Dispatches from the Obama trail: Obama ventured into Hillary territory, quite literally where her father is buried, to Scranton, Pennsylvania tonight and rallied 4,800 eager fans. Under the neon lights of a massive indoor soccer field, Obama also unleashed some of his harshest criticism yet of Clinton, laying out three reasons why he’d make a better nominee:
Difference #1:
“When she talks about experience what she really means is: ‘I’ve been around the track quite a few times, I know how it works.’ So she takes more money from Washington lobbyists than any other candidate, Democrat or Republican, because she says, and she said this in a debate recently, that lobbyists are real Americans. Now, I don’t know if any of you have lobbyists in Washington representing you, but I don’t think so… Then this weekend she starts running ads saying, ‘Oh, no, no, he’s actually taking money from these folks,’ even though we have sent back money that was from lobbyists, we sent back money from PACS. But she just ignored the facts. And listen, understand the argument that she’s making. She’s essentially saying: “Yeah, I’m bad but he’s just as bad.’ What kind of argument is that? What kind of inspirational message is that?”“Difference #2: I think it’s important for the next president to tell the people what they need to hear. Not to say one thing in one place and say another thing in another place depending on what’s politically convenient. I mean, look, we can have a difference about trade policy and Nafta, but what you can’t do is you can’t you can’t campaign on behalf of Nafta when your husband’s the president and then say that you were against Nafta all along when you are running for president. You can’t do that. You can’t say that you’re opposed to the Colombian trade deal and then have your chief strategist lobby to pass the Colombian trade deal. You can’t do that. You can’t be for the war when it’s popular and then when it’s unpopular say I wasn’t voting for the war, I was voting for diplomacy.”
“And, finally, difference #3 (referring indirectly to the ABC debate): I think we need to change the tone and the tenor of our politics so that we’re talking about real problems and no phony controversies. Where we’re trying to unify the country instead of divide it.”
Hillary is scheduled to hold a rally of her own tomorrow morning in Scranton and Karen plans to post on her event. It’ll be interesting to see what her closing argument is to these folks. Scranton, thick with blue-collared white workers, is her stronghold in Pennsylvania – if she loses it she loses the state. It could be diversionary that Obama’s campaigning here — forcing her to defend it — but Robert Gibbs told me earlier they’re looking to “draw votes.” They certainly found at least a few at tonight’s rally where Obama was introduced by Bob Casey and Caroline Kennedy. Obama called the crowd “feisty” when they kept booing Hillary and they interrupted him a couple of times with chants of “Yes we can!”