Posted by
Steve on Monday, April 14, 2008 4:37:31 PM
The wheels appear to be coming off of the Obama bus after his comments last week. Since I commented on Saturday, Barack Obama has tried to clarify his comments. What he has done is dig himself a bigger hole.
His original comment was that people were bitter over losing their jobs in small towns. Because they were bitter, they turned to religion and guns to give them security. His clarifications just amplify the fact that he sees everything in economic terms. He believes that everyone that is poor should look at the world and want more social programs. That they do not is because they have religion or guns to pacify them.
That world view is exactly out of the leftist handbook. The problem is that leftists are not supposed to say what is in the leftist handbook. If they say what is in the handbook, people will understand where they are coming from and never vote for them again. That is what makes Obama’s comment so problematic for the Democrats. Do they embrace it as the truth the see it for? Or do they denounce it as a mistake? If the embrace the idea, people will consider them leftist elitist snobs and not vote for them. If they denounce it as a mistake, Obama will lose some of his “magic”. That is a big dilemma.
Mrs. Clinton took no time to start dumping on Obama for the gaffe. There is no real difference between the two on the issues. There is little difference between how they view the American people. There is a huge difference in how they would implement their programs. Obama would be less inclined to be dogmatic in his implementation. The end result would be the same; the technique to get there would be different. Since there is so little difference between Obama and Clinton, any small difference has to be magnified. This is not really a difference as it is a mistake that can be amplified into a perception difference.
The move should help Mrs. Clinton win in Pennsylvania. She was leading there, anyway. But, this will cement her lead and not allow Obama to defeat her at the last minute. It will also cut into Obama’s leads in the rural states of North Carolina and Indiana. It probably will not impact the Democrat primary contest very much. The gaffe will come back to haunt Obama when he has to fact the Republican nominee in November. There the real differences between Obama and McCain can be amplified and this gaffe will really hurt Obama with rural voters all across the country. It might be enough to insure a McCain win in November.
What did Barack Obama mean when he said that rural people were bitter? He looks at poor people and thinks that they must be bitter. He thinks that he would be bitter if he were poor, so the poor must be bitter. Then he looks at the poor and sees that they are not bitter. So, he has to come up with some explanation that accounts for the reason why the poor are not bitter. Since he has no real belief in religion, he thinks that all others have the same non-belief. He ascribes the non revolt of the poor as being satisfied by answers in religion. He also does not believe that any rational person could believe that gun ownership is good, so he ascribes gun ownership to some form of dementia. This all came bubbling out in his comment last week. This comment will be attached to Obama whether he likes it or not. I assume that he will not like it.