Vying for support from steelworkers, Hillary Clinton was jeered when she brought up Barack Obama’s comments Monday about how small-town Americans “cling” to guns and religion.
Long shouts of “boo” and “no” followed the first words of her speech to the Alliance for American Manufacturing on trade policy: “I understand my opponent spent a lot of his time today attacking me,” Clinton said, adding that people in “Pennsylvania and beyond” found his remarks offensive.
Obama refuted charges from Clinton that he is an “elitist” in his speech at the same venue earlier in the day, accusing her of false populism and being in league with lobbyists and special interests.
“Around election time the candidates can’t do enough for you. They’ll promise you anything, give you a long list of proposals and even come around, with TV crews in tow to throw back a shot and a beer,” Obama said in an allusion to Clinton’s visit Saturday to an Indiana bar for beer and whiskey. “But who are they going to be toasting once the election is over?”
The 1,500-member crowd gathered in the downtown convention center wore sweatshirts, hats, stickers and pins pledging allegiance to their unions in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio.
Many were less certain about the candidates, reflective of recent polls showing nearly 20 percent of Pennsylvanians hadn’t made up their minds about next week’s
primary.
“Obama came out in fun and she hit him hard — that hurt her here,” said Rita Johnson, an Obama-leaning Pittsburgh resident.
“Hillary touched on the importance of American manufacturing to national defense a little better,” said Denny Kline, also of Pittsburgh. “I’m leaning her direction.”
On trade, the candidates appealed to their audiences with similar calls to bring back some of the 3.5 million manufacturing jobs lost in the United States since 2000, including more than 207,000 in Pennsylvania, according to the D.C-based Alliance for American Manufacturing, host of the forum.
Clinton and Obama attacked the Bush administration for being weak on trade and monetary issues with the Chinese government, ultimately allowing inexpensive exports to flood American markets and put manufacturers out of jobs, they said. The crowd shared the
sentiment.
Although China was a clear focus of the forum — the host organization recently started an ad campaign called “China Cheats” — one point of distinction between the candidates was on the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Clinton said she’d revise the 1993 agreement, criticized as precipitating job loss in the United States and doing little to relieve economic struggles in Mexico. Obama reiterated outright opposition.
