If you check out today’s Washington Post, the “bitter” thing is actually getting a ludicrous amount of coverage.
Sigh.
In other news, the Communist Fags of America Association (CFAA) and Florida Citrus Growers (FCG) have officially endorsed Obama today.
Colombian officials could not be reached for comments.
What I HOPE for is that people are going to look at this whole thing and say, “Hell, yeah, I’m bitter! I’m working at Burger King for minimum wage because my 20 years at the plant doesn’t mean a thing when they close it down because people in China will do the same thing for 1/5 of the wages. I’m going to lose my home because of predatory lending. My kids are going to a substandard school because of No Child Left Behind. My Republican state senator is more interested in punishing pregnant teens than he is in helping his constituents. And Clinton is telling me that I’m not REALLY bitter?! Who does she think she is?”
I don’t, unfortunately, expect that to happen, but I really, really WANT it to happen.
I agree with BrainGlutton in post 36. Obama was boycotting Venezuela (and Colombia) and was courting Florida. Quelle scandale!
Instead of “So that’s the real reason why I believe my religion and gun rights and preventing illegal immigration are important, according to Obama, huh? :dubious: And what’s he gonna *do * to fix it?”, that is?
ISTM that’s where his trouble lies with the upcoming rounds of lower-income voters - both in sounding condescending about the origins of their belief systems and in not selling a detailed economic stimulus package that will help them economically, not so much in calling them “bitter”.
Clinton learned not to make that mistake, of telling people what their issues are instead of asking them, in her “listening tour” of upstate NY (with the same problems as PA) in her first Senate campaign. This is the first time Obama has run a campaign against a real opponent outside his former IL state senate district, though, and he made a rookie blunder.
Since we’re off-topic here, that is.
Oh this is just fucking rich. So his opponents in Illinois weren’t “real” opponents, they were just fakes, or figments of everyone’s imagination, and those campaigns don’t really count. And his blunder is a rookie one, which makes him unfit for the presidency, but Clinton’s “misspeaks” just make her human, and her piss poor financial planning and cronyistic hiring practices and keeping a political PR guy who’s actively negotiating against her interests with a foreign government as a paid campaign strategist, those are experienced blunders, so that’s A-OK, right?
What a retarded argument.
And for the record, Bill Clinton said almost the exact same thing as Barack Obama, just this past December. Watch and listen for yourself.
But when Barack Obama says there’s a lot of economic anxiety and bitterness, and people express their frustrations by focusing on immigration and NAFTA and gun control, etc., his is a “blunder,” but former President Clinton is a genius.
Please. Give me a fucking break.
The “bitter” remark will become for Obama what “I was for the 87 billion…” became for John Kerry. He has essentially handed his opponents a club and begged his opponents to beat him senseless with it.
I read this article on RealClearPolitics and rather than paraphrase, I’ll just link it.
Charismatic stump speeches will not mitigate this mistake, lingering questions about Rev. Wright or Obama’s liberal voting record. Many of you will not be able to accept this, of course. But you need to understand that you simply won’t have the numbers to overcome this at the ballot box, despite the fervor of your passion.
You bring this up as if it’s an objectively bad thing. Frankly, I’d be more concerned if a Democratic nominee had a conservative voting record, but maybe that’s just me.
And The Pennsylvania Morning Call endorsed Senator Obama today. . .
And then he also earned the endorsement of the Scranton, Pennsylvania Times-Tribune this morning (don’t forget, Scranton is Clinton’s family’s “home town”). . .
And then, of course, there’s the fact that he just picked up another Superdelegate endorsement today, as well.
But yeah, he’s sunk. :rolleyes:
As I said in an earlier thread, politics is sales, and rule no 1 in sales is, Don’t antagonize the customer.
Obama’s been caught speaking derisively about some of the core beliefs and practices of people whose votes he desperately needs in a close upcoming election.
At best it’s an incredibly boneheaded maneuver. Essentially, Obama is frustrated with not being able to make more headway with working class white folks in PA. So he says, effectively, that it’s not really his fault that his message isn’t selling. The customers are bitter. They’re religious fanatics (pot meet kettle?) and gun nuts.
But Obama’s statement was really just the defensiveness of a man with a large, surprising brittle ego. Not really my fault, he’s saying. They’re bitter. No. It is your fault. You want to be the president, leader of the free world. Carry the weight. Suck it up. Don’t tell anyone that it’s really the voters fault for not supporting you. Work harder, find a better way to get your message across.
It may be that Obama has a fundamental misunderstanding of the country he seeks to lead. The rap against Democrats for a generation in US politics has been that they are elitists who look down on the common man, especially rural, religious white folks. Obama’s smart enough to know this, but he still stumbles right into the same trap.
A lot of these rural white folks will have a perfectly reasonable question to ask Obama: Is life on the South Side of Chicago so wonderful for the working poor that we should want these “benefits” in our town too?
It was a mistake. An admitted mistake. Just like Clinton - everyone makes mistakes. People were up in arms about Clinton flat out lying a couple weeks ago, this week it’s Obama’s turn to face the squad. Status Quo in my opinion.
Does Obama fundamentally misunderstand the country he seeks to lead - of course not, he’s a human being who made a dumb mistake. He wouldn’t be where he is today if it were not for the men and women of the USA putting him there, Obama’s supporters know this. As of today the man is significantly ahead of Clinton nationally, and has been pulling away for weeks. Slowly but surly - slow change tends to be more permanent change.
Did Obama eff up? Yup. Enough to cost him anything in this race - I doubt it. It certainly won’t cost him the nomination…He will have to fight this during the general for sure. But he will hopefully have chosen wisely a good Veep and he will no longer be alone. A percentage of Clintonites will vote Obama because he a democrat, a percentage will vote Obama because they were on the fence and originally chose Clinton but would be more than happy with Obama.
I don’t see this as fundamentally damaging anything, and I’m fresh out of coolaide.
It was only a glass of damn orange juice, phl. Yes, he’ll survive it. 
Gah! I know I was talking about the other thing but… Maybe he can order a coffee for his veep? Hopefully he/she like coffee. 
Will you *please * try to read first before you reply? I said this is his first campaign outside his IL state senate district against a *real * opponent.
Do you seriously believe Alan Keyes was a real opponent? 
Didn’t say that last part either, or any of the rest of the spewage that followed. Can you *please * stop wasting precious, irreplaceable electrons here with these misrepresentations? :dubious:
Anybody else want to take that one? 
Word of advice: “No, YOU are!” is not usually an effective argument here. Or anywhere else, for that matter. Even when it’s accurate, which this is not.
You talkin about them arabica beans? Can’t believe all of you are ignoring the ties to terrorism. God bless Obama for denouncing and rejecting coffee!
Daniel
I think his “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.” comment is going to really hurt his chances of courting small-town America.
I resent the implication that bitterness leads to guns and religion. WTF is he thinking? I’m thinking Barrack is out of touch.
Hillary is of course not an option, and McCain will be more of the same as GWB. Not loving the choices here.
Twenty two people and two newspapers don’t mean much in the grand scheme of things.
The first thing you need to ask yourself is whether you accept the premise that Obama did damage to himself with these remarks. If you can’t, then further conversation is pointless.
If you are prepared to admit that he has damaged himself, then the discussion turns to how badly he hurt himself and how long the affect will linger. That answer depends on the audience. Republicans will happily flog him with this until November. Clinton democrats will do so until the convention. Obama supporters will continue to rationalize and attempt to deflect and excuse.
In the short term, he has given Clinton an opening when she was close to being knocked out. He has also planted doubts in the minds of moderates, “Reagan Democrats” and others who see John McCain as a viable alternative and the general election. I believe the other points raised in the article I linked to be relevant as well.
Because, of course, if Evil One, who was 99% unlikely to vote for either Obama or Clinton in the first place, decides that Obama is damaged because he told the goddamn truth, then for god’s sake, people, he’s damaged!
Never mind that people are much less stupid than the Republicans or the DLC think they are. People ARE bitter. They ARE angry with the way the Republicans have been mismanaging the country for the last seven years. They ARE ready for change.
I still don’t think Obama said anything wrong or bad or damaging in the first place. The only people saying what he said was damaging are the traditional media, McCain’s campaign (which is scared to DEATH to face Obama in the fall), and Clinton’s campaign (who would sell Chelsea to the gypsies if it would guarantee the Gypsy vote).
Devil’s advocate: one could say this is just not a mistake - this is a mistake that reveals a fundamental truth about Obama’s thoughts and feelings that he’s tried hard to hide: that he’s an elitist snob who looks down on the poor and rural in contempt.
In that case, would it be such a stretch to believe that this error, which will undoubtedly be hammered to death by McCain and/or his supporters, could cost him the Presidency?
The problem is not that he said they were bitter.
The problem is that he attached reasons why small town America is not voting for him. A terrible mistake.
His feelings and beliefs are being exposed.
And he and his supporters still don’t get it.