No 'bitter' aftertaste? How Obama gaffe plays
By Ken Dilanian, USA TODAY

JACOBUS, Pa. -- Phil Little seems like just the sort of Pennsylvanian voter who might have been offended by Sen. Barack Obama's comments that small-town residents "get bitter" and "cling to guns or religion."

"We believe in God, and I own a couple of guns," said the retired Little, wearing a camouflage Field & Stream cap and waiting with his wife in their SUV to watch their granddaughter's softball practice.

Little says he switched his party registration from Republican to Democrat so he could back Obama in the upcoming Pennsylvania primary on April 22. Hillary Rodham Clinton's criticisms Sunday that Obama's comments were "elitist and divisive" haven't moved him.

"I don't think he put his brain in gear before he engaged his mouth," Little said. "But he apologized. ... I think he has the right ideas, and I like hearing him talk. I put him in sort of the same mold as the Kennedys, JFK and Bobby."

Guns and abortion

Little's support for Obama puts him in the minority in heavily Republican York County -- particularly in the small boroughs, such as Jacobus, which is about 50 miles northwest of Baltimore. People here, as resident Barbara Larson put it, "vote on the gun issue, and the pro-life issue."

Still, in more than a dozen interviews here, even conservative Republicans couldn't muster the sort of outrage over Obama's remarks that Clinton backers were expressing Sunday. For example, Clinton partisan Stephen Reed, the mayor of nearby Harrisburg, said Obama's remarks "lacked judgment. They lack understanding."

Several McCain supporters here said the comments wouldn't play well among rural Americans. But nearly everyone allowed that, in fact, many small-town residents are indeed bitter.

"Hell, yeah, they're bitter," said Harold Creager, a retired phone company technician who was sipping coffee in Rutter's, a convenience store. "George Bush has been a disappointment. The economy. Jobs. Immigration -- we're being invaded."

'Flavor of elitism'

Glen Rock, retired from the nearby Harley-Davidson motorcycle factory in York, Pa., said, "I'm not going to vote at all, because I don't believe in (any) of them."

Politics, Rock said, was just a cycle of broken promises.

Little added that he saw firsthand that racism is hurting Obama in Pennsylvania. "I had somebody say to me the other day, 'Who would have thought that in our lifetime, a woman and an "N" would be competing for president?' " he said, not uttering the slur himself.

No one argued Obama's comments were a good development for his campaign. Far from it. The question was how much.

"The fact that he said it among highbrows, that's going to hurt him," said Scott Renfro, a fifth-grade teacher driving a Ford pickup with a bass boat in tow. Obama made the comments at a fundraiser last Sunday in San Francisco, a city associated with left-leaning politics.

Renfro, who said he's voting Republican, said, "It just had a flavor of elitism about it. In the general election, it will hurt him in this state."

In criticizing Obama on Sunday, Clinton warned the Democrats that the party risked being viewed by voters as out-of-touch and elitist in the fall election.

But Gary Whisler, a retired teacher with an Obama sign in his front yard, called the notion of Obama as an elitist "really hilarious."

Obama, who was raised by a single mother, "had to make his own opportunities. He didn't have anything handed to him, the way Hillary did," Whisler said.

Whisler said he has never before been active in a political campaign.

"He is different from anybody I can remember running for president," Whisler said of Obama. "He's really for the little people, not the special interests."

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"Look Who's Bitter Now!"

Was a great disco hit back in the 1970s.
I think it was Donna Summer, right?