Hillary Clinton‘s campaign deserves a bonus for finding these plain Pennsylvania voters to speak out against Barack Obama‘s “bitter” comment.
For those of you living under a rock, Obama came under fire after saying voters were bitter over our nation’s tough times:
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.
Clinton and other anti-Obama elements accused the Senator of being “elitist” and looking down on blue-collar voters. As if any of the candidates have ever worn a blue-collar.
Anyway, Clinton’s now trying to ride the wave and released this video in Pennsylvania featuring voters who are “offended” by Obama’s remarks. And they sound bitter as shit.
Hey, remember when we asked if the Democrats can survive this “toxic” election season?
Shaun Tom
Being from Pennsylvania, and originally RURAL PA for that matter, I can say that what Obama said is entirely true. People continue to hold fast to some bygone “traditional” lifestyle and guard themselves against anything that deviates from homogeneity. C’est la vie.
Disgusted American
All this BS makes me TIRED..I Already know Im voting for OBAMA…Hillary is grating on my nerves..and well,McCain – Why Bother?
abracadaver
Also being a lifelong Pennsylvanian, I can also concur that Senator Obama’s remarks are right on the money. That’s why so many knee-jerk reactionaries in our Commonwealth are offended; because he hit them right where they live.
Pennsylvania has more registered gun owners and hunters (as a percentage of population) than any other state in the nation. We have more members of the NRA (in sheer numbers; totally a quarter of a million) than any other station in the nation PERIOD. Pennsylvania hunters and gun enthusiasts in no small number helped propel G.W. into office, even though Pennsylvania went blue in both 2000 and 2004. Plus, our state is nearly 50% Catholic; no further explanation needed on that one.
As an Obama supporter, I pray that he is careful not to misstep like this again. He shouldn’t underestimate how racist and small-minded our populace can be. In the words of James Carville (which are spot on): “When it comes to Pennsylvania, you have Pittsburgh in the west…Philadelphia in the east…and Alabama all points inbetween.”
DanGOP
As a Central Pennsylvanian, and a Clinton supporter, I sincerely hope that Obama keeps making these outrageous statements about us.
But, most of the people here are Clinton supporters. She’ll win Pennsylvania, and he might just have lost the Commonwealths of Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Virginia, along with the State of Ohio with these comments, if he’s the nominee. So keep on going, Obama. Keep on putting your foot in your mouth.
Seriously, though, I am disturbed that Obama would make statements like this. However, it just proves tht he’s completely out of touch with American Values.
todd
Hillary, the rethuglican, will do whatever it takes to inherit BUSH III presidency. I hope Obama doesn’t become her VP – never get into the trough with PIGS, or you end up like Al Gore – tossed aside…
jesse
Hillary Clinton,
This ad makes me Vom just a little bit in my mouth. Please focus on your strengths, whatever those are and retract the claws.
You’re like a badger that has been backed into a corner and your desperation is palpable.
Leland Frances
If Obama does get the nomination & is elected [the latter looking less and less likely] we sure hope he appoints a US Secretary of Proctology because all you Obamoonies who keep pulling bloody nonsense out of your asses are going to need some serious reparative surgery.
Al Gore got “tossed aside”? What the fuck does that even mean? Any end to the honeymoon between Clinton & Gore after they were elected [he was initially identified as the first VP in our history actually given something to do] would have been his own doing. Just as his failure to see that the Repug coup de Monica had backfired and, finally, do what any commoner could have done in 2000—read Clinton’s end-of-presidency ratings which were the highest of any post WWII President INCLUDING Reagan. And on specific issues like the economy Clinton’s ratings were in the 70s. His “personal ratings” were lower but Gore was a fool to totally distance himself from Clinton during his own campaign wrongly thinking that the public couldn’t make the distinction and he couldn’t share credit for the administrations successes. Such misjudgment was the second reason, after the numbnut Naderites, that Gore didn’t swamp Bush fils.
Seriously, is there a collector campaign colostomy bag for sale among all the things with Obama’s logo on it? How about a “How To Cook Crow” recipe book? And will you PLEASE stop trying to sell me Obama flowers at the airport?!
Martin
Did that guy just say “out of touch with American Values”? What values are those? And why are those “values” more American than mine? I’d rather have a President with intelligent, tolerant, compassionate “values” than a President who panders to gun-toting bigots and supposed “Christians” whose “values” we hear god-damn too much about.
emb
I think all this outrage and posturing is the really offensive thing to come out of this. The fact is, Obama’s statement was accurate. Many “Traditional American Values” (irresponsible gun ownership, intolerant religions, homophobia, xenophobia, star-obsession, out-of-control consumerism) are most definitely reflections of a basic fear, dissatisfaction, and emptiness at our social core. What’s outrageous and irresponsible is for an aspirant to the Presidency to be “shocked, shocked” because someone has the courage to state the truth. It’s not all about some amorphous “Them” or just about Evil Republicans–a fundamental problem in our culture is the culture itself, and how we respond to the fears and anxieties that grow in part out of 8 years of bush nonsense.
Brian
How do you know those people were “real Pennsylvanians” and not actors?
Sorne
Well it looks like we are going to have another election were we get to pick the least worse person. Obama keeps putting his foot in his mouth. McCain is going to continue on like Bush. An then we have Hillary she is a liar, a thief,and a real certifed Bitch, worst of all she brings Billy Boy with her, this man needs to have the Postal Service issue a stamp in his honor. But we all know you have to die first just wishful thinking on my part.
An Other Greek
WOW.
What a bitter ad, what DESPERATION and HYPOCRISY!! Talk about offensive! Hillary and McCain would love to see Obama fall, and they are betting Americans will continue on their suicidal path of brainwash, ignorance and apathy…
I never hated Hillary, but I am beginning to. And sadly, the more I get to know her, the more I see her husband’s presidency clearer, and it ain’t pretty. The Clintons won the presidency and proceeded to:
-lose the house
-lose the senate
-move the democrats to the center
-sell out to NAFTA
-sell out on gays and health care
-render the party so weak that Gore and Kerry could not win (not that the Clintons really campaigned for either of them…, hmm, wonder why?)
-start a NATO sponsored action against Yugoslavia that BROKE U.N. LAW for the first time, thus opening the door for more such illegal acts under Bush…
-etc.
Yes there was more money for everyone with the Clintons (and the dot com boom)
but,
I do NOT want another triangulating centrist that moves the party and not the nation to the center. I do not want a politician that puts her career above her ethics. I do not want a politician that sacrificed the senate, the house, and Gore, as well as Kerry, for her own ambitions…
no more “LEGACY” no more bush-clinton-bush-clinton madness…
I -WILL- vote for Hillary over McCain, NO QUESTION.
I -DO- support Obama over Hillary, NO QUESTION.
abracadaver
EMB: You’re my hero. So well put.
Stevo
MORE IMPORTANTLY… What does Obama have to say about all us bitter queens???
Martin
amen, Sorne!
hisurfer
This is all turning into a farce. They are fighting tooth and nail over who has the better sound-bites. So much for us being a model of democracy and all the other bullshit.
Bitch Republic
Obama is a bitter, old queen. He needs to quit the race for the good of the party because there’s no way he can win the presidency after criticizing guns and religion.
M Shane
You are right about the “democracy”model, hisurfer. However, this just further fortifies my belief not only that Obama is willing to honest with people, but also that he he believes in Democracy which is fast slipping away, and that people need to intelligently think about and demand what they want and moreover, (something which a lot of political scientists know) he understands that America is on the turning edge of becoming a dictatorship. It has been happening since WW2 that we have had, contrary to the constitution, and the wisdom of even (Geo .Washington& Eisenhower) a standing army. We spend a trillion dollars a year on the military. of which 40% is inaccessable. We don’t even manufacture anything.
seitan-on-a-stick
I thought that all the Obama supporters went back to their straight wives. Hillary (even with Obama as VP) has the only chance of beating (Media-loved) McCain after too many racial and now, classist gaffs by Barack. It’s all about the Vote and winning the Presidency with a Democrat and Barack can no longer achieve that threshold of 45% as we will see in Pennsylvania. He’s toast if he falls below 40%. This Homo for Hillary is riding high on the shifting tides towards the more known candidate; Senator Clinton. Obama absolutely deserves the Vice Presidency; he earned it!
seitan-on-a-stick
Correction: gaffe
abracadaver
LOL @ “[H]illary…has the only chance of beating (Media-loved) McCain.” If you think Senator Obama has made too many “gaffes,” just wait and see if Senator Clinton gets the nomination. They Republicans have 16 years of her f*ck-ups to trot out, not to mention her husband’s by association.
And don’t take Pennsylvania as too great an indicator of how well Obama is doing/will do. He hardly had a chance here to begin with. PA is far too racist of a state to elect a black man (look at our last gubernatorial election…even our current governor said, “[If] Lynn Swann were a white man, he’d have beaten me handily.”).
Obama is going to be the Democratic nominee. All all supporters of Senator Clinton who don’t back him are as foolish as those who voted fell for G.W.’s “scare rhetoric” in 2004; and will get exactly what you deserve if you hand the White House to McCain.
Mr C
abracadaver You are so RIGHT!!!
Some of these queens on here. If they don’t like pussy. Hillary has definitely changed them to eat it good. She paid those people to say that. And all that is built on their PRIDE which is the worst sin!
And if your PRIDE is that strong to really believe that you’re resilient in the time of despair and the very gov’t you pay taxes to is turning their back on you and not trying to help you and you’re not BITTER. Then you deserve it!
FUCK OUTSOURCING AND HELPING ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS to move into small town America and suck up services
BRING THE JOBS BACK IN AND TO THE ILLEGALS MEMEBRSHIP HAS IT’S PRIVILEDGES.
She ain’t SHIT!
Puddy Katz
Isn’t this just Hillary negativity? And I agree, how do YOU know these are not actors?
hisurfer
Why is Mr C always yelling?
Shane – One of the things that really irks me about HRC, and that made me swing from being an early supporter to positively hating the sight of her, is the sheer level of intellectual dishonesty in her rhetoric. Obama is no angel, but at least he’s trying. HRC could have met him on that level, and still fought hard. Instead she’s pulling this Annie Oakley act (which, does Obama now have Bruce Villanch or some other queen writing his lines? That was a good one).
I met some students in Cairo a few months back. They weren’t even angry at the US just so much as sick of us, and tired of us. They’re fighting their own very real and very corrupt dictatorship, and we (Bush, the State Dept, the Pentagon) aren’t helping by hectoring everyone else about democracy while utterly failing to nurture it at home.
Bitch Republic
Geez, way to fall for the bullshit, hisurfer. Obama is the biggest liar I’ve seen in ages. He’s trying? Trying to pull the wool over your eyes, maybe.
johnosahon
June 3rd cannot come any sooner. hurry up so that this MONSTER, Sen Oakley McClinton(R NY) can pack her bags back to Arkanas.
Mr C
Excuse me hisurfer I don’t yell.
I know all that internet bullshit terms. That’s how I type. I don’t yell at people I don’t know. But at least I know it’s being read.
Thank You Very Much.
And FUCK Hillary Clinton.
CitizenGeek
At the start, I was in favour of Clinton … now, I’m absolutely against her. She’s so desperate right now, she’s clinging to faux controversies. Obama talks to Americans like their adults — something few other politicians dare to do — so it’s predictable that people (like Clinton) would freak out over it. These kind of moronic tactics would NEVER come from the Obama camp.
I think Andrew Sullivan was right when he said that it’s becoming a national imperative to defeat Clinton.
M Shane
Hisurfer: It’s been the case, to my knowledge that most all empires, like the U.S. have fallen appart internally.Britain escaped, giving up their claims e.g India; after seeing Nazii Germany they coudn’t be the same. They saved their Democracy by demititarizing- pulling the empire down.
I have become adamantly hateful about the degree and kind of duplicity which attends politicing today. As you pointed out, Bush & Co,. are running around spouting off about “freedom ” and even democracy (for god’s sake when the U.S. has done nothing since WW2 but undermine foreign democracies for the freedom of our corporations to exploit other countrys’ resources. and work forces, and the ‘freedom ” for us to use them as military bases (we currently have approximately 735 bases on foreign soil). Relative to our rapid (SPEED OF LIGHT) economic deterioration and extreme militarization and presidential empowerment, (both unconstitutional) it will be a real stunt if Democracy lasts for another 5 years.
I have been somewhat undecided as to who of the democrates I would support, but , just on the basis for Ms.Clintons ready capacity for manipulating and straight up lying for petty reasons; for using anything she can to fool the public (just the several war and gun stories) and to demean Obama despite harm to the party, I don’t trust her any more than her husband Bill who lied about NAFTA in multiple ways:( ie that we were subject to the forces of globalizetion).and everything else.
I find it interesting that we don’t get the full context of Obama’s statement.The sentence is a gualifying remark “it’s not surprizing then..” We don’t know what he ment. Curiously , beween the two of them, Obama is far more empathetic to the role of working people. It seems obvious to me that Hillary wants to put as much (percieved) distance between herself and Bill. I don’t think that she wants to admit that Bill did more harm to labor than almost any Republican(yes) in recent history. The maneuver is clear: make what he said confusional and to seem antagonistic: then with the pettiest effort draw a commonality:duck hunting between them and her. How cheap.!
M Shane
BTW the ” Annie Oakly” was indeed great. Campaigns should have more wit. If they’re going to get nasty may as well have fun. (sorry for the typos’ :wrong glasses on.)
Meeg
Obama certainly got himself into this mess, but it doesn’t seem to have had a big effect on things (Hillary’s still ahead by about the same margin in Penn, Obama’s still ahead nationwide). I think that some people are a little turned off by the way Hillary’s been milking this and all her shameless pandering. Her whole effort to portray herself as the champion of the gun-toting working class really rings false.