(Crossposted at Old Man McCain)
Let's not get fooled about who the real "elitists" are in this Presidential campaign.
I'm not even going to talk about Hillary Clinton. You can find a takedown of her shamelessness and hypocrisy elsewhere.
This is an anti-McCain post. Let's talk about John McCain.
McCain Campaign Statement on Obama's "Bitter" Remarks - April 11th, 2008:
It shows an elitism and condescension towards hardworking Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking. It is hard to imagine someone running for president who is more out of touch with average Americans.
John McCain and his heiress wife are worth in excess of 100 million dollars. They own at least 8 houses. McCain repeatedly votes against the interests of American workers. In fact, he voted to abolish the minimum wage.
But that's not the worst part. John McCain, while pushing for his horrible guest worker plan (which would basically import hundreds of thousands of foreigners to take American jobs), told a group of AFL-CIO union leaders that they were too lazy to do honest work, even if they were paid an honest wage.
April 4th, 2006:
But he took more questions, including a pointed one on his immigration plan.
McCain responded by saying immigrants were taking jobs nobody else wanted. He offered anybody in the crowd $50 an hour to pick lettuce in Arizona.
Shouts of protest rose from the crowd, with some accepting McCain’s job offer.
“I’ll take it!” one man shouted.
McCain insisted none of them would do such menial labor for a complete season. “You can’t do it, my friends.”
Some in the crowd said they didn’t appreciate McCain questioning their work ethic.
"You can't do it."???
That's what McCain thinks about American workers. He thinks that even if they are offered $50/hour, they still won't do hard honest work. I don't want to get into a big immigration argument, but we all know that this is b.s. Americans will do any job, provided they are paid an honest wage.
So either McCain thinks American workers are just too lazy, or he thinks $50/hour (which translates to over $100,000 per year) is a low wage. Either way, it's clear that McCain is the one who is out of touch, elitist and condescending. I can't stand anyone who says there are jobs "Americans won't do". That's more insulting than anything Barack Obama has ever said. Period.
Let's hope Barack Obama hears about this anecdote. When he starts slamming McCain on this issue, even Republicans will have to admit this is a devastating counterpunch.
Here is the only YouTube clip I could find of the incident. It's put together by a right winger, so ignore the dumb images and just listen to the audio. This definitely shows how exposed corporate hack McCain is on this issue, from both sides of the aisle. Hopefully JedReport will assemble a better video clip soon!