After Trump shockingly won Pennsylvania, we should remember that when Obama talked about "bitter clingers" back in 2008, he was talking about Pennsylvania.

Here's the Huffington Post article by Mayhill Fowler, originally published in April 2008, about a fundraising speech by the candidate Barack Obama. He was speaking in San Francisco, but he was talking about Pennsylvania. And Fowler describes Obama's interactions with people in town hall meetings in Pennsylvania:

In Harrisburg two weeks ago, one person called on by Obama chose not to ask a question. Instead a man who introduced himself as only Dennis told Obama, “Make a speech on patriotism because the Republican Party does not own the flag.” In Wilkes-Barre a few days later, Obama fielded a similar comment from a man who said, “I believe that this nation now has dangerously low levels of patriotism and national pride.... My question to you is How are we going to reestablish America’s reputation to Americans?” 

In other words: Can we make America great again?

At the link, you can read the full text and listen to the audio of what Obama said to the elite-donor types in San Francisco. I'll excerpt some of it and do some boldfacing. The idea is to understand how the Democrats lost Pennsylvania this year:

"At Off the Bus, because they're not part of the professional gaggle, they can come up with their own views of what's happening..."

About that blogger who got Bill Clinton to call Todd Purdum a "scumbag"... and 2,500 other blogger-reporters boosted by Huffington Post.

Mayhill Fowler says she never planned to ask Bill Clinton the question that unleashed a decidedly unpresidential tirade....

Fowler had her tape recorder going when [Barack Obama] made his ill-fated remarks about frustrated small-town residents turning to guns, God or anti-immigrant sentiments....

Mary Katherine Ham, a conservative blogger, says that while she would insist on identifying herself, "politicians need to learn that anyone can break news, and citizens who run into you -- even if you're not writing for the Huffington Post -- can post it anywhere."

In an e-mail, Fowler says she has come to realize that her presence "flummoxes some longtime journalists -- because suddenly here I am, unpaid but as a consequence with much more freedom to find out what's going on out there, and writing for a new and encroaching media that is a Wild Wild West of lawlessness."

A Wild Wild West of lawlessness — otherwise know as a marketplace of ideas.

"She was admitted to the private San Francisco fund-raiser as an activist blogger and then functioned as a journalist."

Mayhill Fowler, the blogger who brought us that Obama quote (about bitter small-towners with their guns and their religion). So, bloggers are supposed to know their place, eh? If she were really a journalist, she'd have viewed the event as off the record. But she was a blogger — a pro-Obama blogger — so the idea was she'd boost their candidate. But — oh, no! — she blurred the line!

The whole episode gives a revealing glimpse into yet even more ways in which the Internet is changing the coverage of politics....

There’s a bit of a brush fire in California about how Ms. Fowler got in, and Ms. Fowler is protecting the person who secured her a ticket. That person has since called her and said that fund-raisers are always off the record.

“This was never conveyed to me,” Ms. Fowler said. “I was invited to the event, I had written on fund-raisers in the past, why wouldn’t I this time?” She said the Obama campaign had never objected before to her having written about fund-raisers (though admittedly, nothing much of interest had happened). And the invitations said nothing about being closed to the press. Besides, she said, several guests brought people and children and who had not been invited.

“We had a fundamental misunderstanding of my priorities,” Ms. Fowler told me. “Mine were as a reporter, not as a supporter. They thought I would put the role of supporter first.”...

Ms. Fowler said she held her digital recorder openly. The place was jammed with others using video cams and cell phone cameras...

Ms. Fowler said she found his response "professorial" and judgmental toward blue-collar voters and that even though she supports him, she was "taken aback" by them.

“I’m a religious person, and I grew up poor in a very wealthy family -- sometimes we didn’t have enough to eat, but my larger family was rich,” she said. Her father was a hunter. “Immediately, the remarks just really bothered me. For the first time, I realized he is an elitist.”

Oh, is "professorial" really so bad? I guess it is. But this notion that because Fowler was viewed as a supporter (a pose a journalist can't take), she wasn't free to talk about what she observed... I can't accept that. Of course, the campaigns have to worry that bloggers are loose cannons. Let them worry. They can try to use us for PR, but we're free agents. Access doesn't buy silence.