Posted on 04/12/2008 4:20:28 PM PDT by Berlin_Freeper
Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama on Saturday defended labelling struggling working-class voters "bitter," insisting they have every reason to be frustrated.
"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 ... who are bitter," he said at a rally Saturday.
"They are angry. They feel like they've been left behind," he said of those hit by tough economic times. "That's a natural, natural response."
Obama was slammed by his rival for the Democratic White House nomination, Senator Hillary Clinton, for comments he made at a fundraiser in California last week that white, working class voters, a key voting bloc in this year's presidential race, had turned away from Washington after years of economic decline and cast their votes on social issues instead of economic ones.
"So it's not surprising then that 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 said, according to a transcript published by huffingtonpost.com.
Clinton jumped on his statement as condescending.
"I was taken aback by the demeaning remarks Senator Obama made about people in small-town America," she said at a rally in Indiana Saturday.
"Senator Obama's remarks are elitist and are out of touch. They are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans. Certainly not the Americans that I know."
De facto Republican nominee John McCain's campaign also hit out at Obama's remarks.
"It shows an elitism and condescension toward hard-working Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking," McCain advisor Steve Schmidt told The New York Times.
(Excerpt) Read more at afp.google.com ...
Clinton just “doesn’t get it”. This is her major problem in this campaign. It is almost to the point that she should just keep her mouth shut.
She doesn’t realize that Obama seems to be capable of wiping up after himself expertly! She ends up looking like a kindergarten teacher.
What a dirtbag. Not not Biden, but he fits as well
Waike up ammmeeerika
The media is running interference for Obama on this by the way it characterizes what he said... that the working class is ‘’bitter.’’ That’s not the issue. The issue is that he said that’s the reason they embrace God and guns.
In obama’s world, everyone who isn’t bitter or racist simply doesn’t get it.
“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”
He still doesn’t get it! Now he calls religion a “tradition” instead of a belief and b/c of faith in the Living God. Yeah I just go to church on Sunday b/c it’s a family tradition! What a guy.
Obama’s stance: that he just told the truth in a way that offended is only going to add fuel to the fire, since the problem with his statement is that it is NOT TRUE!!
He just looks like a bigot that hasn’t realized America isn’t made of stereotypes created in the minds of the communists on the left.
“Clinton jumped on his statement as condescending.”
It is. And he meant what he said despite his “backtracking”
The last thing we need in the White House is a “disaffected” minority or Arkansas trailer trash part two.
Mr. Obama, you can have my gun when I’m dead, you don’t have a clue as to the meaning of my religion and bitter, you bet. I’m a child of the 60’s, I resent the beans and hamburgers I had as a child while knowing the poor benighted downtrodden blacks were stealing my father’s job, eating steak, driving Cadillacs and demanding “rights” they already had but were too stupid to use.
Exactly. God and guns are pejoratives to him.
Love the way gun ownership is portrayed by BO as a sign of mental illness or a psychological disorder: ‘They’re stressed by job losses, and so - being depressed - they buy guns...’
My husband and I have both been fully employed for over three decades and — WE OWN SEVERAL GUNS.
Sheesh.
Try another excuse for gun grabbing - that one won’t fly...
Can you believe the way Hillary is attempting to pander to gun owners, in response? An utterly bogus gesture, given her record - these folks must think the average voter is not only “bitter” ...but totally stupid, too.
Obama is right...
I for one, am damned bitter over the MY tax dollars going to support generation after generation of criminal bast%^$# who end up hating me even more each generation...and blaming me for the fact they’re fatherless, brainless and ignorant criminals sitting in prison...
Oh - I forgot — In prison they find SALVATION by becoming, you guessed it — MUSLIMS.. Another group who wishes me and mine an unpleasant death or enslavement....
Seems like a lousy investment....
Yes — I’m DAMNED bitter, armed and fully prepared to take necessary action given the opportunity...
Exactly. This seems to be the MO of the MSM now.
These leftist, socialists can’t understand anything but the power of government. He went to Frisco and called us rednecks, because he simply can’t fathom how Americans believe in God and their family and the Constitution and the second amendment and reject government control and socialist handouts.We love our Freedom, and we know there is a higher power than government. That’s what he’ll never understand Obama is about the totalitarian collective. He knows the Federal Gov’t has been used to buy off the votes of those who depend on it for their meaning in life and their very existence. He naturally assumes that those who won’t accept the handout are really just bitter that they haven’t got the big government payoff yet.
Obama had to be referring to democrat plantation negroes are bitter,not whites, hispanics, asians, or uppity blacks.
It has been sounding as if Obama and his wife are both bitter too. Michelle O. has not been proud of the U.S. in the past and Barry O. seems to be just as bitter as his mentor preacher in Chicago.
You’ll notice Messiah Obama (NOR this reporter) bother to tell us the REAL REASONS those jobs went away...
DEMOCRAT PARTY POLICIES that made doing business here uncompetitive, like:
Over-Taxation
Over-Unionization
Over-Regulation
UNLIMITED CIVIL LIABILITY
Inane Enviro Regulations
I am getting damned sick and tired of being labeled racist when the only racist comments I see come from Blacks!
Not one cent for reparations. Kill the tax exempt status for all of these racist, political churches and let them pay as I do.
Obama stated in his autobiography that. as a student, he attended the lectures and sought the company of marxist professors. Now he’s said that small-town bitterness over economic distress has translated into misguided clinching to traditional relief mechanisms: church, guns, ‘anti-immigration’ (i.e., ILLEGAL aliens). Karl Marx famously said that religion is the opiate of the masses. Clearly, Obama has offered his informed opinion that the bitter masses of small-town America find misguided solace in their Church, not to mention their trenchent gun culture.
Here’s what I think: Obama assumes that White American churches preach bigoted screeds because his Black Nationalist church does. He sees conservative faith as a threat, because it is exactly opposite what he hears in Wright’s church every Sunday.
Right now, he feels vulnerable as a black man running for POTUS. He wishes there weren’t so many guns in America. He fears for his own safety. Think about it-—would you feel safe as a presidential candidate glad-handing crowd of the great unwashed? These fears find voice when he speaks about 2nd amendment issues. He personally doesn’t feel safe, and it tells in his opinions about gun control.
So I think this feller exposes his internal biases in a shallow manner. You can tell a thief by the size of the lock he keeps on his own door. His church preaches racist vitriol. ergo so must ‘whitey’ churches (he offers us an olive branch——it’s because we’re economically embittered-—he feels our pain).
He’s worried about guns, because he doesn’t trust the electorate to use guns responsibly. He’s worried about himself. Socialists can’t abide the notion of an armed populace.
He is right they are bitter about having the country being taken away from them by liberal elites.
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