Obama Explaining What People Are Like In Small Towns In Pennsylvania

Obama up-date:

Barack Obama didn’t back off his argument that blue collar, small town Pennsylvanians are bitter over their economic lot in life — but acknowledged that he could have phrased it more artfully.

“When you’re bitter, you turn to what you can count on,” he said at a Town Hall Meeting on the last day of his 3-day Indiana bus tour. “So people, they vote about guns. Or they take comfort from their faith, and their family and their community. And they get mad about illegal immigrants who are coming into this country. Or they get frustrated about, you know, how things have changed. That’s a natural response.”

“And I didn’t say it as well as I should have, because the truth is these traditions that are passed on from generation to generation, those are important. That’s what sustains us. But what is absolutely true is that people want to feel like they’re being listened to.”

Obama called controversy over his remarks at a San Francisco fundraiser last week “a typical sort of political flare-up,” and didn’t do much to keep the fight going. His response today ignored Hillary Clinton’sJohn McCain’s attacks on him as “out of touch” — unlike in his indignant turn in Terre Haute last night.

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