A political tempest over Barack Obama's comments about bitter voters in small towns has given rival Hillary Rodham Clinton a new opening to court working-class Democrats 10 days before Pennsylvanians hold a primary that she must win to keep her presidential campaign alive.
Obama tried to quell the furor Saturday, explaining his remarks while also conceding he had chosen his words poorly.
What he said then: Asked at a San Francisco fundraiser last Sunday why he was not doing better in Pennsylvania, Obama privately said: "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 gonna 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."
What he says now: There has been a small "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," Obama said Saturday morning at a town hall-style meeting at Ball State University.
"They are angry. They feel like they have been left behind. They feel like nobody is paying attention to what they're going through. ... What we need is a government that is actually paying attention," he said.
What she says: "I was taken aback by the demeaning remarks Senator Obama made about people in small-town America," Clinton told several-hundred voters at a factory in Indianapolis.
"Senator Obama's remarks are elitist and out of touch. They are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans, certainly not the Americans that I know. ... Americans who believe in the Second Amendment believe it's a matter of a constitutional right, Americans who believe in God believe it's a matter of personal faith." She also said, "People don't need a president who looks down on them. They need a president who stands up for them."
What others are saying: Political insiders differed on whether Obama's comments, posted on the Huffington Post political Web site Friday, would become a full-blown political disaster that could prompt party leaders to try to steer the nomination to Clinton even though Obama has more pledged delegates. Republican candidate John McCain's campaign piled on, releasing a statement that also accused Obama of elitism.
— Associated Press, New York Times, Washington Post