I can't believe the ridiculous hand-wringing over Obama's comments. Were they offensive? I don't think so, but people take things in different ways.
The fact is we don't need, and we are very unlikely to get the "guns, god and gays crowd" to vote democrat.
They aren't the key to this election... and going after single issue voters is probably not a very fruitful effort...
Who do we need to go after? See below...
The key to this election is moderate republican suburbanites. These people are socially liberal, but economically conservative. Most of them are completely disgusted with bush... and the other thing? Many of these people (and I should know, I live with them here in DuPage country) are very uncomfortable with the influence of the religious right on the republican party.
These comments from Obama will probably help him with the suburban crowd (especially women) who are the real people we need to win over to knock McCain out.
If Hillary thinks she's going to win over rural or small-town voters as a path to victory over McCain she is probably insane.
Can we win over the rural voters? Sure, but we don't need to.... We can easily win the election without guns, god, gays voters (even though it would be nice to pick some up)