Supporters of Barack Obama are hoping that the recent fallout from Senator Obama’s comments about small town voters will be minimal. In a private fundraiser in San Francisco on April 6, Obama described small town voters in such a way that Senators Hillary Clinton and John McCain pounced on his remarks.
“You go into 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.”
Anybody who thinks that this incident is just a hiccup in Obama’s campaign is fooling themselves. No matter how honest these statements may be, nobody likes to be called bitter and have their religion and personal beliefs attacked. Yes, voters are frustrated and even bitter that the economy is sinking and the opportunity they once had is no longer available. That, they may accept. But slapping voters’ religion and ideology in the face is incomprehensible to voters. This incident won’t destroy Obama’s candidacy like former Senator George Allen’s “macaca” comments did with his candidacy. It will provide an opportunity for Republicans and Senator Clinton to make the argument that he is not only out of touch with real Americans but also too vulnerable to attack from the opposition.
Senator Clinton sent out the first of many press releases regarding this incident at 6:11pm, Friday, April 11. The subject of almost every successive press release was Obama’s San Francisco remarks. The campaign held a rare Saturday afternoon conference call with reporters in which small town Pennsylvania mayors attacked Obama for implying that small town voters held on to religion because of bitterness and spite.
The Republicans matched Clinton’s attacks. The National Republican Congressional Committee released a statement condemning the remarks but also asked that a Democratic congressman Jim Carney denounce Obama’s remarks. McCain pounded away and an in a speech to the Associated Press’ Annual Meeting, critiqued Obama’s comments, saying that small town voters do not “turn to their religious faith and cultural traditions out of resentment and a feeling of powerlessness to affect the course of government or pursue prosperity.”
The network news programs on NBC, ABC, and CBS led with Obama’s “bitter” comments and devoted a lengthy five minutes to the story. On cable news, when the anchors moved to talk about politics and the 2008 election, they brought up Obama’s comments and the political reaction. It was the subject of conversation on the Sunday political talk shows and it got front page coverage on The New York Times’ Sunday edition.
Obama’s campaign has largely tried to focus the attention on the remarks to the “bitter” side instead of the ones insulting religion, guns, immigration, and trade policy views. It is much easier to rationalize that part over the anti-religion and anti-gun lines. In an email to supporters, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe conveniently left out the other half of Obama’s remarks.
Senator Obama offered a radical re-interpretation of his remarks that force him not only to defend his remarks but to spin them like never before. He knows that it “may have been clumsy” but he meant it as a compliment. He said, “What I was saying is that when economic hardship hits in these communities, what people have is- they’ve got family, they’ve got their faith., they’ve got the traditions that have been passed on to them from generation to generation. Those aren’t bad things.”
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How can two presidential candidates be treated so differently? For the past week Senator Barack Obama has been thrusted with Hillary’s razor sharp tongue.
Although we all,with reasonable intelligence, knows what she’s up to. She’s keeping alive Barack poor choice of words and want everyone to forget her repeated pattern of lying.. Oh, I mean misspoken words.
She’s been on this rampage stating that America doesn’t need a president who looks down on them. Hello! America doesn’t need a president who regulary lies to them with no conscious or not enough remorse to explain or simply tell the truth.
Read this article about Bill Clinton’s words and see if they sound similar to you..Clinton & Obama’s Speech Very Similar
How can she honestly reprimand Obama for his statement, and her husband is guilty of the same.
What happen to equality?
Why has the media averted or failed to report indepth on this story?
After Bill Clinton made this statement, he went on to be president. Is this fair?
Hillary is a hypocrite and her husband is out of touch!
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