Obama Draws Fire for Comments on Small-Town America

http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/04/11/obama-draws-fire-for-comments-on-small-town-america/

Hillary Clinton and John McCain both ripped into Barack Obama Friday for reportedly saying residents of small-town America “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them” out of bitterness 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.

The comments, which can also be heard in an audio recording later posted on the Huffington Web site, immediately became fodder for the campaigns of Clinton, Obama’s rival for the Democratic nomination, and McCain, his potential Republican challenger.

“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 Friday afternoon at a campaign stop in Philadelphia. She said the Pennsylvanians she’s met aren’t bitter, but “resilient” and “positive.”

McCain adviser Steve Schmidt called Obama’s statement “remarkable” and “extremely revealing.”

“It shows an elitism and condescension towards hardworking Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking,” Schmidt said. “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.

Spokesman Tommy Vietor, though, released a statement chiding Washington insiders for failing to restore those lost jobs Obama reportedly referenced in San Francisco.

“And if John McCain wants a debate about who’s out of touch with the American people, we can start by talking about the tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans that he once said offended his conscience but now wants to make permanent,” Vietor said.

The Huffington Post originally quoted Obama as saying: “Our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. 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.

“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.”

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.

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 Obama’s 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.”

Of course, Clinton would have a hard time arguing she’s just like those small-town Pennsylvania voters. She and her husband’s newly released tax returns showed they earned nearly $110 million since leaving the White House, compared with the Obamas’ meager millions earned in the same period.

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