The Clinton campaign is trying so hard slam Barack Obama over comments he made recently, saying small-town Pennsylvanians are “bitter” because of job losses and high gas prices and whatever else. While Obama conceded that he may have chosen a better adjective to describe how people are generally feeling, I’ve known plenty of people who have lost their jobs in this state, and let’s just say most weren’t singing Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry Be Happy.”
To say the Clinton campaign has pounced is to put it lightly. Today they put Tom Vilsack, the former Iowa governor, on a conference call with reporters about the “bitter” remark. Clinton herself while at Drexel University in Philadelphia on Friday took Obama to task for the use of the adjective, describing Obama as condescending to blue collar voters and out of touch.
Here’s what she said to automotive workers in Indiana Saturday:
“Sen. Obama’s remarks are elitist and out of touch,” she said. “they are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans, certainly not the Americans I know, not the Americans I grew up with, not the Americans I lived with in Arkansas or represent in New York.”
“I don’t think it helps to divide our country into one America that is enlightened and one that is not,” Clinton continued, finishing her remarks with a line she introduced on Friday in Philadelphia after the story broke: “People don’t need a president who looks down on them. They need a president who stands up for them, and that’s exactly what I will do.”
For context, I’d like to offer the New York Times/CBS poll released this month showing 81 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with the direction America’s taking. Not exactly indicative of a happy-go-lucky populace, which I suggest is why Clinton and Obama are running so hard for the job of president. There’s an opportunity for either one of them to reverse that trend during the next term.
Obama has responded today saying he could have chosen better words, but … :
“Lately there has been a little typical sort of political flare up because I said something that everybody knows is true which is that there are a whole bunch of folks in small towns in Pennsylvania, in towns right here in Indiana, in my hometown in Illinois who are bitter. They are angry.
“They feel like they have been left behind. They feel like nobody is paying attention to what they’re going through.
“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 or they get frustrated about you know how things are changing.
“That’s a natural response.
“And now I didn’t say it as well as I should have because you know the truth is is that these traditions that are passed on from generation to generation those are important. That’s what sustains us.
“But what is absolutely true is that people don’t feel like they are being listened to.
“And so they pray and they count on each other and they count on their families. You know this in your own lives and what we need is a government that is actually paying attention. Government that is fighting for working people day in and day out making sure that we are trying to allow them to live out the American dream.”
Clinton’s attack on Obama isn’t out-of-bounds; just good debating, except there seems to be a very strong push in the last 24 hours based on one word. When you consider the last three weeks, it may not be hard to understand why the Clinton campaign would like to see the national conversation change. For the Clinton’s, this is a list of what they’ve been contending with recently:
- The Bosnia embellishment.
- Pennsylvania polls showing Obama pulling close where once her campaign proclaimed her as unbeatable.
- Her senior strategist and pollster Mark Penn was found to be lobbying the U.S. government on behalf of Colombia in favor of a free trade agreement Clinton opposes. Her husband, former President Bill Clinton, has also come out in favor of it.
- Bill Clinton resurrected the Bosnia story this week, stumbling over an explanation for why Mrs. Clinton erroneously described her 1996 trip.
- Increasing calls by prominent Democrats, many who support Obama, to withdraw from the race.
Clinton is too good a candidate, too smart a politician, to allow all of these to happen, and I’m not quite sure how or why it has. None of these appear to be fatal, but they couldn’t come at a worst time, either, with Pennsylvania’s primary looming in a week-and-a-half and Obama closing fast. Some pundits suggesting a major upset could be within reach. Clinton needs to find some traction, even if it’s on a “bitter” road, to right the ship
