Posted on 04/11/2008 7:54:25 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. - Sen. Barack Obama was criticized Friday by his two fellow presidential candidates for statements he made recently at a San Francisco fundraiser that could be viewed as derogatory toward rural America.
"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," Obama said Sunday, according to the Huffington Post web site.
"And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not," Obama reportedly continued. "It's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Obama does not allow reporters into fundraisers held at private residences, so they were not reported at the time.
The comments could fuel suggestions that Obama can be arrogant. They began circulating on the Internet Friday and drew rapid responses from both Sen. Hillary Clinton, his rival for the Democratic nomination, and Sen. John McCain, the likely Republican nominee.
"It's a remarkable statement and extremely revealing," McCain adviser Steve Schmidt said in a statement. "It shows an elitism and condescension towards hardworking Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking, it is hard to imagine someone running for president who is more out of touch with average Americans."
Clinton, campaigning in Pennsylvania, also suggested Obama sounded like an elitist.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
I’ll go you one better. I’m FROM a small town in the midwest (6th generation) and proud of it. Small town Americans are the best in the world, and they know there’s a lot not right about Obama. Like it or not, libs/MSM, small town USA is oftimes who elects a president in the end.
“Imagine a President who has even more contempt for the American people than Jimmy Carter does.”
There are many Americans who return the favor to Jimmy Carter.
No it won't destroy his campaign. But things rarely do. What it will do however is further define him for the electorate. This is all about positioning. For the last several weeks, McCain has seen an opening in Barak's armor in which he can paint Barak as an out-of-touch elite liberal. Look at how McCain dealt with Rockefeller's attack on McCain sense of humanity: he used it to attack Obama and made the point that Obama did not sufficiently dissassociate himself from those comments.
So this statement is like Christmas Day for the McCain campaign. Obama's statement has neatly summed up exactly how they want to portray him to electorate. Now, see where Obama has been positioned:
Yeah, Americans now have a good picture of him now. He's the elite far-left liberal that McCain's campaign wants to portray him as.
Fairly or unfairly, positioning is everything in an election. Either you position yourself or your opponents do it for you. For example, Dan Quayle got positioned as an airhead and once that happened any gaff no matter how small or insignificant fed into that impression. Other candidates could misspell potato, but Quayle could not afford to.
Because of Wright and now this, Barak has been positioned and anything he says from here on to election day will be viewed in that light. Any gaff, any misstatement, any poor choice of words, is going to feed into that perception and will be seen as confirmation of it.
The thing is, once your positioned, you can only change that perception over a long period of time. It can't be done quickly or else your efforts appear to be gimmicks. You look like Dukakis riding in a tank or Hillary releasing a cookie recipe. People figure (often rightly) that you're trying to pull a fast one. The best you can do in the short run is to change the topic and try to emphasis a different perception that plays to your strengths.
Reagan knew how to do this instinctly. When critics claimed he was lazy, Reagan laughed and said: "I know that hard work never killed anybody, but I figure why take the chance?" The perception of Regan's laziness was totally at-odds with the facts, but if Reagan had attempted to deal with by releasing stories about how hard he actually did work, it would not have been effective. Laughing at it, worked and enabled Reagan to move the conversation into an area that played to his preceived strengths, namely his affability.
Obama's probably going to deal with it this way: 1) The story's gonna have legs over the next fews day and Barak will kind-of sort-of apologize for his poor choice of words, assuring us that he really loves the heartland; 2) the MSM will declare the matter resolved because there will be nothing left to say and it will appear that Barak has put it behind him; 3) Conservations will rail about how Barak got "away with it". 4) Barak will start doing some more folksy things that rural people like to do.
In the end though, none of that will work because once Barak messes up again, people will remember that perception of him as an elite liberal snob. He simply is not going to lose that perception and it will carry into November. His best hope is to find a different aspect of his perhsonaility that he can emphasis and use a counter-weight to this one.
In 1995 Obama stated: “These are mean, cruel times, exemplified by a ‘lock ‘em up, take no prisoners’ mentality that dominates the Republican-led Congress” and “that white Americans couldn’t care less about the profound problems African-Americans are facing.”
http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/archive/barackobama/
-snip-
“This doesn’t suggest that the need to look inward emphasized by the march isn’t important, and that these African-American tribal affinities aren’t legitimate. These are mean, cruel times, exemplified by a ‘lock ‘em up, take no prisoners’ mentality that dominates the Republican-led Congress. Historically, African-Americans have turned inward and towards black nationalism whenever they have a sense, as we do now, that the mainstream has rebuffed us, and that white Americans couldn’t care less about the profound problems African-Americans are facing.”
“But cursing out white folks is not going to get the job done. Anti-Semitic and anti-Asian statements are not going to lift us up. We’ve got some hard nuts-and-bolts organizing and planning to do. We’ve got communities to build.”
-snip-
re: the Columbia trade deal. It’s a crime what Pelosi et al have done, indefinitely shelving this. The damage to our country is huge on many levels. (Ditto for her refusal to allow FISA a floor vote). Putting extremem partisanship ahead of the good of our country and people should be prosecutable, regardless of which party is guilty.
I showed that pic to a new programmer from Dell, who joined our group a few months ago and was riding the fence. He jumped on over. (He was amazed at how powerful it was and the fact he had never seen it.)
Obama is a smart guy but the world is full of people who are a whole lot smarter. Yet he's so full of himself, you'd think he had discovered penicillin.
Good comments. I’m not sure the MSM will be completely cooperative with Snob-ama’s attempt to put this behind him in your #2, though, because in this case we also have the Clintonistas desperate to bring him down..... and they still have plenty of allies and flacks all over the media. So I would not be surprised if this stays alive for quite awhile and he could be on life support well before the convention.
Looks like he’s lost his “magic.”
Have you noticed that he responds to criticism and charges with the lamest responses, like he's never had to do it before? Hillary runs the 3am ad, and his response is that it matters what kind of judgment the person who picks up the phone has. Yeah, dimbulb, that was exactly her point! She's saying you don't have any! Then, he says this crp and he acts like people think he's an elitist because he called people bitter, not because he called them racist troglodytes with tiny brains.
"Show him this stuff -— and have him email his family and friends -— one of the videos shows the crotch salute -— we need to keep spreading this stuff throughout America —"
Thre is also a photo of an illegal grabbing his crotch....I think from a photo of some day labourers waiting for work.
I will spoon feed that so as not to frighten him. Thanks.
I think he's stuck with it and it will color a lot of what happens in his campaign. Let me give you an example: last week Obama went bowling and got a 37. The context of his poor score was simply: Barak is a bad bowler and maybe a bit of wuss.
Now imagine the bowling incident had not happened last week but instead happens next week. Because of how he's been positioned, the context is totally different. Barak Obama is the elite liberal snob, so of course when he attempts to go bowling he throws gutterball after gutterball. Who's he fooling anyway? What a phony for even attempting it.
So bowling a 37 now, after this statement and in light of Wright's sermons, becomes a confirming incident of the overall perception of Obama. Hillary could bowl a 37. McCain could bowl a 37. But if Obama bowls a 37 it's because he's an elite liberal snob.
I am officially a ‘broken glass DINO’ now. Can’t wait to vote for Hillary on April 22.
If Obama should manage to be crowned at the DNC convention, he’ll still have to engage in at least ONE debtate with McCain and while they may both be Left of Center, (A) Obama is farther to the Left and (B) will try to paint McCain as a far right extremist with support from racist-sexist-warmongering-zealous-greedy-homophobes. “You know the type”.
He’ll have some rehearsed talking points to brush over in the debate but he’s sure to go off the cuff now and then guaranteeing at least a few “water cooler” moments that are discussed the next day (is his political career DEAD afrer saying THAT or not). And the Networks will be happy because it’ll be the cheapest “reality tv” drama they every had to air.
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