Posted on 04/12/2008 8:41:56 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
MUNCIE, Ind - After a full throated response to criticism that he is condescending, Democrat Barack Obama on Saturday conceded that that comments he made about bitter working class voters who "cling to guns or religion" were ill chosen.
"I didn't say it as well as I should have," he said.
As Obama tried to quell the furor, presidential rival Hillary Rodham Clinton hit him with one of her lengthiest and most pointed criticisms to date.
"Senator Obama's remarks were elitist and out of touch," she said, campaigning about an hour away in Indianapolis. "They are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans."
At issue are comments Obama made privately at a fundraising gathering in San Francisco last Sunday. He explained his troubles winning over working class voters, saying they have become frustrated with economic conditions:
"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."
The comments, posted on the Huffington Post political Web site Friday, set off a storm of criticism from Clinton, Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain and a number of other GOP officials.
The flap threatened to highlight an Obama Achilles heel — the image that the Harvard-trained lawyer is arrogant and carries himself with an air of superiority.
The campaign has been quick to react, hoping to defuse any damage caused with working class voters that Obama needs to win over in upcoming primaries in Pennsylvania and Indiana.
"Lately there has been a little typical sort of political flare up because I said something that everybody knows is true, which is that there are a whole bunch of folks in small towns in Pennsylvania, in towns right here in Indiana, in my hometown in Illinois who are bitter," Obama said Saturday morning at Ball State University. "They are angry. They feel like they have been left behind. They feel like nobody is paying attention to what they're going through."
"So I said, well you know, when you're bitter you turn to what you can count on. So people, they vote about guns, or they take comfort from their faith and their family and their community. And they get mad about illegal immigrants who are coming over to this country or they get frustrated about you know how things are changing."
After acknowledging that his previous remarks could have been better phrased, he added:
"The truth is that these traditions that are passed on from generation to generation those are important. That's what sustains us. But what is absolutely true is that people don't feel like they are being listened to.
"And so they pray and they count on each other and they count on their families. You know this in your own lives, and what we need is a government that is actually paying attention. Government that is fighting for working people day in and day out making sure that we are trying to allow them to live out the American dream."
But Clinton struck hard, calling Obama's comments "demeaning." The increased attack showed that Clinton is eager to hold on to her working class support and is looking to open new questions about Obama's judgment that would make voters and Democratic officials reconsider their support for the Illinois senator.
"I was raised with Midwestern values and an unshakable faith in America and its policies," she said. "Now, Americans who believe in the Second Amendment believe it's a matter of constitutional right. Americans who believe in God believe it's a matter of personal faith.
"I grew up in a church-going family, a family that believed in the importance of living out and expressing our faith. The people of faith I know don't 'cling' to religion because they're bitter. People embrace faith not because they are materially poor, but because they are spiritually rich.
"Our faith is the faith of our parents and our grandparents. It is a fundamental expression of who we are and what we believe."
It’ll be interesting to see what the next rounds of polling in PA look like.
His biggest blunder with his statement, is that he exposed the fact that he is a Marxist.
Your theory on a Hillary plant may be right. I don’t even think they have video, just audio.
Leftists are allowed to get away with saying things that conservatives aren’t. ANYTHING that a conservative says, even if there is nothing wrong with it, is spread all over the media and debated, analyzed and torn apart.
Seems to me he’s accepted at least some, if not most, of the reasoning his wife demonstrated in her thesis about blacks. So, maybe he’s taking what she believes abut blacks and transferring it to what he believes about typical white people.
His teleprompter was broken that evening so he had to speak off the cuff. If you have watched the debates you would see that when he has to think about what he is saying instead of just reading from a teleprompter, he is not the articulate, deep thinker he tries to portray.
I'd like to think he is unique, but apparently not.. btw,, lots of white folk in the crowd.
Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) addresses supporters during a campaign stop at Columbus East High School in Columbus, Indiana, April 11, 2008. (John Sommers II/Reuters)
But but but but this butthead is s’posed to be SOOOOO articulate.
Who’s writing his speeches?
He’s jumped the shark.
if he makes it to the next round, he’ll publicly embarass himself in his first debate with McCain as soon as he goes off script.
“At least he didn’t use Howard Dean’s phrasing of:
God, guns and gays!”
Indeed, but say it purdy or say it plain......BS wrapped in perfumed gift-wrap is still BS! These looneys are peas in a pod!
Militant
Rural whites are frightened dumb-asses clinging to their guns and Bibles, hating anyone different in appearance, they are bred that way, says Obama. Obama clarifies.
I've never been proud to be an American . . . Americans are mean, say Michelle Obama. Michelle Obama .. uh, well . . . perhaps the most honest, vis-a-vis her feeeeeeeelings, of them all.
Well, he's digging a whole where his brain dips in...
Well, OK then, Mr. Barak "Barry" Hussien Obama, how should you have said this? Are there rosier terms you could use, to label and stereotype? Why do you profess to cling to religion? These people are quite different from you, obviously, and you hold obvious antipathy towards them. What does that make you,?
If Junior keeps screwing up, Hillary just might have a chance. What fun.
But you said it the way your base believes it. So you are apologizing for not cloaking your true feelings in softer language.
It’s tough to keep your speeches straight when you are under all that sniper fire. Just ask Hillybilly.
I rarely can watch debates, i am generally sleeping when they are on.
Therefore I get most of information from MSM,
Then I get real story on FR.
I missed that he was speaking off the cuff.
I have known for awhile that he had socialist/marxist leanings.
He is after all part of the democrat/Daley machine out of Chicago
A LOT of people have said things “not as well as they could have”. Doesn’t mean they won’t be called to account for the intent behind the words, or “how it sounded”.
There is a broad, smoldering anger behind the words of a class of individuals, who think that every word uttered by others means that some secret agenda was being expressed. But their own words are “taken out of context” or “meaning is being read into the words that was never there”.
To call children clambering about in trees “monkeys” is not by itself any term of derision, it is only to gain the attention of the children, with the motive to stop them from hanging in the tree. But, if the child is of African origin, suddenly, the term becomes a “racial epithet”, and is an expression of hate.
To do things one way, and demand that others be very, very circumspect about NOT doing things the same way, approaches the height of hypocrisy. Also sets yourself up for not being taken seriously later on, for any of a number of reasons.
Thin-skinned people should not throw darts. Either they use gentler means of reproof, or grow a thicker skin.
And we all know that gentler means of reproof work really, really well.
Or maybe not.
see my reply in #38
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