"It was all good just a week ago."[1]
I knew the N.L. had to kick in sooner or later. Just last week, Obama had whittled Hillary Clinton's seemingly insurmountable lead in PA down to single digits. Some pundits were proclaiming for the first time, that it was within the realm of possibility that Obama could actually win the state. AB.com was breathing a preemptive sigh of relief, with the possible end of this Democratic nomination campaign within striking distance, I could take this blog back to doing what it does best.
And then, this sh*t happened.
Mr. Obama attended a closed-door fundraiser in San Francisco, a week ago yesterday, which someone tape-recorded. (Someone always does.) He was explaining to his audience why many working-class white voters, especially in rural areas, seem reluctant to support him.Here's the audio, which is barely audible, but you can pick out the above comment.
He said that he regularly visited towns in Pennsylvania and the Midwest where the jobs had long since disappeared, and political promises of an economic revival had proved empty.
“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,” he concluded.
I've been a pretty ardent Obama supporter, and will continue to be. But this, in my opinion only of course, is his first really significant misstep of the campaign.
The "bitter" remark is nothing big. Bitter, frustrated, disillusioned, whatever you wanna call it, it's all semantics. The basic sentiment that people are pissed off about losing jobs, inflation, $4/gallon gas, foreclosed homes, high energy costs, and the proliferation of vocoders is real. You can't really deny that, even if you get caught up on one poorly chosen word.
On the other hand, there is no easy way to excuse the "anti-immigrant sentiment" portion of the statement. I know things can be taken out of context, and perhaps it's entirely possible the intent of what he's saying is being magnified, but on the surface, that sounds vaguely xenophobic, possibly even racist. While there are certainly lots of people who blame illegal immigrants for taking jobs, it's quite another to toss that out as a reason for why these very same folks won't vote for you. Because guess what, after this comment, there's a darned good chance they won't.
Obama's subsequent statements have attempted to clear up the whole "bitter" thing, and to clap back at Hillary Clinton for calling him "elitist" (code for "who does this uppity Negro think he is?"). I already addressed the bitter part. And Clinton (whose tax records showed $109M earned since she and Bill left Penn. Ave.) calling Obama (who just paid off his student loans a year ago) "elitist" has to be about the silliest thing I've heard of since my brother told me he actually bought Ray-J's album[2] this weekend. Pot, meet Kettle.
But the "anti-immigrant" thing? Well, Barry's still got some splainin' to do.
I'm no soothsayer, but I suspect this will harm Obama more in the longterm (ie: November) than the short (ie: next Tuesday). One thing's for certain though. He just gave the demonic imbeciles at Fox News one more log to add to the Rebb'n Wright/Proud Michelle/lapel pin fire of anti-patriotism they've been stoking for months.
And this will be a hard one to extinguish.
Question: How bad of a misstep was this comment for the Obama campaign? Do you think the comments were taken out of context or simply a very bad move?
Obama: No Surprise That Hard-Pressed Pennsylvanians Turn Bitter [HuffingtonPost]
[1] Name that tune.... again.
[2] Seriously, this is that piracy was invented for. I'm not sayin' steal it, but don't waste $15 on such a no-talent bum.
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This is A-Typical Ivy League inspired rhetoric.. Did you think Democrats have changed or something? ROTFL Dont be so naive. Thanks to Barak, we now know that elitism knows no color as well. Good going Barak for continuing to smash those stereotypes..
I'm not sure if I'll go as far as daedalus, but that's exactly how it'll be spun. It's harder by far for Obama to claim out-of-context since the HuffPo broke this story, and Obama has used them in the past as his preferred method of sending messages out to the world.
This statement of his has something to hate for just about every interest group Obama needed to sway, if he wanted to win the election in November. Surely it's occurred to him that some people "cling" to religion because, er, they believe in God. Some people cling to guns because they don't like to get robbed, or *gasp* they think the 2nd Amendment was a good idea... not as a reaction to bitterness about their economic prospects.
It surely does sound like one upperclass midwestern liberal talking to a room full of upperclass west coast liberals about the problems convincing those confederate hicks give up their backwards thinking and Vote Nanny-state for the win.
I suspect he didn't really mean it that way, but gawd help him if he has to face McCain in the battleground states, with those words in his mouth, and try to convince those same indie voters not to break right in November.
He's made it a lot harder on himself.
I don't believe the American public is as dumb as the media tries to make us think it is. He told the truth, and sometimes that's difficult to swallow. But I believe most folk are not fooled by Hillary and Mc Cains tactics.
McCain is married to a beer heiress! I swear they just showed his wife strolling on the beach at her coronodo beachfront condo, wearing Chanel shades. And Hillary just happened to have 5 mil to give to her campaign. The demographic Barak described knows damn well Hillary and McCain can't relate to them. Give them a second, it's hard to face the cold, hard truth. We are in the middle of an international food crisis,(there's a damn rice shortage-rice!)people are losing jobs & homes, gas is outrageous.The so called "Regan Democrats" are going to need just a little while longer to admit they got played. They'll come around.
lol, yah rite. The cold, hard truth is that poor people cling to religion and guns because they're bitter of their economic situation, but they haven't woken up to the economic situation they're supposed to be bitter about? Which is it, ebw? Was Obama right about why they're bitter, or have they not woken up to the bitterness he accuses them of?
Also, is all that, you know, church stuff just code-talk for bitterness? I thought we were supposed to listen to the core message back when it was Rev. Wright doing the preaching, instead of the rhetoric. Now we're supposed to ignore the message and understand it's just middle-class bitterness that makes people turn to God?
You've got to make up your mind here.
In the broad scheme of things, I'm not convinced that this will hurt him. Let's remember that this is the guy who survived the Rev. Wright controversy. I was one of the first people to utter the following words: "Well, he ran a good campaign." I was quite convinced that his numbers and popularity would have tanked. Clearly, I was wrong.
Going into Pennsylvania, a state he was NOT expected to win in the first place, I'm just not persuaded that Hillary has done enough, particularly in the face of her own NAFTA missteps in the past to counter this obvious misstep in Barry's (that's just hillarious to call him that, lol) banter. She needs to do a lot more 'splanning herself to get past NAFTA, even for me as a grad student who has absolutely no direct relationship to experiencing the outsourcing of jobs.
This was NOT a comment taken out of context, and I'm glad Barry made sure to clear that up by saying that he merely misspoke. I think it would have been a wonderful spin to say that the Republican party has some how co-opted votes by focusing heavily on anti-gun control and anti-immigration and focusing heavily on religion--but somehow they didn't do that (maybe they should hire me, lol). However the interesting thing is that I think Barry was more right in his assessment than most people would ever admit out loud because it's even more politically incorrect than saying "God Damn America!" because J. Wright's sermoning high points can be easily dimissed as fooleywang. By Clinton pandering to Pennsylvania voters as having her roots in the Quaker state, and all this aligning herself with the voters I personally think is pouring salt in an open wound. I mean, she has made this $109 mil. over the past few years--clearly she's in another tax bracket than the majority of small town America.
I mean, all presidential candidates in my lifetime were exorbitantly independently wealthy (I don't think that's proper grammatically, but who cares, this is a blog), and I'm sure it's a hard battle to remove the veil of elitism from their eyes when they're on the campaign trail. But are we next going to see Hil'ry swiggin down a half pint of beer in Scranton to prove herself? Honestly, we as Americans, small town and otherwise, are probably secretly bitter because we don't have many of the same opportunities that those in the upper class have--and truth be told many of us cling to our religion, and our own personal right to bear arms, and yes, many in small town Penn. are probably mad as hell at the fact that many undocumented workers come to this country and take away jobs that they once had because they don't demand as much pay. Hell, I'd be bitter as well.
But those are things you can't say out loud in this country.
Maybe Barry should just come out in a speech and give a one liner: "Hillary Clinton, and by inference, Bill as well, and John McCain can kiss my son of an immigrant ass."
I'm sure that'd stir things up in the campaign.
If this as bad as it gets for Senator Obama, he will survive. Given Hillary's pattern of 'misspeaking' I don't think this will break him. And Hillary has much more to say and do to convince me that she can identify with the average American. She won't hurt for speaking engagements if she should lose the nomination. Her and Bill seem to be doing well.
And for Senator McCain perhaps he should monitor the potential for his wife backsliding into her old reported drug days...
I won't say Barak got the Jeremiah Wright treatment, but there was a lot of his speech that didn't make the news [not surprisingly]. Here's an article from someone who was there.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-coleman/i-was-there-what-obama-re_b_96553.html
I respect Barak for not bringing this up, taking the high road, and humbling himself by bowling with the cast of Roadhouse. He's a better man than me & my crew of Ivy League Latte sipping buppies who've read Rage of a Privileged Class one too many times.
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