Obama Defends Himself Against Criticism Over ‘Bitter’ Remarks

MUNCIE, Ind. _ Battling persistent suggestions that he can seem elitist, Sen. Barack Obama defended himself Saturday against continued criticism over recent remarks of his now being called insulting to the very working-class voters he needs in crucial upcoming primaries.

For the second day in a row, he aggressively pushed back against complaints over comments he made last weekend at a private San Francisco fundraiser, remarks the two other presidential candidates suggest smack of Big City arrogance.

“I didn’t say it as well as I should have,” the Illinois Democrat confessed to an audience at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., referring to a comment he made a week ago that many rural, working-class Americans are “bitter” over their economic plight.

After being asked at the fundraiser why he has struggled to win over such voters, he reportedly said: “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 has repeatedly battled suggestions during his presidential bid that he is a liberal elitist, a Harvard-educated former law school lecturer whose eloquence allows him to falsely present himself in more moderate tones.

With the crucial Pennsylvania primary slightly more than a week away, the remarks provided an opening for N.Y. Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign to again question his general election ability to woo working-class voters, a group he long struggled to gain traction with until he built momentum by winning state primaries and caucuses.

Besides in Pennsylvania, blue collar and small-town voters will also make up a significant share of the Democratic electorate on May 6 in Indiana and North Carolina _ two other critical upcoming primary states.

Clinton’s campaign, meanwhile, aggressively sought to fan the controversy, which neatly fit into the former first lady’s message that Obama is not well vetted and would struggle against a Republican in a general election.

Campaigning in Indianapolis, she said she was “taken aback by the demeaning remarks Sen. Obama made about people in small town America.”

Her campaign deployed numerous surrogates, especially those with rural ties, to speak out against Obama and suggest that such comments have proven deadly to Democrats in general elections.

Clinton, meanwhile, stressed that she is the granddaughter of a factory worker who was “born in Chicago, raised outside of that great city” and someone with strong Midwest values and faith in America.

“Sen. Obama’s remarks are elitist and they are out of touch,” she said.

Clinton said she found Obama’s comment about religion especially troubling.

“The people of faith I know don’t `cling to’ religion because they’re bitter,” she said. “People embrace faith not because they are materially poor, but because they are spiritually rich.”

The campaign of Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, echoed Clinton.

“Yet again, Barack Obama has stood by the elitist remarks he made in San Francisco, which reveal exactly how he feels about millions of Americans,” McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said in a statement. “Our country’s greatness and identity are rooted in faith, values and fundamental rights like the right to bear arms _ not frustration and bitterness.”

Political observers are mixed on just how damaging Obama comments are and whether the dispute will fade in a few days, or provide a spark for Clinton to try to restart a campaign that has struggled, ironically, since her wins in Ohio and Texas.

Dave “Mudcat” Saunders, a Democratic strategist who advised John Edwards’ presidential campaign and is now neutral, said Obama has much explaining to do with rural voters.

“I don’t have a gun because I’m bitter, it’s because I’ve always had one. I don’t pray to God because I’m bitter. I pray to God because it makes my life better,” he told CNN.

Clinton supporters, meanwhile, handed out “I’m not bitter” stickers at an event in North Carolina, as her campaign flooded reporters with statements from surrogates and others that denounced Obama’s remarks.

Acknowledging the importance of guns, God, family and community to many Americans, Obama told his Indiana audience that he did not mean to be condescending.

“The truth is that these traditions that are passed on from generation to generation, those are important,” he said Saturday. “That’s what sustains us.”

Obama called the controversy “a little … political flare-up.”

It came as he was wrapping up a four-day tour across Indiana, which is receiving more presidential campaign attention than any time since Robert F. Kennedy campaigned there 40 years ago.

Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, Clinton’s top supporter in the state, told reporters that he believes Obama’s remarks present a real political problem.

“The far right wing has a very good track record of using things like this relentlessly against our candidates, whether its Al Gore or John Kerry,” he said Saturday, CNN reported.

The Huffington Post Web site first reported the remarks Friday and Obama responded that evening, although he then did not acknowledge that he had said anything wrong while suggesting Clinton and McCain are more “out of touch.”

Obama does not allow reporters into fundraisers at private residences so his comments from last weekend were not initially reported.

Robert Gibbs, Obama’s communications director, said the candidate was simply trying to suggest that Republicans have long used “wedge issues to purposefully divide the country.”

The latest controversy surrounding Obama comes as the last one was quieting. That one, involving controversial remarks by his longtime Chicago pastor, flared after the most recent Democratic primary in early March.

As Obama addressed the topic Saturday, many in the audience silently listened, not yet aware of the brewing controversy.

“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,” he said. “When you’re bitter, you turn to what you can count on. So people, you know, they vote about guns, or they take comfort in their faith and their family and their community. And they get mad about illegal immigrants who are coming over to this country.”

But Obama insisted that the nation must get past the divisions. “We’ve got to get past the distractions in our politics and fight for each other,” he said.

About a quarter of the room gave him a standing ovation when he finished on the topic.

Emley Sensing, a retired county worker from Anderson, Ind., who watched Obama, said she was aware of the fundraiser remarks, but not troubled by them.

“I don’t think he’s an elitist at all,” she said. “He was speaking from his heart. People are bitter from what’s been happening in America the last eight years.”

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(c) 2008, Chicago Tribune.

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