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Hillary's final pitch to Pennsylvania
Dan Rottenberg
Hillary's absolutely, positively
last message to Pennsylvanians
DAN ROTTENBERG
Editor’s note: Monday’s Philadelphia Daily News editorial page published a last-minute message to Pennsylvanians from Hillary Clinton that Mrs. Clinton sent to all local mass media, including Broad Street Review. Since it seemed redundant, we declined to post it at first. However, upon closer examination we noticed that the even later version Mrs. Clinton sent us differed markedly from her earlier message to the News. So we are posting her final open letter below in the hope that it’s not too late to make a difference in the Pennsylvania primary.
By Sen. Hillary Clinton
My family has a long history in Pennsylvania. My grandfather moved to Scranton at age two. He went to work in the lace mills at age 11 and often worked six days a week until he retired. If they had changed the calendar so he could work eight or nine days a week, he would have done so readily. That’s how much he loved being a blue-collar Pennsylvanian.
My father grew up in that working-class family, and although we lived in a Chicago suburb, his heart never left Pennsylvania. As a girl, I often asked him, “Dad, what good is your heart doing you in Pennsylvania if you live here in Illinois? Besides, why are we stuck in this bland sheltered Midwestern suburb when we could experience the bracing life of a genuine Pennsylvania anthracite coal town?”
“I’d move back there in a minute if I could,” my father explained. “But the competition in Pennsylvania was just too stiff for me. That's one smart state, let me tell you!” He was a bitter man, let’s face it. Thank God he could cling to his faith, his guns and his prejudices in times of stress.
Pennsylvania’s rich traditions
My brothers and I were christened in Pennsylvania, and every summer we would stay in the cottage my grandfather built on Lake Winola. Here we fell in love with Pennsylvania’s rich traditions: the heart-shaped bathtubs in the Poconos, the annual re-enactments of the Molly Maguire hangings, the colorful funeral processions for victims of black lung disease— the list is endless. And how we salivated over Pennsylvania delicacies like shoofly pie, scrapple, and a cheese steak sandwich served on a roll (or on unleavened bread during Passover), not to mention Pennsylvania’s abundant variety of starches!
I cherish my memories of our family’s typical Pennsylvania Sunday outings— to see a Broadway matinee, or to stock up on gas, tomatoes and liquor in New Jersey, or to enjoy crab cakes in Maryland— anything to escape our meshugginah state for a few hours. But sometimes our most sublime joys were the little pleasures, like just sitting on our porch at Lake Winola watching the sun set while tract developers gobbled up farmland, or listening to our neighbors’ arteries harden.
Like most working-class Pennsylvanians, my grandfather taught me to drive, to drink hard liquor and to use firearms responsibly, often all at the same time. “A gun is a tool like any other; it can be used for good or ill,” he often reminded me as he pistol-whipped one of my boyfriends who failed to measure up to his wholesome blue-collar standards. “Guns don’t kill people; bullets kill people. And if you must kill people, don’t kill Pennsylvanians. The state’s lost enough population already.”
What you want from a president
Because I’m a Pennsylvanian at heart, I sense instinctively what Pennsylvanians want. You want polka festivals. You want State Stores. You want casinos and potholes.
Above all, you want a fighting president who won’t back down from a challenge when the phone rings at 3 a.m. and there's a heavy breather on the line. When I say I’ll fight for you, I fight for you— not only with foreign governments and Republicans, but also with my fellow Democrats and even my husband and my campaign advisers. Did I mention that I learned to shoot a gun in Pennsylvania?
Believe me, if I didn’t have such heavy responsibilities, there’s nothing I’d rather do right now than knock back a Yuengling with a couple of Pennsylvania codgers in Beaver Creek, or pray the rosary at St. Basil’s Ukrainian Orthodox Church, or grind gefulte fish with my Jewish neighbors, or stand in an unemployment line discussing my favorite Pennsylvania slag heaps.
One Pennsylvania place my parents never took me as a girl was Philadelphia— a hotbed of elitists like William Penn, Benjamin Franklin and Ignat Solzhenitsyn, who never packed a lunch pail or shot a deer, or even a teenager. But if I manage to blow this primary, I promise to personally climb to the top of City Hall Tower with a machine gun and open fire. Because I’m a fighter. Did I mention that I learned to shoot in Pennsylvania?
last message to Pennsylvanians
DAN ROTTENBERG
Editor’s note: Monday’s Philadelphia Daily News editorial page published a last-minute message to Pennsylvanians from Hillary Clinton that Mrs. Clinton sent to all local mass media, including Broad Street Review. Since it seemed redundant, we declined to post it at first. However, upon closer examination we noticed that the even later version Mrs. Clinton sent us differed markedly from her earlier message to the News. So we are posting her final open letter below in the hope that it’s not too late to make a difference in the Pennsylvania primary.
By Sen. Hillary Clinton
My family has a long history in Pennsylvania. My grandfather moved to Scranton at age two. He went to work in the lace mills at age 11 and often worked six days a week until he retired. If they had changed the calendar so he could work eight or nine days a week, he would have done so readily. That’s how much he loved being a blue-collar Pennsylvanian.
My father grew up in that working-class family, and although we lived in a Chicago suburb, his heart never left Pennsylvania. As a girl, I often asked him, “Dad, what good is your heart doing you in Pennsylvania if you live here in Illinois? Besides, why are we stuck in this bland sheltered Midwestern suburb when we could experience the bracing life of a genuine Pennsylvania anthracite coal town?”
“I’d move back there in a minute if I could,” my father explained. “But the competition in Pennsylvania was just too stiff for me. That's one smart state, let me tell you!” He was a bitter man, let’s face it. Thank God he could cling to his faith, his guns and his prejudices in times of stress.
Pennsylvania’s rich traditions
My brothers and I were christened in Pennsylvania, and every summer we would stay in the cottage my grandfather built on Lake Winola. Here we fell in love with Pennsylvania’s rich traditions: the heart-shaped bathtubs in the Poconos, the annual re-enactments of the Molly Maguire hangings, the colorful funeral processions for victims of black lung disease— the list is endless. And how we salivated over Pennsylvania delicacies like shoofly pie, scrapple, and a cheese steak sandwich served on a roll (or on unleavened bread during Passover), not to mention Pennsylvania’s abundant variety of starches!
I cherish my memories of our family’s typical Pennsylvania Sunday outings— to see a Broadway matinee, or to stock up on gas, tomatoes and liquor in New Jersey, or to enjoy crab cakes in Maryland— anything to escape our meshugginah state for a few hours. But sometimes our most sublime joys were the little pleasures, like just sitting on our porch at Lake Winola watching the sun set while tract developers gobbled up farmland, or listening to our neighbors’ arteries harden.
Like most working-class Pennsylvanians, my grandfather taught me to drive, to drink hard liquor and to use firearms responsibly, often all at the same time. “A gun is a tool like any other; it can be used for good or ill,” he often reminded me as he pistol-whipped one of my boyfriends who failed to measure up to his wholesome blue-collar standards. “Guns don’t kill people; bullets kill people. And if you must kill people, don’t kill Pennsylvanians. The state’s lost enough population already.”
What you want from a president
Because I’m a Pennsylvanian at heart, I sense instinctively what Pennsylvanians want. You want polka festivals. You want State Stores. You want casinos and potholes.
Above all, you want a fighting president who won’t back down from a challenge when the phone rings at 3 a.m. and there's a heavy breather on the line. When I say I’ll fight for you, I fight for you— not only with foreign governments and Republicans, but also with my fellow Democrats and even my husband and my campaign advisers. Did I mention that I learned to shoot a gun in Pennsylvania?
Believe me, if I didn’t have such heavy responsibilities, there’s nothing I’d rather do right now than knock back a Yuengling with a couple of Pennsylvania codgers in Beaver Creek, or pray the rosary at St. Basil’s Ukrainian Orthodox Church, or grind gefulte fish with my Jewish neighbors, or stand in an unemployment line discussing my favorite Pennsylvania slag heaps.
One Pennsylvania place my parents never took me as a girl was Philadelphia— a hotbed of elitists like William Penn, Benjamin Franklin and Ignat Solzhenitsyn, who never packed a lunch pail or shot a deer, or even a teenager. But if I manage to blow this primary, I promise to personally climb to the top of City Hall Tower with a machine gun and open fire. Because I’m a fighter. Did I mention that I learned to shoot in Pennsylvania?
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