This Post Has 2 Comments

1. 

   Edgar Montrose April 13, 2008 Reply

   Obama's original comments were dead-on, and this rebuttal is dead-on, and, unfortunately, it doesn't matter. The very bitterness that he described is the sort of thing that causes people to take refuge as single-issue advocates, and to treat any mention of their single issue as an attack. They do not hear, "You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, 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 gonna regenerate and they have not. 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," all they hear is, "They cling to guns or religion." It requires sophistication of thought and emotional control to step-back and analyze his words in a broader scope, two things that many people lack, bitter or otherwise.

   It also doesn't help to see media outlets like CNN truncating the quote to, "They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion," and providing no context. Unbiased reporting, indeed.

2. 

   Larry J Carter April 16, 2008 Reply

   Obama may be less out of touch than his opponets. But I wonder if that is good enough. His claim that government can {or should} provide all the answers, will not replace the people's personal convictions, their natural rights, faith in family and community, which is their natural "fall back" position.

   I believe it shows "some sophistication of thought and emotional control" to reject a false consciousness via the equalization of all people and the provision of their material needs by the state. What we are seeing is an awakeing to the fact that government has promised and is still promising more than it can deliver.