From a comment here at myDD.

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I live in PA. I asked a friend at a birthday gathering on Saturday if she had heard what Obama said about Pennsylvanians and she replied,

"No I'm not cultured enough to follow the news but I am going to church tomorrow with my gun to spread hate on immigrants. And naturally, I do this all because I am poor."

Last Sunday, just back from his six day bus tour of the state of Pennsylvania, "Professor" Snob-ama told the "Swells" ALL about the "Rubes".

How Obama's comments will hurt him the most.

Politico's Mike Allen has 12 reasons why Obama's words will hurt him.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/040 8/9561.html

Beyond the Democratic primaries, this is what I think is the most damaging part of his comments.

9. The comments play directly into an already-established narrative about his candidacy. Clinton supporters have been arguing that Obama has limited appeal beyond upscale Democrats -- the so-called latte liberals. You can't win red states if people there don't like you. "Elites need to understand that middle-class Americans view values and culture as more important than mere trickery," said Paul Begala, a Clinton backer. "Democrats have to respect their values and reflect their values, not condescend to them as if they were children who've been bamboozled."

I can't imagine that voters in these small towns enjoy being described anthropologically to a candidate hanging out with his millionaire San Francisco supporters and donors.

But what is really remarkable about this quote of what Obama told his audience of San Francisco rich folk is how he displayed, perhaps unconsciously, his contempt for those very people whose votes he wants to win. First he implies that they're racist citing the difficulty they might have when the message is "delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama, then that adds another layer of skepticism."

Remember, it was a pro Obama blogger at Huffington Post, Mayhill Fowler, who first posted the transcript and audio of Obama's talk at the San Francisco fundraiser. And she wasn't happy about how he was portraying Pennsylvanians to his California donors.

I'm not sure this is what at least this lot of Californians needed to hear about Pennsylvanians. Such phrases can reinforce negative stereotypes among such Californians, who are already percieved to be in a state already surfeited with a smug sense of superiority and, as an ironic consequence, a parochialism and insularity at odds with the innovation, prosperity and openness for which California is rightly known.

Apparently, Obama thinks that "these people" in industrial states only adopted their values and political positions because the economy in their area started to decline.
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.

Let's unpack that, shall we? Isn't there more of a likelihood that "these people" believed in gun rights even when the economy was doing better? And how does he square this explanation of why someone might "cling to guns" with his attempts to convince Pennsylvanians that he supports gun rights?

Did they turn to religion because of the economy? Might they not just be sincere believers? In Obama's view, do "these people" become religious only because they have a grievance? That certainly seemed to play into his defense of Jeremiah Wright's diatribes against white America.

What does he mean when he refers to their "antipathy to people who aren't like them?" Is he calling them racist, nativist homophobes? And when he calls them anti-immigrant, might he not acknowledge that plenty of people have legitimate concerns about the vast numbers of illegal immigrants coming into our country? Obama himself has called for stronger enforcement at our borders. Is that because he's just catering to these bitter voters? Or is it because he believes that to be the right policy?

And what does he mean about saying that they are anti-trade because they've been beaten down? He's been one of the most anti-trade candidates out there, slamming Hillary for her supposed support for NAFTA and opposing the Colombian free trade agreement. Was Austan Goolsbee correct when he hinted to Canadian diplomats that Barack Obama didn't really mean what he said about trying to renegotiate NAFTA? Is Obama just demagoguing the issue or is he one of those bitter voters also?

Obama tried to smooth over the controversy that has erupted over his remarks in San Francisco by rephrasing his point.
"When you're bitter, you turn to what you can count on," he said at a Town Hall Meeting on the last day of his 3-day Indiana bus tour. "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 into this country. Or they get frustrated about, you know, how things have changed. That's a natural response."

"And I didn't say it as well as I should have, because the truth is 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 want to feel like they're being listened to."
Don't buy the idea that this is, as Obama said, "a typical sort of political flareup."

Hmm, how typical is it for a candidate to characterize a huge swath of his target voters as bigoted, gun waving religious fanatics?

Yup, he's right that he didn't express it as well as he could have. When talking to his wealthy San Francisco supporters religion and gun rights are things that people "cling to" when they're bitter.

In Obama's cleaned-up version, religion ("faith") becomes something small town people "can count on," along with community and family, rather than something they "cling to" on account of being "bitter," along with guns and hatred of immigrants and others "who aren't like them." That's a nice try, I guess, but it's hard to believe it will fool anyone.

Just what Obama didn't need as the campaign moves into Pennsylvania, Indiana, and North Carolina, states full of small town voters who might not like that tone of condescension from a Harvard lawyer whose wife got a $200,000 raise after he was elected to the Senate and complains about having to spend $10,000 a year on extracurricular activities for their children

There's more...

The recent comments made by Barack Obama to an audience of well-monied, San Francisco bundlers and maxed out donors is yet another sign that the junior senator from Illinois is not nearly as smart or seasoned a pol as his followers and admirers were led to believe -- or would have us believe.

To use a sports analogy, Obama just committed an unforced error. And it was a big one.

It's humorous watching Obama and Obamaites in the media trying to spin this problem away by CLINGING to the idea that this is about whether people are bitter or not.

Sorry no, the same "rubes" that Obama has clearly showed he looks down on, arent so simple. They know how deeply insulting Obama was to them, thier culture, thier deepes beliefs.

As Rev. Wright would say, "NO, NO,NO...we're still in bible country here..."

Unlike the candidate's erudite speech on race, (which was designed to sanitize the mentally filthy Reverend Wright in our collective imagination), these comments need not a delicate sifting through of worthwhile thought to find itty-bitty bits of bad. It's just a stupid statement. Period. And now he's goes on and on to defend it

Yes, people do tightly clutch what they have in times when things all around them are being lost. (both residents of rural America and big time urban, hyper ambitous politicans)And yes, there is the tendency toward vesting one's hopes in remote and unseen gods to "get through the day." But the American people aren't clinging to their guns and gods because they are bitter. That is decidedly his argument, and he is wrong.

People cling to their guns and gods because they like them, know them and have a stated right to do so. In good times as well as bad, you will find small town Americans praying and shooting. They like to hunt and they like to believe an enormous universal intelligence is watching over them. They are not bitter. And unlike Obama (who "clings" to his own nutty religious institution) they are not cynical. Most joined their churches because they believe, not because it will get them votes on the South Side of Chicago.

Small town Americans may very well be a little more frightened these days, and rightfully so, but they are, pointedly, not bitter.

Read EX Obama sympatizer Michal Goodwin in today's NY Daily News:  Snob-ama slight a big-time error

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics /2008/04/13/2008-04-13_snobama_slight_a_ bigtime_error.html

Having grown up in one of those small Pennsylvania towns Sen. Barack Obama sneers at, I know what really makes people there "bitter." It's slick-talking politicians who look down on their beliefs and values.

Small-town people get doubly "bitter" when those pols have the gall to ask for their votes while demeaning their lives. See, even hicks don't like being played for suckers.

When they accused Obama of being out of touch for saying small-towners "cling to guns or religion" out of frustration, Sens. Hillary Clinton and John McCain were too kind.

Snob-ama is not just out of touch. He's from another planet.

He might consider going back there, because the White House now looks out of reach.

Snob-ama's lame concession yesterday that his mistake was "I didn't say it as well as I should have" only makes the repeated smear worse. He should get off his Ivy League horse and apologize to the millions of Americans he insulted. As it stands, he has confirmed he doesn't understand or respect them.

Through his warped vision, if you own a gun, oppose gay marriage or want our nation's borders sealed, you're just bitter over your lousy job. Amazingly, he even sees the embrace of God as a reaction to the bad economy.

As gaffes go, they don't get much bigger. Then again, it's not a gaffe when you believe what you're saying, as Snob-ama clearly does.

The trouble started when the Chicago Democrat, after saying Washington had failed to stem the tide of lost jobs, dropped a bombshell on his fellow Americans by saying: "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."

In one sentence, Snob-ama de-legitimized every choice people in America are free to make. It's arrogance on steroids, fueled by a secular, elitist view of middle America as filled with ignorant red-necks.

Turn his screed around and it comes out this way: If the hicks had good jobs, they wouldn't need God or guns. Then the borders could be wide open for the enlightened world to come here 'cause our hate would vanish.

Such a dark view of heartland hearts is not very Christian and suggests Snob-ama really did hear the rants of his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The mentor who led him to Jesus Christ seems a bitter man who wraps his hate for America in the trappings of religion.

If Wright's typical of religious people, God help us. Thankfully, he's not. For the people I grew up with, faith is about salvation and at least trying to love thy neighbors, even as they gossip about them. For many, faith begets hope, charity, hard work and patriotism.

They don't "cling" to faith as a bitter reaction to immigrants or free trade, as Snob-ama uncharitably put it.

Lets get real.

Bill Clinton's first mention of the incident came last night at a Legion Hall in Jacksonville, N.C.

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"Yesterday, Hillary's opponent got into a little bit of trouble by making some comment -- you may have seen it," the former president said. "But the thing that has got me is one more time their side alleged that there was really not much difference how working people fared under me and under the Bush administration. Now if you believe that, I urge you to vote against Hillary."

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A must read new Politico piece lays out the reality of what the Clinton campaign believes but won,t say.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/040 8/9564.html

Why, ask many media commentators, won't Hillary Rodham Clinton see the long odds against her, put her own ambitions aside, and gracefully embrace Barack Obama as the inevitable Democratic nominee?

Here is why: She and Bill Clinton both devoutly believe that Obama's likely victory is a disaster-in-waiting. Naïve Democrats just don't see it. And a timid, pro-Obama press corps won't tell the story.

But Hillary Clinton won't tell it, either.

A lot of coverage of the Clinton campaign supposes them to be in kitchen-sink mode--hurling every pot and pan, no matter the damage this might do to Obama as the likely Democratic nominee in the fall.

In fact, the Democratic race has not been especially rough by historical standards. What's more, our conversations with Democrats who speak to the Clintons make plain that their public comments are only the palest version of what they really believe: That if Obama is the nominee a likely Democratic victory would turn to a near-certain defeat.

Far from a no-holds-barred affair, the Democratic contest has been an exercise in self-censorship.

Rip off the duct tape and here is what they would say: Obama has serious problems with Jewish voters (goodbye Florida), working class whites (goodbye Ohio) and Hispanics (goodbye, New Mexico.)

Republicans will also ruthlessly exploit openings that Clinton--in the genteel confines of an intra-party contest--never could. Top targets: Obama's radioactive personal associations, his liberal ideology, his exotic life story, his coolly academic and elitist style

This view has been an article of faith among Clinton advisers for months, but it got powerful new affirmation last week with Obama's clumsy ruminations about why "bitter" small-town voters turn to guns and God.

....one argument seems indisputably true: Obama is on the brink of the Democratic nomination without having had to confront head-on the evidence about his general election challenges.

That is why some friends describe Clinton as seeing herself on a mission to save Democrats from themselves. Her candidacy may be a long shot, but no one should expect she will end it unless or until every last door has been shut.

Skepticism about Obama's general election prospects extends beyond Clinton backers. We spoke to unaffiliated Democratic lawmakers, veteran lobbyists, and campaign operatives who believe the rush of enthusiasm for Obama's charisma and fresh face has inhibited sober appraisals of his potential weaknesses.

The concerns revolve around two themes.

The first is based on the campaign so far. If the voting patterns evident in many states in nomination voting continued into the fall they would leave Obama vulnerable if McCain can approximate the traditional GOP performance in key states.

The second is based on fear about the campaign ahead.

But all this was in a Democratic contest. What about about when Obama's running against a Republican?

Let's take the first point: Obama's electoral coalition. His impressive success to date comes predominately from strong support among upscale, college-educated whites and overwhelming support from African-Americans.

But there is reason to question whether he would be able to perform at average levels with other main pillars of the traditional Democratic coalition: blue-collar whites, Jews and Hispanics.

Obama lost the Jewish vote by double-digits in the battleground state of Florida--where this constituency looms large--and that was before controversy over the anti-Israel remarks of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

He won only about one-third of Hispanic votes on Super Tuesday - and did even worse a month later in Texas. A Democratic nominee needs big margins with Hispanics to win states like New Mexico, California, Colorado and Arizona. In the fall, Obama would be running against a Republican with a record on immigration that will resonate with Hispanics.

Then there's the lower-income white vote. Does it seem odd that a woman with a polarizing reputation would be rolling up enormous margins among some of the country's most traditional voters? Three out of every four blue-collar whites in small-towns and rural areas of Ohio voted for Clinton over Obama on March 4.
Fair enough. But McCain would be challenging Obama on a range of issues that would complicate this coming together---issues that Clinton did not use or used minimally because they would not be particularly effective.

McCain, by contrast, would have a free hand to exploit a paper trail showing Obama's evolution---opponents would say reversals--over the past decade from liberal positions on gun control, the death penalty, and Middle East politics. He would exploit Obama's current position in favor of driver's licenses for illegal immigrants and beginning diplomatic talks with U.S. adversaries like the dictators of Iran and Venezuala. Will those issues help lower-income white voters "come back together" with Obama?

Those issues are all in-bounds.

What about the issues that most journalists and probably McCain himself will consider out-of-bounds but that, if recent history is any guide, will echo nonetheless in the general election?

The last two Democratic nominees, Al Gore and John F. Kerry, were both military veterans, and both had been familiar, highly successful figures in national politics for more than two decades by the time they ran.

Both men lost control of their public images to the right-wing freak show--that network of operatives and commentators working mostly outside of the mainstream media--and ultimately lost their elections as many voters came to see them as exotic, elitist, out-of-touch, phony, and even unpatriotic.

Obama is a much less familiar figure than Kerry or Gore, with a life story that is far more exotic, who is coming out of a political milieu in Chicago politics that is far more liberal.

The freak show has already signaled its early lines of attack on Obama. Many Americans already believe---falsely--that he is a Muslim. Voter interviews already reveal widespread unease with minor and seemingly irrelevant questions like why he does not favor American flag pins on his lapel. Nor does it seem likely that voters have heard the last about Jeremiah Wright.

Obama's advisors said they are not naïve about freak show politics. Their response is that Obama's appeal to a new brand of politics, and his personal poise and self-confidence, will allow him to transcend attacks and caricatures in ways that Gore and Kerry could not.

Obama is indeed poised and self-confident. But the current uproar over his impromptu sociology lesson in San Francisco about "bitter" voters in Pennsylvania raise questions about his self-discipline, and his understanding of how easy it is for a politician in modern politics to lose control of his public image.

Clinton has her own baggage, to put it mildly. But it's been rummaged through for years, so what Democrats see is pretty much what they would get.

The frustration and even anger emananating from the Clintonites comes from being unable to say in public what they think in private.

Little wonder why. Bill Clinton's comments comparing Obama's support in South Carolina to Jesse Jackson's may have been rude and they were certainly impolitic. But it's absurd to contend, as many Democrats indignantly do, that they amounted to a shocking low blow or to "playing the race card."

The reaction underscored the essential prissiness of the Democratic contest so far. One can be sure the general election will not be such a delicate affair.

There's more...