that Smith quoted

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mayhill-fo wler/obama-no-surprise-that-ha_b_96188.h tml

are you saying people DON'T blame immigrants when they can't find a job? or that people DON'T blame trade policies?

or are you saying he should never actually say this no matter what kind of truth there may be?

its true and I thought we democrats understood this, Immigrants get blamed for way to much,

wow are we the GOP party now?

Obama doesn't back away from saying the truth even if people dont want to hear it, you are right we shouldn't vote for him

What he said is very true. If it causes a problem he can give another speech similar to his race speech to explain further. The man is teflon, this won't hurt him.

The McCain camp has already pounced:

Asked to respond, McCain adviser Steve Schmidt called it a "remarkable statement and extremely revealing."

"It shows an elitism and condescension towards hardworking Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking," Schmidt said. "It is hard to imagine someone running for president who is more out of touch with average Americans."

It isn't saying much that you find Obama's statement offensive.  You've proven a thousandfold that you find everything about him offensive.

Your attempt to spin his entirely truthful and accurate statement into some kind of elitism is faultly, disengenuous, and as baseless as a hovercraft.

Bob Barr and Joh McCain will split the anti-immigrant and NRA vote . . . so this isn't a big deal . . . unless you fall into one of those categories.

"Elitist contempt"? "Enmity for common people"? Really?

While your supporting a multi-millionaire Yalie married to a President who said she wasn't going to stand by her man like some little Tammy Wynette? Who said things like "Yeah, I coulda stayed home to bake cookies"?

Really, turn down the Outrage-O-Meter just slightly.

but he takes it to the next level. Guns and religion though? that's where it became an 'Oh, OH!' moment

In all seriousness this is something BO needs to work on and a lot harder.  working class voters have a real dislike for candidats they see as eitherelitist or using what they call PC.  This is way BO is doing so bad with Reagan dems.  I can tell you that voters like my mom and dad really have low threshold for statements like this and if you think it is nothing think again.

BO needs to go out and show some compassion for the needs of views of these votes much like Bill Clinton did.  All you have to do is look at the polls over the last three months to see that BO is not connecting with these traditional dems. I keep hearing about how BO is going to win and it is over but i dont see him or his campaign making in roads into these voters and IMHO if he doesnt he is going to lose to McCain.

david

bunch of racists. Are you going to vote him out?

I can't figure out why Obama would say that about religion.  Everytime he brings up other people's religious habits or how they use religion in their lives like this, people's minds automatically go to his own personal religious fiasco.  I mean what right does he have at this point to judge the religious views of others?  

Being from PA, I just don't think Obama fits in here.  I think he is out of his element in his visits to small towns.  He needs to at least change into something other than a suit or a shirt and tie, when he is bowling, or on the farm feeding a calf with a bottle.  We have our supply of Harvard graduates here just like everywhere else as well as outstanding speakers, but he has academia and formality written all over him, and he can't seem to shake it when he is talking to everyday working people.

So please..do ya really go down that "contempt"road?

You are abusing the TR rating privilege.  You cannot just randomly troll-rate a commenter/diarist just because you disagree with him/her.  I call attention to the management.  Please attend to this ratings abuse.

McGovern AND Mondale on the same ticket in 2008? Wow, Obama really can't help himself. First, he throws his granny under the bus, then he insults "typical" white people, and now this.

Hillary by 30 in PA.

He needs to do some travelling around the country and the world. Then maybe he can run again in four or eight years.

I think progressives aren't too worried about the rifle rack and immigrant-hater vote.

A few points:

1.  Obama is, himself, a religious person, so charging that he is somehow anti-religion is preposterous.

2.  The gun-toting, bible-thumping crowd plays for the other team; they don't vote in Democratic primaries.

3.  What Obama said was true.

and yeah...the media is already using this..
(screw'em)

MATTHEWS: OK. Let me ask you about how he -- how's he connect with regular people? Does he? Or does he only appeal to people who come from the African-American community and from the people who have college or advanced degrees?

cause everyone knows African-Americans and folks with degrees aren't "regular people"

Zzzzzzz.

Your gig is to cop a sinister interpertation to EVERYTHING SEn Obama says or does.  Like this fiary you wove based on one out-of-context sentace.  Which, even lacking any context, obviously does not mean what you insist it does.  

So by all means, continue to wallow on.

Would completely agree with this comment.  When Maytag left Newton (where it had been for many decades -- my great-grandfather worked for it his entire career)  a few years ago so that its products could be manufactured overseas by its now-foreign owners, there was a hell of disgust at "free trade" rules that allowed this to happen. At the same time, there was (and is) a lot of anti-immigration sentiment due to demographic changes and immigrants who were not integrating into English-speaking society.  It all boiled down to job losses, uncertainty over the future, and rapidly changing community demographics.  Even my mother, living in Newton and who has never voted Republican in her life, felt this way.

The reason this hits small towns disproportionately are manifold, but the most obvious is where the hell are you going to go for work when the only big employer in town packs up and leaves and suddenly a double-digit percentage of employed adults in the town are hitting the bricks?  That problem doesn't exist to anywhere near the same extent if you are in a metro area. Furthermore, demographic changes are far more apparent in a small town, and unsettling to many even if there was not economic upheaval.  And that's Obama's point, I think.

The people who are shocked at this comment are, I posit, the very elites who are out of touch with the places in America that have been so adversely affected by the economic upheaval that has been created by trade rules and the lack of a comprehensive immigration policy that is perceived as working for America. Sure, not everyone in small towns like Newton feels this way, but many do.

I thought it was impossible for a Republican to win this nomination, but if Democrats on online sites like these are attacking their own nominees over stupid idiotic non-important statements like these, then maybe it really is possible.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with what Obama said. NOTHING AT ALL.  It's being misquoted and twisted, like always, and being made out to be bigger than it really is.

The media (online, print and blogs) is a joke.  I'm actually ashamed at how childish debate has become.  

I think what Obama said is essentially true. Sometimes the truth hurts.

and the Obama camp says that can't confirm that Obama even said this.  

Unless there is audio or video, this "quote" may not be accurate.

"Typical Pennsylvanians are just another the typical white People.  They're all bigots." -- the gospel according to Obama.

Obama is out of touch of reality.  The reason perhaps is his exposure to too many sermons from Mr Jeremiah Wright, and that's why his brain convolution is a bit shallow (immature).

My advise to Obama... don't talk to much.

it's not so much what he said..which is bad, but where he said it...in "billionaire's row" of San Francisco. Obama always had a haughty elitist streak that was his disconnect from the Jacksonian voters, the Reagan democrats. I said it before and say it again, Jerome had linked a post by Michale Barone and a demographic chart, both say the same story, Obama's base are AA and academics and the "liberal elite" he does not connect with the regular democrats or the conservative democrats and saying such things and venues like this makes it all the more worse for him.

If you call bigots,  hateful religious zealots, and the NRA - the common people,  your world view must be pretty narrow and bleak.  

I grew up in rural Pennsylvania with a single mom who worked two jobs and made less than 10,000 a year.  My entire family still lives there and they are fabulous people.  The best people I know from there are ridiculously hard-working, practical almost to a fault, and deeply yet lovingly religious.  But the majority of people (at least in my area of PA) are overwhelmingly as Obama describes.

The only way you can take issue with that is if you've never seen that behavior in people,  or if you're just looking for something to be offended by.    

I know elitism after moving to San Francisco later in life.  Elitism is not building affordable housing for working class families because it might obstruct your precious view.  Elitism is kicking service workers out of the city after the dot com boom, and telling them they're good enough to work here but not live here.  

But elitism can also be the feelings found in the hearts of many people in rural PA.  Elitism is at the heart of white supremacy and it's feeling like you're better than immigrants because you are already a citizen.  That's a very powerful feeling for those who feel generally oppressed and worthless.  If even a fraction of that energy was directed into paying attention to political realities, we would all be much better off.

Obama's campaign does not like poor people from these economically devestated places:

Remember Samantha Power's comments in Ohio:

We f*** up in Ohio," she admitted. "In Ohio, they are obsessed and Hillary is going to town on it, because she knows Ohio's the only place they can win.

"She is a monster, too - that is off the record - she is stooping to anything," Ms Power said, hastily trying to withdraw her remark.

Ms Power said of the Clinton campaign: "Here, it looks like desperation. I hope it looks like desperation there, too.

"You just look at her and think, 'Ergh'. But if you are poor and she is telling you some story about how Obama is going to take your job away, maybe it will be more effective. The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive."

Does anyone remember the 3 G's from 2004?  The Republicans ramped up wedge issues that dealt with God, guns, and gays and were able to slide key demographics into their column.

Obama's point (I would imagine, since I'm not in his head) is that when people hit rough times in small towns, it's easy to get sucked into wedge issues instead of things that truly effect you.  If people disagree with that, then so be it, but this fake outrage like "Obama hates people that have guns and are religious" is completely dishonest spin.

Obama campaign response:

http://thepage.time.com/obama-campaign-r esponse-to-clinton-mccain-attacks-of-bit ter-remark/

****

****

What is idiotic about these words is not that he assigns bitterness to those that live in such small towns, but that he ascribes religion, guns, and anti immigrant sentiments etc to them.

You go into some of 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.

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."

(a) It is idiotic to think that a fondness for guns is caused by disapperating jobs.  Guns, and our fondness for them, have been around for a lot longer than that.

(b) It is idiotic to think that a fondness for religion is caused by disappearing jobs.  Religion too, has been around for a while.  Most of the people who "cling" to religion, have jobs.

(c) It is idiotic to think that antipathy to immigrants is caused by disappearing jobs.  Most people with xenophobic emotions have jobs.

(d) And finally, it is idiotic to think that antipathy to trade is caused by disappearing jobs when the candidate himself does a fine job demagoguing on trade.

In the extended comments he talks about how the economy suffered there during the Clinton years. Is that true? I thought the 1990s economic boom was quite well-distributed, unlike the period of growth we just had, where the benefits mostly went to the already wealthy.

John McCain's campaign is attacking Barack Obama for Obama's rather indisputable comments about the rise of anti-immigrant fervor in small town America. Obama said that the rise of such fervor has a lot to do with bitterness.
But wait - didn't John McCain say something similar in December to the New Yorker?

Anti-immigrant passion also owes much to the disproportionate influence of a few small states in the nominating process. National polls show that, as an issue, immigration is far behind the Iraq war, terrorism, the economy, and health care as a concern to most Americans; a recent Pew poll shows that, nationally, only six per cent of voters offer immigration as the most important issue facing the country. But in Iowa and South Carolina, two of the three most important early states, it is a top concern for the Republicans who are most likely to vote.
"It's the influx of illegals into places where they've never seen a Hispanic influence before," McCain told me. "You probably see more emotion in Iowa than you do in Arizona on this issue. I was in a town in Iowa, and twenty years ago there were no Hispanics in the town. Then a meatpacking facility was opened up. Now twenty per cent of their population is Hispanic. There were senior citizens there who were-'concerned' is not the word. They see this as an assault on their culture, what they view as an impact on what have been their traditions in Iowa, in the small towns in Iowa. So you get questions like 'Why do I have to punch 1 for English?' 'Why can't they speak English?' It's become larger than just the fact that we need to enforce our borders."

Sure, it's not exactly the same, but it's pretty darn similar. In fact, McCain seems to be saying something far more controversial. While Obama is saying economic hardship breeds anti-immigrant feelings, McCain is saying lots of rural people just hate Hispanics. That may or may not be true - but the fact that McCain's campaign is feigning outrage over Obama's truisms when their own candidate has made thematically similar statements strikes me as...what's the word...oh yeah - dishonest.  

The issue is that Democrats--at least the SF/Seattle/Cape Cod/Boulder/Burlington/Madison Democrats--get off on this kind of stuff. In their world he is speaking truth to power.

What the Elitocrats (ECs) have never seemed to grasp is that the majority of America does not think the way that they do, about God, Guns, Gays, and a host of other things. I am not saying the left should capitulate to everything middle America wants or thinks, but it's like they won't even acknowledge that we get presidents like Reagan and Bush because so many people, including moderate Democrats, think the way that Obama criticizes.

"everyday" people as the thread labels them have no interest in being talked down to.  Yet, for my entire voting life, some in the Democratic party have insisted that we treat "everyday" people like they are hopeless rubes.  

...give me a break.

What Obama spoke is reality...you know it, I know it, the media knows it...yet the Media ignores the argument hes raising and instead fans the fire...my goodness, we are Rome.

The "guns and religion" comment was stupid and he should apologize-- something Clinton doesn't know how to-- look at how she reacted to her lying on Bosnia.

But read the whole text before coming up with generalizations.  He isn't a 100 millionaire.  He's much closer to any of the folks he's talked to than the Clintons have been since the 1990s or McCain since the 1890s.

OBAMA: So, it depends on where you are, but I think it's fair to say that the places where we are going to have to do the most work are the places where people feel most cynical about government. The people are mis-appre...I think they're misunderstanding why the demographics in our, in this contest have broken out as they are. Because everybody just ascribes it to 'white working-class don't wanna work -- don't wanna vote for the black guy.' That's...there were intimations of that in an article in the Sunday New York Times today - kind of implies that it's sort of a race thing.

Here's how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, and they feel so betrayed by government, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn't buy it. And when it's delivered by -- it's true that when it's delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama (laugher), then that adds another layer of skepticism (laughter).

But -- so the questions you're most likely to get about me, 'Well, what is this guy going to do for me? What's the concrete thing?' What they wanna hear is -- so, we'll give you talking points about what we're proposing -- close tax loopholes, roll back, you know, the tax cuts for the top 1 percent. Obama's gonna give tax breaks to middle-class folks and we're gonna provide health care for every American. So we'll go down a series of talking points.

But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of 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. 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.

Um, now these are in some communities, you know. I think what you'll find is, is that people of every background -- there are gonna be a mix of people, you can go in the toughest neighborhoods, you know working-class lunch-pail folks, you'll find Obama enthusiasts. And you can go into places where you think I'd be very strong and people will just be skeptical. The important thing is that you show up and you're doing what you're doing.

This diary is a POS.  You don't parrot what you already know is going to be the GOP's talking points in the fall "Obama is an elitist".

"Hillary Clinton is a liar" diaries are the same thing - that's what they're going to go after her if she's the nominee.  Most people have enough sense not to stoke either one of them.

Obama is completely out of touch with ordinary Americans. He doesn't have a clue. Neither do his followers.

It takes a willful ignorance to interpret this as contempt for everyday people.

Fortunately, there's plenty of that, around here.

Could this be the comment the Clinton campaign was hoping for from Obama in the final 10 day countdown to the Pennsylvania primary?

Let's skip ahead to the general election - this is the kind of line that the right Republican opponent could turn into gold. If Obama wins the nomination, will the McCain campaign channel Rumplestiltskin and make this a successful talking point through the fall?

Grover Norquist, the anti-tax activist who leads an influential weekly meeting of conservatives, went as far as to argue that Obama's line would cost Democrats the White House.

"That sentence will lose him the election," Norquist told ABC News. "He just announced to rural America: 'I don't like you.'"

"Now you can vote against that guy not because you don't like him," Norquist added. "You can vote against him because he doesn't like you."

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/TheNote/s tory?id=3105455&page=1

Great work

For McCain

holy shit, leave for 4 hours and come back to all of this.

It was a stupid comment, he (being the one eloquent with words) should have framed his issues much differently

One clown in the blogosphere posts this and every freaking lemming says oh yeah, Obama has contempt...

No one buys it.

Try again.

What a foolish, condescending thing to say about the people of Pennsylvania, whose votes he will be asking for in less than two weeks.

You do not win elections by insulting voters or disenfranchising them. If Obama is foisted on us because of voter suppression, you can kiss the presidency goodbye in November.

Unbelievable.

The issue here is really the narrative that BO is just giving to McCain and his Rove trained team. BO is a northern liberal who is part of the blame american's and america first crowd.  He he should be very careful about what he says to stop meme like this.  And what does he do, he makes it worse. And working class voters are starting to see an narrative.  That BO is an elisist liberal who doesnt really care about working folk.

david

Empirically accurate, politically dumb.

or any Dem that talks about the Guns, God & Gays voter I guess.

Such short memories you all have.

Not fair i think you mean George McGovern.

david

Dems. You don't know anything about politics.

My biggest problem with the premise of your post here is your suggestion that Obama thinks there is "something wrong" with praying to get through hard times. He is in no way saying anything like that here. Unlike most politicians, who are loathe to touch, much less discuss frankly, any difficult, entrenched social issues, Obama is willing to engage on these terms. He is not being elitist or condescending but merely trying to describe the mindset of working class voters in economically hard hit states. Why you would choose to denigrate him for this is beyond me. If more people would be willing to engage with the root problems facing our society we would be a lot better off.

In: Obama is an elitist snob.

Out: Obama is a fire-breathing black radical.

Just wait until next week when we take another Obama quote out of context to frame him as....(wait for it)...a tax and spend liberal!

Mydd: doing the rightwing's dirty work.

Senator Obama's comments in response to the Clinton and McCain campaign's attacks

TERRE HAUTE, INDIANA - At a town hall meeting in Indiana, U.S. Senator Barack Obama made the following comments in response to the Clinton and McCain campaign's attacks:

"When I go around and I talk to people there is frustration and there is anger and there is bitterness. And what's worse is when people are expressing their anger then politicians try to say what are you angry about? This just happened - I want to make a point here today.

"I was in San Francisco talking to a group at a fundraiser and somebody asked how're you going to get votes in Pennsylvania? What's going on there? We hear that's its hard for some working class people to get behind you're campaign. I said, "Well look, they're frustrated and for good reason. Because for the last 25 years they've seen jobs shipped overseas. They've seen their economies collapse. They have lost their jobs. They have lost their pensions. They have lost their healthcare.

"And for 25, 30 years Democrats and Republicans have come before them and said we're going to make your community better. We're going to make it right and nothing ever happens. And of course they're bitter. Of course they're frustrated. You would be too. In fact many of you are. Because the same thing has happened here in Indiana. The same thing happened across the border in Decatur. The same thing has happened all across the country. Nobody is looking out for you. Nobody is thinking about you. And so people end up- they don't vote on economic issues because they don't expect anybody's going to help them. So people end up, you know, voting on issues like guns, and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. And they take refuge in their faith and their community and their families and things they can count on. But they don't believe they can count on Washington. So I made this statement-- so, here's what rich. Senator Clinton says `No, I don't think that people are bitter in Pennsylvania. You know, I think Barack's being condescending.' John McCain says, `Oh, how could he say that? How could he say people are bitter? You know, he's obviously out of touch with people.'

"Out of touch? Out of touch? I mean, John McCain--it took him three tries to finally figure out that the home foreclosure crisis was a problem and to come up with a plan for it, and he's saying I'm out of touch? Senator Clinton voted for a credit card-sponsored bankruptcy bill that made it harder for people to get out of debt after taking money from the financial services companies, and she says I'm out of touch? No, I'm in touch. I know exactly what's going on. I know what's going on in Pennsylvania. I know what's going on in Indiana. I know what's going on in Illinois. People are fed-up. They're angry and they're frustrated and they're bitter. And they want to see a change in Washington and that's why I'm running for President of the United States of America."

Here's how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long. They feel so betrayed by government that when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn't buy it. And when it's delivered by -- it's true that when it's delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama, then that adds another layer of skepticism.

... for suggesting that he was behind the plan to divide and destroy the Democratic Party.  It is now clear that Hillary's campaign is quite capable of doing that without him at the helm.   Suggesting that the Democratic nominee "looks down on" and "has contempt for" working class people... wow.

"everyday people?"  What are the rest of us?  

they cling to...religion

This from a man who wants us to excuse his own clinging to a radical racist minister for twenty years?