By Ashish
'Barack Obama's gotten some heat this weekend for comments he made in San Francisco about people in small-town America becoming frustrated and "bitter" about nothing ever being done in Washington and thus cling to guns and religion. The Clinton camp, sensing that this may be the final Obama issue they can go after, is pushing it extremely hard, as is the McCain camp.
The comments were not worded well by Obama, that's obvious. But ultimately, they boil down to the types of comments he's been making the entire campaign -- that ordinary people feel ignored by Washington. He probably should have left "guns and religion" out of it, but whatever, it's done.
This won't have any impact on the primary with Clinton since its already over. If anything, this will push even more superdelegates to Obama because Clinton is now resorting to a very typical Republican attack against the Democratic nominee and thus basically doing McCain's work for him. All the "elitist" attacks by Clinton are basically copies of some of George W. Bush's attacks on John Kerry in 2004. And normally these attacks would be fair game, but not when Obama's already basically won the nomination. All Clinton is doing now is trying to weaken him in the general election, and doing that will just push superdelegates to try and end this sooner rather than later before Clinton pulls a political suicide bombing and ruins the party's chances in November. And it's not like any of these attacks do anything to portray Clinton as stronger. Nobody thinks she wouldn't be portrayed as an elitist by Republicans either, especially after her tax returns showed over $100 million in earnings since 2000. She is a woman who has had secret service detail for nearly two decades now. If she thinks people buy her as being "in touch" with small town America, the same small town America that her and her campaign have said "don't count" when it comes to voting, she's more out of touch than even I thought. After Clinton won Ohio and the Texas primary, people assumed that superdelegates would start swinging back to her, but instead they continued to endorse Obama because Clinton continued her negative "kitchen sink" strategy against him, and that has turned off many in the party. I suspect the same thing will happen here. Nobody would care if Clinton stayed in the race (even though she can't win) to keep focus on her positive aspects, but people care when she stays in the race (when she can't win) for no other reason than to damage the Democratic nominee and cost the party the election in 2008, and people should care. If the party allows Clinton to wreck what should be an easy Democratic victory in November, they will have nobody to blame but themselves. Democrats always manage to find ways to blow elections they have no business losing (just look at 2004) and seem to be trying their best to blow 2008 as well.
But yeah, she'll push this and it may create a minor drop for Obama in national and PA polls over the next few days but it'll fade by the end of the week. Obama wasn't going to win PA anyway so it doesn't really make much of a difference there because remember, most people in big cities do have the impression that small town America clings to guns and religion. Right or wrong, big city America often blames small town America for electing Bush in 2000 and 2004 and also, right or wrong, blames small town America for keeping issues that have nothing to do with day-to-day life, like gay marriage and gun rights, in focus. I'd suspect that many in small town America even agree with Obama's statement. And is this really the type of statement that makes people second guess Obama? No. Just like the Rev. Wright stuff, it will serve to make people think "oh, there goes the media again making a big deal out of nothing" more than it makes people think anything new about Obama. People who live in the real world realize that America has a LOT of bitter people and that those people are bitter for a variety of reasons, and pandering to them like Clinton is now doing in a pretty transparent way isn't going to solve anything.
And as I've been saying, people are beyond stuff like this. Every minor story like this that the media has tried to blow up into a major thing has ended up fading away with little to no impact, and this one will be no different, at least in the primary.
As for the general election, remarks like this may end up having some impact because part of the Republican plan for Obama is to try and paint him as an elitist liberal. But anybody who thinks a remark like this is going to swing the election hasn't been following this election year too closely. People haven't cared about any of these types of stories thus far, and I doubt many care about this either.'
http://www.411mania.com/politics/columns/73081/Thoughts-On-The-Obama%5C%5Cs-%5C%5CBitter%5C%5C-Comments.htm
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