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Do you guys really think he literally meant that people cling to guns and religion? Because I took it to mean, based on both what is logical to me, the full context of the comment itself and what he has said since, that he meant people cling to the political subjects of guns and religion.
In other words, when they don't think that their daily lives will improve financially or in any other way regardless of who is elected, they will fall back to their trigger topics like guns, religion, abortion, etc. So when the republican party campaigns on those topics in a manner that speaks to them, those ideas become more central in their decision of who to vote for than matters of fiscal or economic concern. They may like what the democrats say about health care and jobs, etc., but they don't have faith that it is anything other than rhetoric, so they fall back on the topics of gun control, family values, etc. Some may find it elitist of me to say so, but given my experience growing up in a rural area, I consider many rural Americans to be more prone to the conservative 'moral' politics than the liberal ones. And by moral politics I mean things like abortion, 'family values', affirmative action, and so on. They like the idea of tax cuts for the middle class, protection for US employees and universal health care, but they don't believe anyone can deliver. So they fall back on the triggery topics instead.
That I thought was the crux of the discussion. Not that people literally have nothing else going for them when times get tough than guns and religion, but that they don't have faith that political candidates can deliver on anything else, because they haven't seen anyone deliver in so long.
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