President Barack Obama plans to campaign for Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania next month, the state that he once said was home to “bitter” voters who “cling to guns or religion” because of their economic status.
In April 2008, then-candidate Obama dismissed rural Americans in Pennsylvania who were left behind by both Republican and Democratic administrations.
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. 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.
President Obama won’t travel to these towns to campaign for Hillary, but will campaign in the city of Philadelphia.
“President Obama will lay out the high stakes of November’s election for Pennsylvania families and encourage Pennsylvanians to register to vote ahead of the October 11 deadline,” the Hillary campaign wrote in a statement announcing the event.
The rally is set for Tuesday, September 13.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.