Obama Fires Back On “Bitter” Comments, Says It Was Just Clumsy Talking
Sen. Barack Obama sounded a defiant note tonight when asked during a candidate forum about whether his words to a group of San Francisco donors pegged him as an elitist who is out of touch with the average voter.
“My words may have been clumsy, which happens surprisingly often on a presidential campaign,” Obama said, a remark that drew laughter from the crowd assembled at Messiah College for the “Compassion Forum”. Obama added that he had meant to tout — not demean — the redemptive power of religion for those facing hardship. “Religion is a bulwark,” Obama said. “What I was referring to was in no way demeaning a faith that I myself embrace.”
Here, once again, is what Obama actually said:
You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, a lot of them — 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’ve gone 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. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, and they cling to guns, or religion, or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment, or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
That doesn’t sound clumsy to me at all. That sounds like a man saying exactly what he means. Ted Kennedy saying “Osama” instead of “Obama” is clumsy. Obama saying “it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, and they cling to guns, or religion, or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment, or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations” is clear and concise.
But, to be fair, I’m willing to grant that Obama might not have thought he was insulting those who practice a religion he himself “embraces” given that he attends a church where conspiracy theories about AIDS being an American government conspiracy are preached from the pulpit.
I don’t know how to describe the congregation of a church like that other than “bitter.”
