One of the first rules of politics is to never talk down to the people you want need to vote for you. Especially in states where you are in a tight race with a candidate who does a better job relating to the type of people you’re talking down to. Enter, Barack Obama:

“[O]ur 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.”

Wow … Or maybe, just maybe, there are people who really believe in the Second Amendment, or their religious faith, or the idea of borders, language, and culture irrespective of their personal economic position.

I guess the real question is whether or not Barack Obama can relate to these types of people in places like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan.