The comment was taken out of context and have been used as a bludgeon by the
McCain and Clinton campaigns. What this protracted primary is doing is
helping elect four more years of flawed and failed policies.
The contest of some off the cuff remarks.
"[T]he truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we
can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives.
You go into some of 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 gonna regenerate and they have not. So it's
not surprising then that 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."