(Cross-posted from The Field.)
Over at Politico, Ben Smith is pushing Senator Clinton's swipe at Senator Obama today over his reported explanation at a fundraising event last week about how a bad economy influences anti-immigrant sentiment and other views.
The dueling quotes, and more, at the jump...
Clinton said she'd seen in the media that "my opponent said that the people of Pennsylvania who faced hard times are bitter."
"Well, that’s not my experience," she continued. "As I travel around Pennsylvania, I meet people who are resilient, who are optimistic, who are positive, who are rolling up their sleeves. They’re working hard every day for a better future for themseves and their children."
"Pennsylvanians don’t need a president who looks down on them. They need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them, who works hard for your futures, your jobs, and your families," she said, implicitly casting Obama as an elitist.
Oh, gawd. Enough already. The poor little $109 millionaire has the victim game so soaked into the brain that now she wants company. It's condescending to rural voters to tell them they should feel "offended" by Obama's reported remarks...
This is the statement she's trying to make hay out of:
You go into 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.
But you know what? Plenty of rural folks will agree with that statement, and my guess is that very few will conclude that Obama was talking about or insulting them.
Telling rural Pennsylvanians they should feel victimized by those words is telling them they should become as insufferable and over-sensitive as the urban and suburban PC "offense junkies" that see themselves in, and are rallied by, Clinton's professional victimhood.
Update: The Obama Campaign responds (McCain jumped on this one, too):
Obama campaign statement in response to McCain and Clinton campaign attacks on Senator Obama:
"Senator Obama has said many times in this campaign that Americans are understandably upset with their leaders in Washington for saying anything to win elections while failing to stand up to the special interests and fight for an economic agenda that will bring jobs and opportunity back to struggling communities. And if John McCain wants a debate about who's out of touch with the American people, we can start by talking about the tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans that he once said offended his conscience but now wants to make permanent,” Obama campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor said.
Update II: In the comments section, Jakester posts the Obama statement in its full context. In fact, he was saying that rural Pennsylvanians are not racist! Clinton is being ridiculed right now on CNN over this one.