I waited, and waited, and waited.
I waited for Obama to say it. I waited for the staff to say it. The surrogates. The supporters. The damn pundits. Alas, (to my knowledge) no one did.
The talking heads (and I use the word "heads" loosely as it insinuates the presence of a brain) gave it a name, bittergate. Then some argued that it obviously isn't/wasn't/cannot-be bittergate, it's CLINGate, stupid (and looky here, it might just work as a verb as well). Bitter, cling, guns, church, elitist, yada yada yada.
What I found astonishingly overlooked from Obama's S.F. fund-raiser answer was the following (emphasized):
But the 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.
I read the line "but the truth is..." over and over. "No evidence".
He said "no evidence"?
AHA!
Could he have meant to say that we have to convince small-town-America folks that the issues they thought would never be affected by politicians might have a chance to be brought to the table for real progress and change this time around? See, folks don't "cling to guns". They don't "cling to religion". They cling to issues and policies relating to guns and religion and they vote based on said issues.
Let us try a different version of Obama's answer (alterations/additions emphasized):
...So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to proposed policy relating 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, since, on other issues that matter, such as the economy and healthcare, the promises had been made, and broken for 25 years straight...
Somehow, the (altered) quote makes a bit more sense to me as it speaks to what I have always perceived to be reality in the political realm. I need not tell the readership of this here forum about the number of times a lying, no-good Republican won an election by drowning the dialog on healthcare and framing as the focal and most critical point of a contest a religiously-charged issue such as gay marriage.
Thoughts?