Reaching out to middle class in Pa.

Associated Press

September 6, 2008

DURYEA, Pa. - Democrat Barack Obama called Republican rival John McCain's acceptance speech the final piece of an out-of-touch convention that focused on its nominee's biography instead of the struggles of the middle class.

"If you watched the Republican National Convention over the last three days, you wouldn't know that we have the highest unemployment in five years, because they didn't say a thing about what is going on with the middle class," Obama told workers at a specialty glass factory.

"They spent a lot of time talking about John McCain's biography, which we all honor," the Illinois senator said. "They talked about me a lot, in less than respectful terms. What they didn't talk about is you and what you're seeing in your lives and what you're going through."

Obama noted that the nation's unemployment rate zoomed to a five-year high of 6.1 percent in August, according to a government jobs report issued yesterday. "We've now lost 605,000 jobs since the beginning of this year," he said. "We've had eight consecutive months of job losses."