Obama's Remarks in SF on April 6: Transcript and Video

Since I was at the "Bittergate" fundraiser, I've been getting requests from reporters and bloggers asking for more video. Unfortunately, I am having technical difficulty getting the video uploaded. So, I'm transcribing here what I recorded, without commentary, pieced together with what the Huffington Post recorded. I hope this gives you a little more context for the remarks.

On the Economy:

OBAMA: The period that has just come to an end, in which the wages and incomes of average workers actually went down during economic expansion. The average family had a $1000 less disposable income than when George Bush took office. Part of this was globalization and trends that we can't lay at the feet of George Bush. But we can blame this administration for having made those trends worse, by giving those of us who were winners in the global economy a tax break, those of us who didn't need them and weren't even asking for them. By failing to provide the training that workers needed as they watched their jobs get shipped overseas. So people are having a tough time. They're working harder and harder just to get by. They are paying..they've never paid more for healthcare or gas at the pump . It's harder to save and harder to retire.

They were using home equity as a way of balancing their budgets, and when the housing market crashed because this administration provided no oversight and no regulation, because we haven't given enough concern given to whether or not the economy was working for those at the bottom and the middle...

:: :: ::

Man in the Crowd: "I'm going to Pennsylvania this week to knock on doors for you. What should I expect? What should I know before I go there?"

OBAMA: It depends on the communities you're in. There are communities in Pennsylvania that actually probably have more in common with San Francisco than they do with the rest of Pennsylvania. and Then, there are other communities that you know are you know culturally very different. They have more in common with downstate Illinois than they do with Philadelphia, for example. It depends on where you are.

But I think it's fair to say that the places where we will have to do the most work are the places where people are the most cynical about government.

The people are misapprenhend...I think they're misunderstanding why the demographics in our, in this contest have broken out as they are. Because everybody just ascribes it to 'white working-class don't wanna work -- don't wanna vote for the black guy.' That's...there were intimations of that in an article in the Sunday New York Times today - kind of implies that it's sort of a race thing.

Then, video I recorded:

This portion was recorded by the Huffington Post:

But -- so the questions you're most likely to get about me, 'Well, what is this guy going to do for me? What's the concrete thing?' What they wanna hear is -- so, we'll give you talking points about what we're proposing -- close tax loopholes, roll back, you know, the tax cuts for the top 1 percent. Obama's gonna give tax breaks to middle-class folks and we're gonna provide health care for every American. So we'll go down a series of talking points.

But the truth is, is that, our 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.

Um, now these are in some communities, you know. I think what you'll find is, is that people of every background -- there are gonna be a mix of people, you can go in the toughest neighborhoods, you know working-class lunch-pail folks, you'll find Obama enthusiasts. And you can go into places where you think I'd be very strong and people will just be skeptical. The important thing is that you show up and you're doing what you're doing.

When not attending controversial fundraisers and repeating "Context is everything" like a mantra, Glennia can be found at The Silent I.