"Bitter"

I don't agree much with anything Hillary Clinton has to say, but her remark that Barack Obama is "out of touch" with the voters of Pennsylvania, especially those who live throughout its small towns, is right on the mark. Having "grown up" with relatives who live in these small towns, I know they don't "cling" to their "guns" and their "religion" because they have nothing else to hang onto. These are just some of the things at the core of who these people really are! I know. I was there.

ABC's Jake Tapper gets it:

"As Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and his allies have locked into damage control mode and attempted to explain his controversial remarks about small-town Pennsylvanians, they've attempted to focus their pushback away from the most controversial part of his remarks to an elite crowd at a San Francisco fundraiser. ...

While the description of small town Pennsylvanians as "bitter" is certainly impolitic, many political analysts say it's what follows that adjective that is potentially so alienating -- the notion that small town folks "get bitter" after which "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."

Folks in Pennsylvania are not "bitter", but concerned about security, health care, education, the war in Iraq, the war on terror, the devaluation of the dollar, the loss of jobs, and so on. They're also not looking for a handout either or for the government to solve their problems. Now, it's easy for someone like Obama to go out to San Francisco to schmooze with million dollar limousine liberals who eat bree cheese and drink red wine while deliberating about the ills of our society, but most of these people are out of touch with much of society--just like Obama. So forgive us Senator Obama, if we're not bitter, because many of us are not. We're just looking for someone to deliver on what they promise. Now excuse me while I go down to the basement to clean my gun and read from the Bible while I decry how bad NAFTA has been for this country!