Last Sunday at a fundraiser in San Francisco, Senator Barack Obama privately made some comments voicing his trouble with winning over the working class voters who have become frustrated with economic conditions. He said, “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.”
Needless to say, nothing said aloud is really private, so by the following Friday his comments were posted on the Huffington Post political Website. And naturally the post set off a barrage of criticisms from rival Senator Hillary Clinton. Now as Obama and his camp are scrambling to repair the damage his careless words caused, Senator Clinton has delivered her lengthiest speech on his failings to date in Indianapolis. “Senator Obama’s remarks were elitist and out of touch. They are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans.”
Obama admits that his remarks were said poorly and he hadn’t meant them the way they sounded. He doesn’t rescind what he said, only that he should have made it clearer as to what he’d meant. He clarified his statements saying, “So I said, well you know, when you’re bitter you turn to what you can count on. So people, they vote about guns, or they take comfort from their faith and their family and their community. And they get mad about illegal immigrants who are coming over to this country. They are angry. They feel like they have been left behind. They feel like nobody is paying attention to what they’re going through.”
Will this hurt Obama’s higher numbers? Only time will tell. He obviously has a great political camp behind him because he spun the ill-received remarks well. Not taking them back but redefining them.
