Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton warned Sunday that ordinary voters may see Sen. Barack Obama as “out of touch” and removed from everyday concerns, trying to equate her rival with the Democratic nominees who were beaten in the last two presidential elections.
Obama lashed back, accusing Clinton of practicing the kind of politics in which “we tear each other down.”
Making back-to-back appearances Sunday night in a televised forum on faith and values, the Democratic rivals continued the escalating fight over a recent comment in which Obama said, among other things, that embittered small-town voters “cling to guns or religion.”
Clinton suggested that Obama’s remark, which was made at a San Francisco fundraising event, was fresh evidence that he could not win the general election in the fall.
Interesting, isn’t it, that from the beginning of the competition between Senators Clinton and Obama it has been Clinton who has insisted on emphasizing America’s social dividing lines that Obama has spent his public service career transcending. If the Presidential election in November is decided not on account of voters’ considered beliefs about the globally and domestically pressing issues of the day, but on account of voters’ feelings about an imaginary struggle for control between “heartland” whites and urban blacks, than America will have only Clinton to blame for another Republican victory.
I think that Obama’s comment speaks for it’s self. Clinton didn’t put a gun to his head and forced him to say it. Are Obama’s controversial comments to be ignored? Another Republican victory may result in that fact that Obama is out of touch, spent twenty years at Wright’s Church, thinks his grand mother is the stariotypical white women, and makes a remark about rural values that can only be seen as …? All of this is Clinton’s fault?
Actually, I find the irony crushing that Hillary Clinton is accusing Barak Obama of being an elitist.
The problem is when you start the solution of almost all economic problems with the words “government should…” you tend to attract people who think they know better than anyone else into leadership of your party. Sometimes this attitude of “government knows best” leaks out into unplanned statements.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
Phil, the problem is when you start the solution of all of life’s problems with the words, “government should,” you don’t understand people that are self-reliant and start and end each day with prayer and own guns for their own protection or to hunt. And Hillary is being absolutely hypocritcal here. Remember earlier in the campaign when she would start speeches with, “Every day when I wake up in the White House I’m going to start each day thinking about what I can do to help you.” What scary words from her! Does any self-respecting or self-reliant person want Hillary (or the government) starting each day, thinking about how she (it) can “help” us? But this is the way liberals think … if the government isn’t relevant to your life, then you are of no use to them, because they can’t then buy your vote with give-aways. It’s very sad that the best both of our national parties have been able to come up with are these three candidates, and that the Democrats can’t do any better than these two far out liberals, who think the Federal government is the be all and end all for our lives.
As Mr. Greville aptly points out – Democrats do not believe that the issues that they are out of touch on (culture, religion, gun ownerhsip) are critically important to large numbers of Americans.
The cultural issues have little if anything to do with race – Adlai Stevenson, McGovern, Carter, Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry (all white) were all on the electorally wrong side of the divide. Obama has merely shown that where he stands on the issues and/or the importance he gives cultural issues – his “trascending” efforts have been tactical. His efforts at trancension among the white cultural voters in Ohio, Missouri, Penn, and W Virginia have just been complicated for the general election. A democrat cannot win in 2008 without Ohio or Penn.
There was some confusion as to why Obama comingled things he supposed believes to be good with others – like guns, anti-immigrant feeling, etc. – that he believes to be bad. I, too, was confused until I read the gimlet-eyed analysis of Juliette Ochieng. Long story short, Obama thinks they are [url=http://www.luoamerican.com/baldilocks/2008/04/mickey-kaus-and.html]all bad[/url]:
[blockquote]If you think about it, the fact that Obama lumped the perceived religion of the white, rural Pennsylvanian with “antipathy toward those not like them‖that is, racism, bigotry and anti-immigration (sic)–makes perfect sense.* The latter is bad and so is the former—if one is observing from the perspective of Black Liberation Theology.
In Obama’s mind, the religion clung to by the “average poor white Pennsylvanian†is BLT’s demonic “white†Church. The “white” Church is the tool of oppression for all—including poor whites—and should be shaken off just like other social maladies. Just like anti-immigration (sic) and racism.[/blockquote]
The worst thing about Obama’s remarks is the implication that hard times and frustration with one’s state in life are what drive one toward religion, and other social customs (guns i.e.), rather than conviction in the case of religion and preference in the case of customes. This is a materialistic, even Marxian, analysis that he seems to espouse.
I’m loving this whole thing going on between H and O. Let’s just let them alone. Napoleon once said: One must never interfere with the enemy while he is in the process of destroying himself.