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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tonto who wrote (17337)	4/12/2008 1:27:49 PM
From: ChinuSFO	Respond to of 149317

Obama Concedes He Misspoke By Shailagh Murray As his political opponents heap on scorn, Sen. Barack Obama acknowledged that he chose his words poorly when describing small-town Pennsylvanians at a fundraiser on Sunday. But he didn't back off the message he had sought to convey. "I didn't say it as well as I should have," Obama conceded before a crowd in Muncie, Ind., this morning, as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republicans prepared to hammer him for a second day. The firestorm started when a recording surfaced yesterday of Obama speaking to a group of San Francisco donors about the electoral challenge he faced in Pennsylvania, where polls have shown him behind Clinton, but gaining ground. Obama dismissed the idea that his struggles were based on his race, and instead offered lengthy observations about working-class disenfranchisement and its political manifestations. "In a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long," he told the donors. "The jobs have been gone now for 25 years, and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are going to 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." Clinton and Sen. John McCain, along with other GOP leaders and pundits, pounced via a blizzard of statements, declaring that Obama was an elitist talking down to middle America. The remarks were a welcome distraction for Clinton, who has been trying to fend off Obama in Pennsylvania and keep her nomination hopes alive. But Obama campaign officials worry more about the guns and religion references as ripe GOP fodder that could haunt their candidate if he wins the Democratic nomination. Essentially, Obama was describing Reagan Democrats, the ultimate general election swing voters. As Obama acknowledged this morning, his mistake was to suggest that many small-town values are formed by cynicism. "You know the truth. It is that these traditions that are passed on from generation to generation, those are important. That's what sustains us," he told the Muncie audience. But he added, "what is absolutely true is that people don't feel like they are being listened to. And so they pray and they count on each other and they count on their families. You know this in your own lives and what we need is a government that is actually paying attention. Government that is fighting for working people day in and day out making sure that we are trying to allow them to live out the American dream." blog.washingtonpost.com