Letter From America
Hillary, Republicans blast Obama for the "bitter" comment
HILLARY Clinton and the Republicans are ecstatic! For once, they can attack Barack Obama for something he has said, without appearing racist.
Explaining why he is not doing better in Pennsylvania among rural whites, at a closed-door fund-raiser in San Francisco on April 6, Obama said: "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 going to 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 antitrade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Obama's gaffe energised a demoralised Clinton campaign, which started firing on all cylinders. Hillary blasted Obama, calling his remarks "elitist," "demeaning" and "out of touch" with mainstream American values, and reminding super delegates why Obama is "unelectable." Obama's comments were "not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans," Hillary said.
A populist Hillary explained: "It's being reported that my opponent said that the people of Pennsylvania who face hard times are bitter. Well that's not my experience. As I travel around Pennsylvania, I meet people who are resilient, optimist, 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, who fights hard for your future, your jobs, your families."
Listening to Hillary's top attack dog, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, omnipresent on all TV shows firing away at Obama's naiveté and inelectability, one is left wondering how he belongs to the same party. They must think Obama is really bad for Israel!
McCain's campaign also criticised the comments: "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."
"This is good for us on several levels," said a spokesman for the Republican Party. "Barack Obama's elitism allows him to believe that the American traditions that have contributed to the identity and greatness of this country are actually just frustrations and bitterness," said a McCain spokesman. Republican House candidates are challenging their Democratic opponents to renounce or embrace Obama's remarks.
Obama at first dug in. Later, he conceded that he "didn't say it as well as I should have," telling Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal that "obviously, if I worded things in a way that made people offended, I deeply regret that. ... The underlying truth of what I said remains, which is simply that people who have seen their way of life upended because of economic distress are frustrated, and rightfully so."
But he stood by his argument that Americans are disillusioned with a do-nothing government, and so they understandably turn to values like religion.
An Obama spokesman released a statement saying: "We won't be lectured on being out of touch by Senator Clinton, who believes lobbyists represent real people and is awash in their money, and who can't tell a straight story about her lengthy record of supporting trade deals like Nafta and China that have devastated communities in Pennsylvania and Indiana.
"She won't change the broken Washington system that all too often leaves American workers behind, but Barack Obama will," he said.
But, this gaffe will hurt Obama. Americans do not like politicians telling them what ails them. Former president Jimmy Carter told Americans in July 1979 that they had succumbed to a "national malaise." With Republican candidate, Ronald Reagan pounding Carter's "malaise presidency," that was the beginning of the end of the Carter presidency.
The timing of the gaffe, ten days before the Pennsylvania primary on April 22, could not have been worse. Besides sex, little drives the news and opinion industry more than race, religion, culture and class. It hurts Obama, especially with the former Reagan Democrats, the culturally conservative, and blue-collar workers, who could be a promising voter group for him. It also antagonises people who were concerned about his pastor but might have given him the benefit of the doubt after his eloquent speech on race.
Obama must understand that some people actually use guns to hunt. And some people cling to religion not because they are bitter but because they believe in it, and because faith in God gives them purpose and comfort.
Of course, as expected, Hillary overplayed her cards. Attempting to endear herself with the gun owners, she said that when she was little, her father taught her how to shoot a gun. The Obama campaign blasted her hypocrisy for feigning support for gun rights when she is anti-gun and has opposed every pro-gun legislation!
Obama must be aware of his weaknesses. Because he has an African father, Hillary and the Republicans will attempt to paint Obama "foreign." The US presidency has been the exclusive domain of the Anglo-Saxons. Michael Dukakis (1988) of Greek ancestry and John Kerry (2004) of French heritage were also painted as foreign. When Obama goes into rationalising why Americans turn to religion or gun, he opens himself up to charges that he does not really understand Americans.
When Hillary Clinton said Obama's comments were "not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans," and she used the words "Americans" in three different contexts in one stump speech on April 12, she was reminding voters that however enchanted they may be with Barack Obama, he is not a true blue American, like say, a Clinton!
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