You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, a lot 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 towards people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations. — 2008

My Take – As a citizen who comes from one of those small towns in the midwest, where for a long time jobs were hard to find, but people held on through the lean years with hard work and taking care of each other, the President can kiss my bitter, clinging butt.  While those of us in fly over country kept our faith in ourselves, in our country, in our heritage, and in our religion, our ‘betters’ in the more ‘enlightened’ parts of the country have been promising the profits of our labor to three generations of people who think that welfare is a career, not a temporary situation.   I hate to break it the President, but it’s those of us who refuse to let go of the bedrock upon which our country was founded and built that keep the wheels on while profligate twits like him debate how many welfare cheats can dance on the head of a pin.