Posted on 05/04/2008 8:38:55 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
Barack Obama insisted yesterday that he shared the same values as voters in white, small-town America, as the controversy over his former pastor’s incendiary remarks continued to damage his candidacy.
Mr Obama – seeking to put the issue behind him during an hour-long televised interview – spoke as new polls showed Hillary Clinton pulling ahead in Indiana and gaining ground in North Carolina, before their next primary battles tomorrow.
The surveys showed Mrs Clinton drawing overwhelming support from white, blue-collar voters and signs of growing alienation to Mr Obama among the group in a Democratic race more polarised along race and class lines than ever. The former First Lady, who in recent days has extolled the virtues of gun ownership and hunting, has even campaigned from the back of a pickup truck as she depicts herself as a champion of the working man.
Mr Obama, who disowned the Rev Jeremiah Wright last week, said that his former pastor had “put gasoline on the fire” when he made a provocative appearance before journalists seven days ago. He repeated assertions that the US Government had introduced the Aids virus to kill black people and defended his “God Damn America” remark made from the pulpit a week after the September 11 attacks.
Mr Obama called the issue a distraction, but said he remained confident that voters would look beyond the controversy. “I love this country. It has given everything to me. It is what I have been fighting for,” he told Meet The Presson NBC. He added: “It is important for the American people to understand my story and how it connects to theirs.” He said that he was instilled with the “values rooted in small-town America”. In the past 48 hours Mr Obama has returned to the theme that was so successful earlier this year: that he is an agent of change, while Mrs Clinton is a cynical embodiment of Washington’s political gridlock.
The centrepiece of that argument is Mrs Clinton’s support for a summer holiday break from tax on petrol – an idea first proposed by the Republican nominee-elect John McCain – when prices are at record highs. She says that it will give working families a respite when they fill their cars.
Economists have derided the plan. It has little chance of being signed into law by President Bush. Mr Obama, who called it a “classic Washington gimmick,” said that it would save consumers 30 cents a day. Mrs Clinton was pandering to voters. “This is what passes for leadership in Washington: phoney ideas, calculated to win elections instead of solving problems.”
Mrs Clinton, appearing on This Week on ABC, defended the plan. She decried “this mindset where elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that disadvantage the vast majority of Americans”. Mr Obama also criticised his rival for saying recently that as president she would obliterate Iran if it launched a nuclear attack on Israel. Mr Obama said: “It’s not the language we need right now.”
The results in Indiana and North Carolina will weigh heavily on the Democrats’ super-delegates – the party’s elected officials and leaders – who will likely determine the race. Mr Obama has an insurmountable lead among elected delegates, but neither candidate will finish the primary process on June 3 with enough to win the nomination outright.
If Mrs Clinton wins Indiana, and challenges Mr Obama in North Carolina – where his 23-point lead has been cut to single digits – it could add to concerns among super-delegates that the Wright controversy, and Mr Obama’s remarks that small-town voters cling to guns and religion, has made him a liability.
Mrs Clinton, meanwhile, will hope that last Saturday’s Kentucky Derby will not be a metaphor for her campaign. The horse she backed, Eight Belles, finished second, and then collapsed and was put down. The winner was the favourite, Big Brown.
He wants to share their money...
...with those who didn't earn it!
Yes, he shares small-town workers’ values. Unfortunately, the small town in question is Berkeley, California.
Sorry, nObama, but you being a half-black Liberal Democrat... 
you just ain't a typical white person like the bigots, religious zealots and gun nuts you said we are!
I see Obama’s “Bitter outside of the Beltway” tour is rolling through small town USA at this very moment...
Give BHO a test, make him build a deer stand, if he wants to pass as a small town blue collar white guy. But that ship has sailed.
Don't forget the overwhelming numbers of black democrats who support the black candidate which also makes them racist. The whole damn'd lot of them are racists
I guess Rev. Wright was wrong about whose chickens were coming home to roost.
Oh, I dunno....it’s all a matter of choosing whose chickens, roosting in whose home? I think they’re coming home just fine, from where I sit.
Yet, never forget, if a White reverend said the sames things as Wright in a White church, reversing it to be anti-Negro, you can bet your bottom dollar that the Black pundits, MSM and their Liberal Democrat allies would have apoplexy to the max! There would be a public lynching for all hands at the White church.
It is so refreshing, after so many years of being force fed that only us typical White folks can be racist, it is nice to see the hypocrites where they live!!!!
“...as she depicts herself as a champion of the working man.”
Oh, REALLY?
In all seriousness, Rev. Wright and his ilk like Al Sharpton would lose their gravy train if they ever acknowledged that Americans don’t give a flying fuck (<———I had to use an expletive to show the intense passion of my argument) if the President is Black, Orange, Green, Purple, Yellow or Pink with Lavendar poke a dots.
I would love to vote for a right wing conservative Black man. (Hell, I’m more African American than Obama...I was born in Africa and I’m darker than Whitney Houston.)
I would love to vote for a woman as POTUS. We need more estrogen and less testosterone in the oval office.
I will not vote for Marxists and neither will sane Americans.
Says the guy who went to a private school in Hawaii.........
Obama is a charlatan who has captivated the imaginations of many people employing a compelling media plan. The media plan was successfully deployed in the 2006 Massachusetts Governor's race. Fortunately, Governor Duval Patrick demonstrates total ineptitude which discredits governance by one associated with this media campaign. Unfortunately, one can never underestimate the intelligence of the voting public.
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