Was Obama wrong about bitterness?
Barack Obama has taken a lot of heat lately for his remarks that some voters in Pennsylvania are bitter about the economy and lost jobs, and are clinging to guns, religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them. His opponent, Hillary Clinton has, of course, pounced on the comments, claiming that they show Obama is out of touch with ordinary U.S. citizens.
(An aside: Of course Obama is out of touch with ordinary U.S. citizens. He’s worth a boatload of money. Hillary Clinton is, too. Neither of these candidates — nor John McCain — really knows what it’s like to be an “ordinary” citizen worried about paying bills. Worried about the costs of providing Ivy League education to your children doesn’t count.)
The thing is, isn’t Obama right? Aren’t many U.S. citizens bitter about the way the economy has performed? There is no better example of this bitterness than in the housing and mortgage industries. When I talk to homeowners trying to sell their properties, they’re bitter that they’ve had to reduce their asking price two, three times and they’re still not getting any offers. Homeowners who aren’t selling are bitter that the house they purchased two years ago has now lost value. They’re bitter, too, that organizations such as the National Association of Realtors continually promised that there was no real estate bubble, that housing prices would only go up, even as evidence mounted that the opposite, in fact, was true.
And don’t get me started on what people think about the mortgage companies. They’re plenty bitter about them, too. They’re bitter that the U.S. government seems happy to bail out corporations that mucked the mortgage industry up, but not as eager to help homeowners stuck with mortgage loans that are little more than time bombs.
Hillary Clinton can pretend that she was taken aback by Obama’s statements. But that claim is as suspect as her tale of dodging sniper fire in Bosnia. If she is in touch with the ordinary people of the United States, then she knows this economy has a lot of people bitter. And nowhere is this bitterness more apparent than in the housing industry.
