idiots.
I thought Hillary’s deplorable comment was a huge blunder, but I think you’re right @Timex. The bigger blunder was not owning it.
Well, in some places like PA, some non trivial portion of them actually DID vote democrat. The Democrats used to have much stronger ties to a lot of those folks because they were union workers and the Democrats had strong ties to the unions. In those areas, stuff like racial issues just weren’t what the Democrats bothered campaigning on.
Yeah, because it allowed it to be portrayed as some mistake, rather than a legitimate criticism.
I’m a little surprised also. In one of their segments on tariffs, either the Newshour or NPR Marketplace, did mention possible layoff at Harley.
I wouldn’t give up hope. Earlier lay offs at Harley’s plant in York, PA did make national news as you can see from a Google Search for “Harley Davidson layoffs”. It just take a few days before they will start. Harley is such an iconic American brand, that I would expect the KC layoffs to be included in media stories on the impact of the tariffs
If you took Trump at his word today, he’s ditched NAFTA and has successfully negotiated a new bilateral agreement with Mexico. But … well, the headline tells the tale:
There is no formal free trade deal between the US and Mexico, only an agreement between the two countries on how to resolve key issues in their trade relationship as part of the NAFTA talks. The US trade representative’s office officially described the agreement as “a preliminary agreement in principle … to update the 24-year-old NAFTA with modern provisions representing a 21st century.”…
Trump has repeatedly indicated he would prefer to reach bilateral agreements with Canada and Mexico, but the two countries have maintained a united front that a trilateral agreement is the only one they will sign. There was no indication on Monday that Mexico had abandoned that position.
U.S. farmers will get $4.7 billion in a first round of direct government aid to compensate for market losses caused by retaliatory tariffs from China and other trading partners.
Wait a second. Haven’t all these subsidies to farmers who export goods been undermining free market capitalism all these years? Soybeans have been subsidized for years, so technically couldn’t someone have lodged a complaint with the World Trade Federation over these practices? And the same goes for steel?
