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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 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 anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

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Phred said:

Well, it is what he said, more or less.

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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.

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Obama Tries Damage Control; Epic Fail

To be honest that vid isn't as good as Allah's deconstruction of it. Pay attention to Obama's attempt to limit the "gaffe" to calling people "bitter." http://hotair.com/archives/2008/04/11/obama-tries-to-change-the-subject-im-out-of-touch/

Dude, that's the least of it and you know it. You came this close to saying "Religion is the opiate of the masses." You strongly implied that people "cling to their religion" only due to economic desperation, and not out of faith at all.

Allah and I were emailing about this and I said, "Well, you know, they all think that. It's the What's the Matter With Kansas? theory that has such a grip on the liberal mindset. They can't comprehend why people aren't gung-ho for socialism, so they postulate that people are 'distracted' and 'divided' by sinister forces injecting 'phony issues' (like God) into politics to keep them from voting for socialism."

Which is, yes, itself pretty much just a re-wording of "Religion is the opiate of the masses."

Will this hurt Obama? I doubt it, as far as the primaries go. Because, once again: Almost all liberals believe this. Obama was just stupid enough to say it before a primary. So he'll get all the liberal votes he was going to get anyway; quite frankly, his voters won't even understand what the fuss is all about. Why shouldn't Obama say it? It's true, isn't it? Downtrodden, uneducated, backwoods smoked-porcupine-pie type people (that would be you and me) of course cling to simple concepts their tiny brains can grasp -- guns, God, patriotism, the lot of it -- because we're just not capable of understanding the complexities of a functioning socialist economic system on the European model.

The only way this hurts him is if superdelegates now realize he cannot win in November, and begin flipping for Lance Corporal Hillary Clinton. But I doubt that will happen, and anyway, the Democratic party cannot afford to not nominate Barack Obama at this point.

I don't want to say that Obama is now unelectable but he's coming perilously close to that point.

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Obama Sends Actor Ronnie Cox To Mend Fences With Small-Town Folks

An emissary of hope. And change. And banjo.

It's patriotic, too, y'all. You heard Yankee Doodle Dandy in there, right?

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“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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What’s most offensive? The condescension displayed here by the intelligentsia’s candidate of choice? The sheer breadth of the stereotype, which would send Team Obama screaming from the rooftops if a white politician drew a similarly sweeping caricature of blacks? The crude quasi-Marxist reductionism of his analysis, which he first introduced in his speech on race vis-a-vis the root causes of whites’ “resentment” — namely, exploitation by the bourgeoisie in the form of corporations and D.C. lobbyists? Or is it the shocking inclusion of religion, of all things, in the litany of sins he recites? What on earth is that doing there, given His Holiness’s repeated invocations of the virtues of faith on the trail? Note the choice of verb, too. Why not just go the whole nine yards and call it the opiate of the masses?

If you missed the Standard’s post a few weeks ago on the various complaints about “distractions” that creep into Obama’s rhetoric, read it now. http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2008/03/obama_its_all_a_distraction.asp This is of a piece with it. Everything in the Obama universe, including gun rights evidently, that doesn’t fit his agenda is a byproduct of external forces conspiring to manipulate the masses to keep his agenda at bay. Exit question: How does Hillary leverage this? Does she dare get the video and stick it in an ad?

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Phred said:
gaffe: an unintentional act or remark causing embarrassment to its originator; a blunder

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It was the gaffe to end all gaffes. Obama just insulted the hell out of a gigantic chunk of voters. He's fucking toast.

What's even worse was his lame-ass attempt at damage control, where it is so painfully obvious he's dancing all around the offensive comment, trying to pretend the whole issue is about his claim that people are bitter, and oh.... look over there! McCain once said something bad!

He's fucking doomed. This is the kind of gift that just keeps on giving.

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afoaf said:
this entire thread smacks of desperation.

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The remark was intentional, and he is not embarrassed by it, as he is standing behind it.

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If you think it is an insult then you don't understand the comment. It is an objective observation.

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Any feigned insult is being interjected by the reader, who would certainly not be voting for Obama in the first place.

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