Obama regrets remark about 'bitter' working class

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Democrat Barack Obama concedes that comments he made about bitter working-class voters who cling to guns or religion were ill chosen.

The senator's comments drew immediate criticism, including a response from Hillary Rodham Clinton, his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Obama scrambled Saturday to quell the furor. Clinton's response to his remarks is one of her lengthiest and most pointed criticisms to date. Obama made the remarks at a fundraiser in San Francisco on April 6.

Sens. Clinton and John McCain sharply criticized Obama on Friday for saying at a private fundraiser in San Francisco that small-town voters in economically distressed areas of Pennsylvania are "bitter."

"Well, that's not my experience," Clinton told a crowd at Drexel University. "As I travel around Pennsylvania, I meet people who are resilient, who are optimistic, who are positive. ... They're working hard every day for a better future for themselves and their children. Pennsylvanians don't need a president who looks down on them. They need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them."

In remarks first reported on the Huffington Post Web site, Obama said, "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," he went on. "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."

Click here for the rest.

Sigh.

More truthful but "controversial" statements getting Obama into trouble: the correlation between economic hardship and fundamentalism or other extremist beliefs has been well established for some years now. For instance, the major recession in the US after World War I provided literally millions of recruits for the Klu Klux Klan revival of the 1920s; hyperinflation combined with the massive and unreasonable reparation debt imposed after the same war provided a fertile bed of social disaffection upon which Hitler's Nazi Party based its rapid and dramatic rise to power in Germany. This ain't rocket science.

Working people in this country really are hurting, and have been for many years. Given that the mainstream press continues to remain mostly silent about what's actually ailing the working class, that capitalists are squeezing them for all the blood they can get, it's no surprise at all that the downtrodden find solace in the stark, black and white views of fundamentalist Christianity, or seek scapegoats for the venting of their wrath, or purchase guns to keep them safe from their invisible enemy.

Republicans are actually well aware of this dynamic, and have been taking great advantage of it since the Reagan era. It's just that nobody's actually supposed to talk about it.

Fucking Christ. Can you believe Hillary's response? That people in these old Pennsylvania factory towns are optimistic?!? What bullshit. It's been so bad there for so long. Remember Billy Joel's 1982 song "Allentown"? That's Allentown, Pennsylvania. Things were fucking awful then, and it's only gotten worse.

Obama speaks the truth and gets pounded for it. Thank god he's saying that his words were only "ill chosen," not that he was wrong. Because he wasn't wrong. Thank god he's taking the opportunity, as he did with Scary-Black-Preacher-Gate, to get into some real issues that usually go undiscussed. Because he's right.

Unfortunately, I've got a really bad feeling that the bullshit mudslinging hasn't even really started yet.



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