Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro critiqued former President Barack Obama‘s infamous “bitter” comments from 2008 in an interview this week, as part of a broader conversation about Democrats struggling to win back the working class.
Obama made the controversial comments during a fundraising event in San Francisco, arguing that small towns in the Midwest saw jobs disappear over the previous decade and have begun to “cling” to harmful beliefs.
“And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are going to regenerate and they have not,” Obama said at the time. “And it’s not surprising then 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.”
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