More from Matt Bai's New York Times Magazine's Obama Cover Piece
On bittergate: ‘‘That was my biggest boneheaded move,'' Obama told me recently. We were sitting across from each other on his plane, the one with the big red, white and blue ‘‘O'' on the tail, flying some 35,000 feet above Nebraska. ‘‘How it was interpreted in the press was Obama talking to a bunch of wine-sipping San Francisco liberals with an anthropological view toward white work-ing-class voters. And I was actually making the reverse point, clumsily, which is that these vot-ers have a right to be frustrated because they've been ignored. And because Democrats haven't met them halfway on cultural issues, we've not been able to communicate to them effectively an economic agenda that would help broaden our coalition."
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‘‘I mean, part of what I was trying to say to that group in San Francisco was, ‘You guys need to stop thinking that issues like religion or guns are somehow wrong,' '' he continued. ‘‘Because, in fact, if you've grown up and your dad went out and took you hunting, and that is part of your self-identity and provides you a sense of continuity and stability that is unavailable in your eco-nomic life, then that's going to be pretty important, and rightfully so. And if you're watching your community lose population and collapse but your church is still strong and the life of the community is centered around that, well then, you know, we'd better be paying attention to that.''
