Obama reaching out to the white working class

[DeepModem Mom]

USA Today: Obama reaching out to the white working class
By Kathy Kiely, USA TODAY

BRISTOL, Va. — As he begins the general election contest for the White House, Democrat Barack Obama is targeting the voters he had the hardest time winning in the primaries: those who are white and working class.

The Illinois senator told USA TODAY Thursday that his appearance here in a small town on the Virginia-Tennessee border represented the first stop in a 2½-week tour about economic issues. The trip will also take him to several states won by his rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, during the Democratic primaries, including Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida.

Obama laid out his campaign plans during an interview in the library of Bristol's Virginia High School. "What we're going to do over the next 2½ weeks is focus on the economy, which is what is pressing on the American people so severely," Obama said. During the tour, he said he plans to "offer some very concrete solutions as to how we deal with both the short-term squeeze that (working-class Americans are) under and how over the long term we right the economic ship."...

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The senator, who has faced criticism for not wearing a flag pin on his lapel, sported one here. He initially resisted wearing a flag pin because "my attitude was my patriotism is what's in my heart," Obama said. He changed his mind after an Internet rumor campaign about his patriotism. "I just wanted to make sure that nobody was confused because there were e-mails going out that somehow I didn't say the Pledge of Allegiance and so forth," he said. "I just wanted to knock down those lies."

Earlier, in a high school gym, Obama told an enthusiastic crowd of about 2,000 it's no accident he chose to make his first appearance as the party's presumptive nominee here — in a community where the population is mostly white and the median income is well below the national average. The community represents "so many people who have been forgotten," Obama said. "Washington hasn't been listening to you and hasn't been paying attention to you."...

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-06-05-Obama_N.htm

[OffWithTheirHeads]

1. Well then, it seems I ordered my new bumper sticker just in time

Bitter, white, blue collar, gun owner
FOR OBAMA