The "Bitter" Truth About Obama's "Bitter" Remarks

Barack Obama's spin machine was really buzzing on Sunday. I received twelve emails from advisers Matt Ehlrich and Sean Smith to tell me how much Pennsylvania sportsmen really hate Hillary Clinton. Oh yeah, twenty-one small town officials think she's horrible, too, and they've even sent a letter.

Exactly where that letter has been sent is unclear, but it sounds pretty damn official. When the President of the Pa. Forestry Association speaks, I listen.

Obama's campaign has gone into overdrive because of this.

"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. 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."

That's something Obama recently said. It's by no means the end of the world for him, although he's pretty much ruined any hope he had of pulling an upset in Pa. No presidential candidate should speak of religion as though it is some dark superstition. Nazareth is one of those religious small towns, and its residents will certainly resent being called xenophobic gun nuts.

"I said something that everybody knows is true. ... I didn't say it as well as I should have," is how Obama explains. Well, what the hell did he intend to say? How is this anything other than a slam against those with religious principles or who have more conservative views? It's difficult to avoid the conclusion that Barack looks down his nose at us.

Of course, many Pennsylvanians are upset. In towns both big and small, jobs have been exported to China at the rate of 15,640 per year. In addition, China has blocked all efforts to stop the genocide in Darfur - where over 400,000 people have been senselessly slaughtered - because it might interfere with oil production. China's 1951 invasion of Tibet resulted in the ethnic cleansing of over 1 million countrymen. It continues today, a Han "manifest destiny," in which both Tibetans and their cultural identity are slowly being erased. At home, Chinese routinely execute at least 1,000 people every year. Bullets in the back of the head do the trick, while transplant surgeons stand by to harvest still pulsating organs.

Very efficient.

So how does Barack feel about this brutal regime - one of the chief causes of the bitterness he notices here in Pennsylvania? In a written statement, he claims to be concerned about China's failure to respect human rights. But when actually speaking to voters in Chester County, the message is much different.

"It's very hard to tell your banker he is wrong," is what Obama says, according to The Morning Call's Scott Kraus. Not much hopeful in that statement, is there?

Neville Chamberlain would be proud.

Update: As William Kristol notes, there's little difference between Obama's condescending observation that we "cling" to religion and that of another thinker. "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of a soulless condition. It is the opium of the people.” That thinker was Karl Marx.