A Stitch in Haste

A blog I don't read, on the Obama "bitter" kerfuffle:

By nearly every measure, working-class Midwesterners and Pennsylvanians, black and white, have been left behind for the last thirty years. They were failed by Clinton and Bush administration policies that allowed major corporations tax breaks for sheltering their money in offshore havens. They were stiffed by a wild-West subprime mortgage market whose collapse has forced many blue-collar homeowners into foreclosure. They lived in places that have been ravaged by sixty years of systematic federal disinvestment. They were left behind by the Republican evisceration of labor laws that once protected the rights of workers to organize. They have watched their wages have stagnated, as their pensions and benefits have been cut, and as their once decent jobs have been replaced by McJobs.

To which I commented at a blog I do read, which cited the above passage favorably:

So everyone's to blame except: (1) the unions that collectively bargained almost every heavy industry in America straight into bankruptcy, and (2) the local politicians who had decade after decade to "do something" about their declining economic bases? Go figure.

New York City has seen its economic base wiped out with a regularity that would put cicadas to shame. Slave-running gave way to agriculture gave way to Erie Canal terminus gave way to light manufacturing gave way to finance gave way to heavy manufacturing gave way to corporate nexus gave way to shipping gave way to heavy industry gave way to new corporate nexus gave way to finance gave way to "Silicon Alley" gave way to...

Times change, economies change — cities must change too. New York has been doing so for almost 400 years. Other American cities, such as San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, Seattle, St. Louis, San Diego, and countless others have, via their entrepreneurs, likewise reinvented themselves with at least some success.

What, exactly, are Pittsburgh's, Cleveland's and Detroit's excuse (besides "systematic federal disinvestment" -- whatever that is supposed to mean)?

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As for Obama's speech itself, I have little to add except to take exception to the inclusion of gay marriage in his laundry list of scapegoats. People don't vote against gay marriage because they're "bitter." People vote against gay marriage because they're cruel, vicious, loathsome, un-Christian bigots. No other explanation is required or acceptable.