How will Pa.'s who 'cling to guns or religion' remember Barack Obama?

San Francisco CA

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In an unguarded moment in April 2008, just weeks ahead of the Pennsylvania primary, Barack Obama, then a freshman senator at the cusp of a historic presidential bid, turned the nation's attention to Pennsylvania's working-class voters, a group hard hit by job losses. Speaking behind closed doors at a fundraiser in San Francisco, the then-presidential hopeful spoke of the resentment across the state's rust belt: "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... They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." Obama's comments were instantly incendiary across Pennsylvania and the Midwest, the firestorm seized by his leading Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton, who portrayed him as being out of touch and an elitist. Obama backtracked and rebounded, winning Pennsylvania in a big way in the 2008 election and again (to a lesser extent) in 2012 but his words could not have been more prophetic. The very voters he referenced in his "bitter clingers" remark eight years ago were the same ones - the white working-class, rural, disenchanted and marginalized voters - who helped catapult Donald Trump to victory in November. Filled with gratitude, but still looking to future challenges, President Barack Obama bade farewell to the nation on Tuesday night. Yet, as he prepares to depart from the White House, Obama enjoys a wide approval rating in Pennsylvania, with ratings upwards of 50 percent, including a CNN poll tracking him at 55 percent approval rating. It's a testament, much like the "bitter clingers" rebound, of the complex legacy the nation's first black president has in the state. For his supporters, that legacy is marked by a strong domestic policy that helped generate jobs, improve infrastructure and reform health care. Former Gov. Ed Rendell noted that the outgoing president's Affordable Care Act extended health care insurance to hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians, including hundreds of thousands now covered under Medicaid exchanges. "That's a huge impact," said Rendell, who served two terms from 2003 to 2011. "When you talk about Pennsylvania, his domestic policy is very strong." Rendell included in the bullet points of that legacy the impact Obama's signature healthcare legislation has had across the state's hospitals, pharmacies and doctors' offices. For example, despite a number of disadvantages, notably among them, a lawsuit filed against the ACA by former Gov. Tom Corbett, nearly 800,000 Pennsylvania residents had enrolled in health insurance made available under the legislation as of 2015. That put Pennsylvania among the top handful of states in terms of reaching eligible people. Rendell credited Obama's economic stimulus package - the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act - as having had a substantive positive impact on the state's economic performance. When he left office in 2011, Rendell noted, Pennsylvania was ranked 9th in the nation in job creation. The stimulus, he said, infused $1.7 billion into the Pennsylvania economy, money that was funneled into infrastructure improvement projects for roads, bridges, waterways and energy, creating thousands of jobs in the immediate ensuing years. "The stimulus had a very dramatic effect and our economy," Rendell said. "It did very well. We generated a lot of jobs." The stimulus meant Pennsylvania did not have to cut basic education funding, Rendell said. Pennsylvania, in fact, was among the states that increased basic education funding as a result. President Barack Obama signs the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act during a ceremony at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in Denver. He was a first-term senator-turned-president. A former law professor with little experience in economics or management. When he walked into the White House he had one, clear job: Piece together the shards of a shattered U.S. economy. It wasn't smooth and it wasn't fast, but Obama ultimately succeeded. Obama will leave behind an economy far stronger than the one he inherited by most measures. "It was a great story what he did to health care and education," Rendell said. Add to that, he said, the auto industry, which in Pennsylvania consists of accessories manufacturing. Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, said: "President Obama's efforts to provide more access to health care for our citizens and better protecting our consumers by taking on Wall Street after the financial crisis has helped Pennsylvania families and consumers. The Affordable Care Act has expanded health care access to more than a million Pennsylvanians, including more than 68,000 people suffering from substance use disorder. The President's Wall Street reform has also taken critical steps forward to protect people from losing their life-savings due to corporate greed."