Obama: God, guns are only refuge of bitter Pennsylvanians
OBAMA CAMPAIGN
Thirty words White House hopeful Barack Obama said at a private California fund-raiser threatened Friday to torpedo any hopes he had of catching up to Hillary Clinton in the all-important Pennsylvania primary election 10 days from now.
Talking about how the loss of jobs over 25 years has sapped the hope of small-town Pennsylvania residents, Obama said at the Sunday fund-raiser, "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."
After the quotes surfaced on a political blog Friday, Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and GOP hopeful John McCain immediately decried them as evidence that Obama is "elitist" or "out of touch."
"My opponent said that the people of Pennsylvania who faced hard times are bitter. Well, that's not my experience," Clinton told a crowd in Philadelphia. "As I travel around Pennsylvania, I meet people who are resilient, who are optimistic, who are positive, who are rolling up their sleeves ... Pennsylvanians don't need a president who looks down on them, they need a president who stands up for them."
McCain senior adviser Steve Schmidt said, "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's double-digit lead over Obama in Pennsylvania has been shrinking in recent days as Obama toured the state and outspent Clinton on broadcast advertising.
Even if Clinton wins Pennsylvania, Obama enjoys a wide lead in the delegates heading into this summer's convention.
But he was put on defense in Pennsylvania, after his remarks were posted Friday on the Huffington Post Web site by blogger Mayhill Fowler, who also provided an audiotape of the remarks. Fowler told CNN she was at the closed fund-raiser because she donated $2,300 to Obama's campaign. On Sunday, she had written a shorter column revealing Obama's speculating about possible vice-presidential running-mates but did not say anything about the controversial comments on small-town Pennsylvania residents.
"Frankly, I didn't want to bring down the campaign," Fowler told CNN. "Then I thought about it . . . the remarks bothered me enough that I wanted to write them up."
At a rally in Terra Haute Friday night, Obama defended his remarks, saying, "Out of touch? Out of touch? I mean, John McCain -- it took him three tries to finally figure out that the home foreclosure crisis was a problem and to come up with a plan for it, and he's saying I'm out of touch? Sen. Clinton voted for a credit card-sponsored bankruptcy bill that made it harder for people to get out of debt after taking money from the financial services companies, and she says I'm out of touch?
"No, I'm in touch. I know exactly what's going on. I know what's going on in Pennsylvania. I know what's going on in Indiana. I know what's going on in Illinois. People are fed up. They're angry, and they're frustrated, and they're bitter."
Here is the larger context of Obama's comments as reported on the Huffington Post web site:
"The places where we are going to have to do the most work are the places where people are most cynical about government ... everybody just ascribes it to 'white working-class don't wanna work -- don't wanna vote for the Black guy.' ... There were intimations of that in an article in the Sunday New York Times today -- kind of implies that it's sort of a race thing.
"In a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long. They feel so betrayed by government that when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, 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 a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama, then that adds another layer of skepticism," Obama said to laughter.
"So the questions you're most likely to get about me, 'Well, what is this guy going to do for me? ... we'll give you talking points about what we're proposing -- to close tax loopholes ... roll back the tax cuts for the top on perent. Obama's gonna give tax breaks to uh middle-class folks and we're gonna provide healthcare for every American.
"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 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. 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. And 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.
"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 toughest neighborhoods, you know working-class lunch-pail folks, you'll find Obama enthusiasts. And you can go into places where you think I'd be very strong and people will just be skeptical."
