The following is a full transcript of remarks delivered by Senator John McCain before supporters after a Roanoke Virginia prayer breakfast on Sunday:

So, it depends on where you are, but I think it’s fair to say that the places where we are going to have to do the most work are the places where people feel most alienated by mainstream American culture. The people are mis-appre…I think they’re misunderstanding why the issues in our, in this and past contests have broken out as they have. Because everybody just ascribes it to ’stuffy condescending eggheads don’t wanna work — don’t wanna vote for a decorated veteran with a proven record of reaching across the aisle on national security and domestic policy issues. They’d rather vote for a half term senator who’s spent half of that term campaigning for President’ That’s…there were intimations of that in an article on Michelle Malkin’s weblog today - kind of implies that it’s sort of an alienation, or perhaps a condescension thing.
Here’s how it is: in a lot of these educated enclaves in states across the Union, places like Berkeley, Ann Arbor, Cambridge, Chapel Hill, and Takoma Park Maryland, people have been alienated from their fellow Americans so long, and they feel so betrayed by government, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about their fellow Americans, then a part of them just doesn’t buy it. And when it’s delivered by — it’s true that when it’s delivered by an old fighter pilot named John McCain (laugher), then that adds another layer of skepticism (laughter).

But — so the questions you’re most likely to get about me, ‘Well, what is this guy going to do for me? Where are the tenure track professorships in women’s studies? When will I get an NEA grant to put on my play, a dialogue in one act between Roy Cohn and Richard Nixon set in an alternate history poststructuralist workers’ America? What’s the concrete thing?’ What they wanna hear is — so, we’ll give you talking points about what we’re proposing — wind farms in places where their sort of people aren’t likely to be inconvenienced by them, we’re going to increase funding for National Public Radio and even the Pacifica radio network. McCain’s gonna provide an immigration amnesty for Honduran nannies, and we’re gonna put pad thai on the lunch menu and celebrate Diversity Month in every American elementary school. So we’ll go down a series of talking points.

But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these neighborhoods in Chicago like Hyde Park, and like a lot of culturally isolated enclaves in the Midwest, the funky little indigenous art shops have been replaced by IKEA, the Tower Records has been replaced by some generic chain record store, and nothing’s been done about it. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna finally be allowed to impose a total ban on cigarettes. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to their Dixie Chicks records because it’s “transgressive” even though they can’t stand country music, or crack jokes about other people’s religion, and even when they don’t, they attend churches and synagogues where the pastor or rabbi is more likely to preach about the virtues of recycling than the word of God, or feel antipathy to people who’d rather read Steven King than Don DeLilo, or worry that Americans misinterpreted Ahmadinejad’s remarks about Israel, or anti-military sentiment, as a way to explain their frustrations.

Um, now these are in some communities, you know. I think what you’ll find is, is that people of every background — there are gonna be a mix of people, you can go in the snobbiest, most elite neighborhoods, places like Portland or you know upper middle-class brie-eating folks, you’ll find McCain enthusiasts. And you can go into places where you think I’d be very strong and people will just be skeptical. The important thing is that you show up, with your anti-abortion picket signs, and your Marine recruiting stations, with your Hank Williams Jr. records, and you keep doing what you’re doing.

In response to McCain’s efforts to target what the Obama campaign feels to be a core constituency, Senator Obama, speaking after a coffee with supporters in San Francisco, stated that he was not impressed: “Has John McCain gone into a Whole Foods lately and seen what they charge for arugula?”

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