(CHB) "On Bitter: Obama tells it like it is and Clinton may use it to elect McCain"

TahitiNut

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Sun Apr-13-08 12:24 PM
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(CHB) "On Bitter: Obama tells it like it is and Clinton may use it to elect McCain"

Edited on Sun Apr-13-08 12:30 PM by TahitiNut

On Bitter: Obama tells it like it is and Clinton may use it to elect McCain

April 13, 2008 - 7:09am
By Hal Brown

I am so angry I scream inside the more I read about how Clinton is casting Obama as a snob for the "blue collar voters are bitter" remark. When I see her and her surrogates making an issue of this in televised comments I have all I can do to stop from throwing something at the screen.

Must we elect the candidate who is the most adept at talking down to voters who don't have the stellar IQ which they do without seeming to be talking down to them? I wrote about this in my previous column but now I feel compelled to write this follow-up.

If Hillary Clinton, who no doubt is as much an intellectual as Obama, convinces enough blue collar voters he's an elitist, and worse, a snob, and he runs against McCain with his war hero and regular guy image, she could be handing the election to a Republican.

If this wasn't such a repugnant political tactic, one which may assure four years of McCain and a Republican administration, it would be ironic and even amusing that the Clintons are calling Obama a snob. After all, Hill and Bill regularly schmooze with the Hollywood elite and corporate billionaires.

If Obama wasn't a classy guy running a classy campaign I'd urge him to start calling his opponent "Hollywood Hillary".

It is a sad state of affairs that a candidate has to behave like a schoolteacher who feels that he'll alienate the lower level students in his class if his language is too complex. Obama presented a reasonable opinion as to how bitter voters may focus on issues they can get a better handle on.

<snip>

After eight years of C-student elitism, it seems we haven't learned shit. This country will get what it deserves in January.

Bitter words in a bitter campaign
April 13, 2008 - 7:45am

Democratic Presidential contender Hillary Rodham Clinton says words don't matter in an election campaign -- unless those words provide fodder to attack an opponent and she and presumptive Republican nominee John McCain are teaming up to try and make Barack Obama pay for his "bitter" words about small-town voters.

Which puts Obama on the defensive, a place he doesn't want to be as he tries to seal the Democratic nomination and put Hillary away.

"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. 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 a way to explain their frustrations."

Clinton pounced. So did McCain. Both campaigns called on Obama to apologize. He finally admitted his words were "ill chosen."

But is the damage enough to cripple his front-running campaign? Probably not. And the furor overlooks a sad, but simple, set of facts:
* Small town voters in Pennsylvania are bitter.
* They do cling to their guns and religion.
* Too many of them are also ignorant, intolerant and racist.
* And they are just the kind of voters Hillary Clinton needs.