[Fox News]Hillary Clinton and John McCain both ripped into Barack Obama Friday for reportedly saying residents of small-town America “cling” to interests like guns and religion because they’re bitter over lost jobs, a remark his opponents interpreted as arrogant.
The Huffington Post reported that Obama made the comments while speaking to a group of wealthy California donors in San Francisco over the weekend. The Post quotes him specifically singling out towns in Pennsylvania, where he’s trying to woo voters and overcome Clinton’s lead in the polls before the state’s April 22 primary.
“Pennsylvanians don’t need a president who looks down on them. They need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them,” Clinton said in Philadelphia Friday afternoon, citing the Obama quotes and saying the Pennsylvanians she’s met aren’t bitter, but “resilient” and “positive.”
“It is a remarkable statement and extremely revealing,” McCain adviser Steve Schmidt said. “It shows an elitism and condescension towards hardworking Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking. It is hard to imagine someone running for president of the United States who is more out of touch with average Americans.”Schmidt also said it shows Obama views the people he’s trying to relate to with “contempt.”
The Obama campaign has neither confirmed nor disputed the account in The Huffington Post.
The site quoted Obama as saying:
“You go into 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 going to regenerate and they have not.Obama, who consistently leads Clinton among highly educated and wealthy voters, has tried to make up ground with middle-class America, where Clinton is strong. But recent comments from him and his wife Michelle have occasionally been interpreted as too high-minded.
“And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or ntipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
Michelle Obama, for instance, drew criticism in February for saying she was “proud” of her country for the first time in her adult life.
A March 28 article in New York magazine reported that, according to a Democratic strategist, Obama was unable to clinch the endorsement of exiting candidate John Edwards because he was “glib and aloof” when Edwards tried to talk to him about poverty.
“It comes off very badly,” Democratic strategist Kirsten Powers said of the small-town America remarks. “They are things that I think in a liberal world sound totally normal, and outside of that world I don’t know that he appreciates how it sounds. And it just sounds very elitist, and it sounds like he’s looking down on people.”
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UPDATE
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