Over at Huffpost, Sam Stein has an interview with former Swampland guest blogger Mudcat Saunders on Obama’s difficulties with white working class voters. He blames part of it on trade, and has this to say on “bittergate”:
“I think it is absurd,” Saunders said of “bitter-gate.” “I think it is the prevailing wisdom of the Democratic Party. That’s just a symptom of the problem. When Barack Obama was saying it, he wasn’t saying that to get people all stirred up and stuff. When he was saying it and you would have asked him if there was something wrong with it, he would have bet you a million dollars to the penny that there wasn’t anything wrong with it, because he believes it. I think there are an awful lot of smart people who believe in rural stereotypes. But the problem with the Democratic Party is that they don’t understand…that a lot of these big city people who have stereotyped us, we have also stereotyped them. Therein lies the problem. See, that’s what happened Barack Obama said that, he played into our stereotype about the big city.”