Bill Clinton on "the Katrina area of New Orleans"

I've been withholding my thoughts on Senator Clinton's "victory" in Pennsylvania last week. She had been, rather recently, expected to lead the state by something like 20% over Obama. Just before the vote, it was said that anything less than double digits would be a defeat. Initial press reports trumpeted her victory by a huge 10%. Actual numbers, more quietly reported, were 8.6%. This is a woman who has been in the public eye on a national level for 16 years and who claims 35 years of experience. Shouldn't she be able to do a little better in my home state?

But I wasn't going to get into all of this. Until...I saw in The New Yorker that hubby Bill gave a last minute campaign speech in Lock Haven, the small town of 9,000 that was the big town we drove to in order to get anything done when I was growing up. I was a little embarrassed, but not altogether surprised to see that Clinton took Clinton County by a wide margin. Yet Obama won neighboring Centre County, home of Penn State University.

The New Yorker article is pretty amusing. And also somewhat alarming. It makes clear how Clinton (Mr. Clinton, that is) makes people feel as if he is talking about them, even while he is talking about himself. But nothing demonstrates how out of touch he really is more than this claim: "I am working on rebuilding the Katrina area in New Orleans."

Which area is that?
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Anonymous said…
80% of my city flooded. the lower ninth ward represents about 5 - 10% of my city. So, to me, the 'Katrina Area' is really the whole city plus the surrounding devestated parishes plus the Mississippi Gulf coast. Of course, NOLA is a special case since we would have survived katrina just fine had the levees not failed catastrophically without even being overtopped. The US Army corps of Engineers admitted before congress in June of 2006 that they were responsible for the NOLA levee failures during Katrina. Our destruction and recovery never should have been made into a partisan issue. Many died and our destruction was caused by mistakes by engineers, their managers and their funding source, the US congress - both parties.
12:46 PM
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