More evidence that we are already in a recession, as GE earnings drop.

Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin at Politico examine some remarks made at a San Francisco fundraiser by Barack Obama that seem disparaging toward rural, white voters. From Smith, here is what they are referring to...

You go into 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. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Ann Althouse has some thoughts on the remarks.

At first blush, it seems to me that the remarks representative typical Liberal intellectual thought about socially conservative rural voters. Liberals cannot understand why these voters cannot see that they are voting against their interests by supporting Republicans based on issues like abortion or gun control, instead of economic issues. Of course, Obama throws in anti-trade as an issue despite the fact that he panders to that belief, and antipathy toward people who are not like them, despite the fact that he has as his personal pastor a man who spews racist hatred from the pulpit. The statement also represents a political tone-deafness that makes the comparison with another intellectual from Illinois who ran for President, Adlai Stevenson, appropriate.