Posted: April 14, 2008 12:30 PM
In 'Damage Control Mode,' Obama Lands Pa. Endorsements
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On the defensive over recently publicized remarks that characterized working-class voters as “bitter,” a defiant Sen. Barack Obama took aim Sunday at Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s attacks, saying “shame on her” and questioning her vocal support for gun rights.
The sharp words were the latest twist in a current of controversy over the publication of comments Obama made at a closed-door San Francisco fundraiser a week earlier. At that event, Obama said some working-class voters are bitter over their economic situation and “cling to guns and religion” as a result.
Campaigning Sunday in Pennsylvania ahead of next week’s primary, Clinton suggested the comments could endanger Democrats’ chances for winning the White House in November.
“He is a good man and a very talented and gifted man, but I think his comments were elitist and divisive and the Democratic Party has been unfortunately viewed by many people over the last decade as being elitist and out of touch,” Clinton said in Scranton. Speaking at a union hall outside Harrisburg, Obama said he was “a little disappointed” about Clinton’s response, The Associated Press reported.
“She is running around talking about how this is an insult to sportsmen, how she values the Second Amendment. She’s talking like she’s Annie Oakley,” Obama said.
As both candidates reach out to people of faith in Pennsylvania, the two participated in the Compassion Forum at Messiah College on Sunday, an event billed as “dedicated to discussing pressing moral issues that bridge ideological divides within our nation.”
At the forum — during which the candidates spoke in separate question-and-answer sessions —- Clinton was asked whether life begins at conception — a critical issue to opponents of abortion.
“I believe the potential for life begins at conception,” Clinton said, according to the AP. “For me, it is also not only about a potential life. It is about the other lives involved. … I have concluded, after great, you know, concern and searching my own mind and heart over many years, … that individuals must be entrusted to make this profound decision, because the alternative would be such an intrusion of government authority that it would be very difficult to sustain in our kind of open society.”
The New York senator added that abortion should remain legal, safe and rare.
Asked whether life begins at conception, Obama said he believed the answer was complex.
“This is something that I have not, I think, come to a firm resolution on. I think it’s very hard to know what that means, when life begins. Is it when a cell separates? Is it when the soul stirs? … What I know, as I’ve said before, is that there is something extraordinarily powerful about potential life and that that has a moral weight to it that we take into consideration when we’re having these debates.”
At the Sunday forum, Obama again addressed his comments at the San Francisco fundraiser and said his words had been distorted and misconstrued, according to The New York Times.
“That was in no way a demeaning of a faith that I myself embrace,” Obama said. “When economic hardship hits, they have faith, they have family, they have traditions that have been passed on from generation to generation. Those are not bad things. Those are the things that are left.”
The Wall Street Journal noted that Obama was “in full damage control mode” at Sunday’s forum where the controversy overshadowed endorsements he picked Sunday from the Allentown Morning Call and the Scranton Times Tribune.
Both newspapers were complimentary of Clinton, but said Obama’s ability to inspire is more likely to lead the country in a new direction.
“There is little doubt that a second Clinton presidency would further the deep divisiveness that characterizes American politics - a divisiveness that dug itself deep during the Clinton presidency, and even deeper during the Bush-Cheney years,” the Scranton endorsement reads. “The first task for the next president is to get past that. And it might not be possible if the presidential cycle goes Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton.”
-- By , NewsHour with Jim Lehrer | Comments | Link
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Hillary sounds elitist. She also said that the former pres. have done it all wrong. Isn't this putting down males, and sending the message that females can do better? Very sexist, and can we include Bill Clinton, as someone who ignored educ. healthcare, and terrorists?
I agree with the notion that this country needs a serious reawakening, and Obama not only is the only major party candidate who doesn't represent the past, but also has a daring vision for the future. I think it's honorable of him to minimize the petty he-said/she-saids, and focus more on what this country needs. It seems like Clinton speaks more selfishly and pulls tricks out of the book that are reminiscent of the politics that alot of people distrust and avoid. How many politicians out there are willing to say "I don't know that answer yet?" How may say "yes, I made a mistake."
Obama just may be the next president to leave a mark and make this world a better safer place.
Obama Black is Wright
Obama attracts thugs and bullies to his campaign and personal life and is able to do so with impunity.
If Obama where Caucasian, he would have been bulldozed by the media long ago.
Look at Obama's affiliations:
- Senator Meeks who openly hates whites and gays and is listed prominently on Obama's campaign website as a major Obama supporter and backer and is one of Obama;s super-delegate. Mr. Meeks has been integral in Obama success in politics.
- Mr. Ayers of the Weather Underground, a group that killed police and tried to bomb the US Capitol, served with Obama on the board of the leftist foundation called the Woods Fund.
- Robert Malley a close senior adviser to Obama who advocates negotiations with Hamas and providing international assistance to the terrorist group.
- Larry Sinclair alleges in 1999 Senator Obama's arranged to meet him in a limousine, sold Senator Obama cocaine and then gave Senator Obama oral sex. Larry then claims that he and Obama went to a hotel and preformed oral sex again. Mr. Sinclair is testifying in court under oath that these allegations are true.
- Mr. Auchi is an Iraqi billionaire and major financial sponsor and closely connected to Obama's rise to power.
While working with Saddam Hussein, Auchi made his fortune through the selling of arms in Iraq and the funneling off of money from the Oil for Food program.
- Mr. Rezko an Iraqi citizen and Obama's and Auchi's long time friend of 17 years and a major mob figure. Rezko is NOT known for his civic sense of duty and does not do favors without asking something in return. Coincidently the Chicago Times reported yesterday that Rezko was negotiating to purchase rehab buildings in Obama's district.
- Mr. Wright a racist who hates America and whites (and Italians?). Mr. Wright has been Mr. Obama's spiritual mentor for over 20 years. Before the media exposed Mr. Wright, he was Obama's chief religious advisor on Obama's campaign staff. Mr. Wright and Mr. Meeks are ideologically closer to Karl Marx and Black Nationalism, than to Christianity.
- Rashid Khalidi a fundraiser for Obama and is one of Obama�s close friends. Khalidis claim Israel as a "catastrophe", and supports Palestinian terrorist groups.
- Mr. McPeaks is Obama's military adviser and national campaign co-chairman who publicly states that American Jews are the "problem." and Christian Zionists were driving America's policy in Iraq to benefit Israel.
Abongo Roy Obama is the older brother to Senator Obama. Roy Obama is a militant Muslim activist in Kenya who according to a report from the Investor's Business Daily has repeatedly urged his half brother Senator Obama to embrace African heritage and supports implementation of Sharia law.
- Michelle Obama trumpets Obama as the second coming of the messiah,and also states that she has NEVER been proud to be an American in her adult life".
The list goes ona list that strongly suggest Obama sympathizes with al-Qaida.
How can Obama's bad judgment to choose to affiliate with criminals and fanatics be justified? And with so many red flags in Obama's past, present rhetoric, and future intentions how could we possibly justify electing him into the most powerful position of this country?
Are we so in love with the color black that we forget to see the man?
While the main stream media has primarily characterized the sting of Obama's remarks at a recent SF $2,300 a person fundraiser at the Gordon Getty mansion as simply referencing the "bitterness" that small town Midwesterners allegedly feel as a result of economic hardship, the full text reveals something more remarkable about the candidate's unguarded opinion about core Midwestern values�which is at the very least dismissive.
Rather than acknowledge that Pennsylvanians' core religious beliefs and other values are the principled result of philosophical reflection, Obama dismisses them outright as notions that Midwesterners presumably "cling to" as an expression of something else entirely: Frustration about their poor economic circumstances.
The Ivy League educated, Harvard Law Review editor's choice of language here can hardly be passed of as candidate misspeak since words are Obama s stock-in-trade. Moreover, his word choices clearly evince an opinion by Obama that Midwestern religious and political values are not "values" at all, but rather a desperate reaction to external forces through which these poor unfortunates express their frustration and bitterness at their lot in life.
It is my view that these very revealing remarks, uttered by Obama in an unguarded moment in the guarded sanctity of his most elite, liberal, and moneyed San Francisco financial backers, once they are understood by the national electorate are game changing. In one moment, Obama has alienated the heartland of America by revealing that he does not respect their core values on religion, guns, fair trade, or immigration by attributing those values to a knee jerk reaction to outside events.
I am are sure that Midwesterners view their own religious and other values as very bit as sincerely held and legitimate as, for example those of Barack Obama's personal mentor and close family friend the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
While the candidate has since maintained he "could have said it better", Obama has not bothered to repudiate his remarks or to explain precisely what he meant.
Nor can the candidate's patronizing views of the core beliefs held by millions of Americans in several key swing states be explained away.
This is huge, a game changer. And if the Democratic Party fails to realize it before it chooses between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as the party's nominee, the DNC will be virtually conceding the White House to John McCain in 2008.
It is noteworthy that the only PA tracking poll to be released following Obama's revealing SF comments now (as of April 14) has Clinton leading Obama in the Keystone State by 20 points, 57-37. (Note that the same poll, by the American Research Group, pegged the PA race last week at a dead heat.)
Obama's argument has always been that Clinton starts out in a given state way ahead, and that once the voters "get to know him", he overtakes her.
I am afraid that the voters in PA--and elsewhere--HAVE NOW GOTTEN TO KNOW OBAMA A LITTLE 'TOO WELL".
i don't understand people who say Barack Obama is racist. His mother was white and he has said that the best that is in him came from her. As far as being elitist, his father left him when he was 2, he was raised by a single mom and sent off to his grandparents. He just finished paying off his student loans. When he got out of college he went to work on the streets of Chicago. On the other hand, the Clinton accumulated 110 million dollars in a very short time, and probably more if the truth be told. Who's elitist?
And what he said is entirely true; he might have said it better but he's just not slick enough of a politician to be forever atuned to how his words can be twisted used against him. We would be very fortunate to have Barack Obama as the next President of the United States. Not only would the US benefit, but the entire world. I believe that with all my heart. If it matters, I'm a 73 year old white woman, and I've been around long enough to know a very special human being when I see one.
Two of these three comments contgain the sort of charges that could be considered libel if Obama and his representatives wanted to waste their time on such garbage, but they also contain the sort of detail that shows them to be the product of more scholarship than the usual poison pen letter. But in typical conservative fashion, it goes over the top, so Obama can't just be a black nationalist, he has to be a black nationalist commie queer drug dealer, etc.
If the people of Pennsylvania and the rest of the country go for this garbage, they deserve another four years of Clinton or McCain.
Jay Leno: "Barack Obama got himself into a little hot water in Pennsylvania when he said small town people become bitter and cling to guns or religion because of economic problems. Well, sure, you pray your house doesn't get repossessed, and when they take it, you pull out your gun. Makes perfect sense."
Jay Leno: "Hillary Clinton attacked Barack Obama, called him 'elitist,' and said he was out of touch with poor people. Later, Bill Clinton gave a speech on the subject and charged a million bucks for it."
Who cares what Jay Leno say, he is a republican hack who would cross his own writers picket line to keep the show from shutting down,
If Hillary was such a working peoples person, she could voluntary give back the 800,000 dollars she and Bill took to for Bill to push the Columbian trade deal. She has 109 million reasons, the victims in this whole charade are the people willing to vote for the Capital Liar in Chief. Just wait and see she will sell your job down the proverbial river and that is a promise
Obama's Flaws
There are many. His statements that he wants to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq, combined with his lack of foreign policy experience, could hurt him. And his aides are hard pressed to come up with any deviations in a voting record the nonpartisan National Journal calls the most liberal of any U.S. Senator.
As a state legislator he was even more off-center. In 1996, he opposed the Defense of Marriage Act, which the Senate approved 85-14 and President Clinton signed into law. He twice voted "present" on a bill to ban partial-birth abortions. In 1999, he was the only state senator to oppose a law that prohibited early prison release for sex offenders.
Mr. Obama also backed a total ban on handguns, a move his campaign now says was the result of a rogue aide filling out a questionnaire. But Mr. Obama's own handwritten notes were found on the questionnaire, calling into question the campaign's version of what happened.