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.
So says Barack Obama, as of April 6 in San Francisco, in an astoundingly condescending moment which demeans many Americans on multiple levels; and in defending himself, his response has essentially been, “Why all the furor? All I did was say what everyone knows is true.” Paging Thomas Frank . . .To this, Hillary Clinton responds,
You know, Americans who believe in the Second Amendment believe it’s a matter of Constitutional rights. Americans who believe in God believe it is a matter of personal faith. Americans who believe in protecting good American jobs believe it is a matter of the American Dream. . . The people of faith I know don’t “cling to” religion because they’re bitter. People embrace faith not because they are materially poor, but because they are spiritually rich. Our faith is the faith of our parents and our grandparents. It is a fundamental expression of who we are and what we believe.
And,
I saw in the media it’s being reported that my opponent said that the people of Pennsylvania who faced hard times are bitter. Well, that’s not my experience. As I travel around Pennsylvania, I meet people who are resilient, who are optimistic, who are positive, who are rolling up their sleeves. They are working hard every day for a better future, for themselves and their children. Pennsylvanians don’t need a president who looks down on them; they need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them, who works hard for your futures, your jobs, your families.
On Commentary‘s “Contentions” blog, Jennifer Rubin called that first comment “probably the smartest thing she’s said in her entire political career”; I think Rubin is right. Of course, John McCain’s campaign is on top of this as well, as witness this quote from one of his advisors:
It shows an elitism and condescension towards hardworking Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking. It is hard to imagine someone running for president who is more out of touch with average Americans.
The theme is clear here: Sen. Obama is an out-of-touch ivory-tower elitist snob who looks down on ordinary folks. As David Paul Kuhn put it,
Last year [Sen. Obama] responded to an Iowa farmer’s concerns about crop prices by asking if “anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?” There are no Whole Foods in Iowa. Recently Obama tried to bowl in Pennsylvania and looked like the sort of Democrat who thinks of Whole Foods when discussing crop prices. Now Obama talks about what drives rural voters’ cultural concerns and ends up looking like the kind of Democrat who bowls a 37 in seven frames. Soon there is a storyline. The silly is now serious.It seems that every time Obama makes a mistake he brings it up again, offers context, laughs about it, and then defends it. No matter, the bowling and arugula mistakes were still small time. But the bitter remark was a game changer.
Unfortunately for the Obama campaign, this is a theme that reminds a lot of folks of the Jeremiah Wright diatribes against America and Michelle Obama’s “the first time I’ve ever been proud of my country” comment; it seems to fit with them all too well. The question is, is this his helmet-in-a-tank moment? Certainly it looks like it might be in Pennsylvania; and while it’s too early to tell for the long term, you can be sure that if Sen. Obama manages to hang on and win the nomination, we’ll be hearing a lot about this from now to November. Sen. Obama shot himself in the foot good and proper; now he’d best just hope he doesn’t get gangrene.