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," Obama said. "And they fell 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. 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.
As a piece of sociological analysis it isn't bad, it may even be accurate. A near-perfect thing for a new doctoral graduate to say when being interviewed for a position as Assistant Professor of Sociology, Anthropology, or Political Science. Bill Kristol here points out the Marxist roots of such thinking, there is a lot of nostalgia for Marx in many university faculty.
As a comment by a Democrat, trying to garner the votes of small town blue collar workers and their families, it is a flaming disaster. I do believe BO has a tin ear.
