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Edited on Sun Apr-13-08 07:36 AM by indimuse
http://www.correntewire.com/what_obama_really_meant_its_the_new_game_thats_sweeping_the_nation
And best of all, anybody can play! Even, or perhaps especially, Obama campaign operatives! Times:
his aides made a flurry of calls to superdelegates to explain his remarks and to reassure them about his electability. And Mr. Obama told audiences Saturday that what he had said about people’s economic circumstances was true, if in-artfully expressed, but that he was not trying to play down the importance of religion or gun rights.
Heh. For the record, let’s go to the tape:
“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,” Obama said. “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.”
Leaving the insults to “small town” voters aside — did Obama “cling to” Reverend Wright? — the worst thing about Obama’s gaffe is that with it, he proves that he has no understanding at all of the voters he’s dealing with. He doesn’t understand their lives, and he doesn’t understand their experience.
Because Obama performs his usual trick—so appealing to his narrow, youthful, uncritical base—of lumping Bush and Clinton together as part of the same past. But for these voters, the Clinton years were a lot better. Clinton’s economic policies were a lot better than Bush’s, and as a result, people were better off, especially as measured by income. As a PA truck driver said: “What don’t you like about Clinton? The peace? Or the prosperity?”
Obama convicts himself, with words right out of his own mouth, of complete ignorance of a huge swath of voters in the American heartland. So, since he doesn’t understand us, why would we trust him to come up with policies that will help us?
The answer, increasingly: We don’t.
And now the Obama campaign is trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube. And call me crazy, but if I were an automatic delegate, and I got a call from the Obama campaign saying “Don’t worry! My guy is really electable,” well, I just might start worrying — especially if I were one of the downticket Dems that Mr. Hopey “transformed” into a target of opportunity for Republican attacks with his “in-artfully expressed” insults. Heck, if I were counter-suggestible enough, I might even think to myself “If they were all that confident, why’d they even make the call?”
I’m betting there people who aren’t quite as anxious for their Unity Pony to arrive as they thought at first…
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Update:: http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/012327.php
So, it depends on where you are, but I think it's fair to say that the places where we are going to have to do the most work are the places where people feel most cynical about government. The people are mis-appre...I think they're misunderstanding why the demographics in our, in this contest have broken out as they are. Because everybody just ascribes it to 'white working-class don't wanna work -- don't wanna vote for the black guy.' That's...there were intimations of that in an article in the Sunday New York Times today - kind of implies that it's sort of a race thing.
Sen. Obama obviously sought to distance himself from the false charge that white working class voters are not voting for him because they are racist. However, it is rather hilarious that he used this opportunity to advance the entirely false claim that "everybody" believes that racism in the white working-class is the reason why he is struggling to win their votes. What is most insulting about his statement is that it is Sen. Obama's supporters who have been spreading the destructive meme that working class whites aren't voting for him because they are racist. I'd love to believe that he disagrees with this notion, but when his campaign and supporters have gone out of their way to falsely smear the Clintons as race-baiters or racists (something that egregious fact-challenged jokers like Donna Brazile have been only too happy to propagate) let's say that I am not entirely convinced just yet.
I don't think Oilbama's campaign will survive this. Obama has virtually done himself in. He has proven AGAIN, he is simply electable. The RW will eat him up! Too many vulnerabilities and unknowns...
Oh, and what's with Barack Oilbama's continuous attacks on Bill Clinton? Always dissing his Presidency!! ( how democratic of him...) Obama is so full of himself... what an arrogant fool.
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