Obama comments may help Clinton

BY MIKE FAHER
The Tribune-Democrat

April 12, 2008 11:28 pm

— For weeks, polls have shown Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama steadily cutting into rival Hillary Clinton’s lead in Pennsylvania.
But now, with the state’s April 22 primary looming, some wonder whether remarks Obama made at a fundraiser more than 2,000 miles away could hurt the Illinois senator’s chances for a victory in the Keystone State.
With references to touchy issues such as gun rights and religion, Obama’s comments about “small towns in Pennsylvania” have given ample ammunition to the Clinton campaign.
The critical question is what impact Obama’s words will have just weeks after he made stops in Johnstown and other Pennsylvania communities.
“I can see where it’s going to get (voters’) attention, absolutely,” Ebensburg Mayor Charlie Moyer said Saturday. “It’s certainly gotten mine.”
Obama’s comments came one week ago at a San Francisco event.
He said his toughest work comes in communities where people “feel most cynical about government” and are distrustful of campaign promises.
“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,” he said in comments first reported Friday by the Huffington Post, an online newspaper.
“So it’s not surprising then that 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,” Obama added.
It is the latter half of that statement that has generated trouble for Obama.
The Clinton campaign came out with its guns blazing Saturday, organizing a conference call for reporters with five Pennsylvania mayors who objected to Obama’s words.
Mayor Robert Lucas of Sharon said his town hosts more than 35 churches.
“Those churches weren’t built because we’re bitter, and we don’t go to church because we are bitter,” Lucas said. “We don’t go up to the mountains to hunt because we are bitter.”
Mayor Steve Reed of Harrisburg said residents “happen to like our small town values.
“We think they’re the bedrock of the American values that have built this nation, and the people of our towns embrace their religions out of faith, not out of bitterness or frustration,” Reed said.
The Clinton campaign also said Obama’s remarks could hinder his candidacy in a battle against Republicans.
“I think it’s difficult for a Democratic candidate to be successful in a general election if he misreads and misunderstands people who live in small communities,” said former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, who is the campaign’s national co-chairman.
Pennsylvania’s Republican party also wasted no time, issuing a press release Saturday saying Obama “described Pennsylvanians as bitter gun-toting, racist, religious fanatics.”
Rob Gleason, a Johnstown businessman who chairs the Cambria County and state GOP committees, said Obama’s statements “are incredibly hurtful and derive from an elitist attitude Pennsylvanians loathe.”
At a campaign stop in the state of Indiana Saturday, Obama stood by his words while acknowledging that “I didn’t say it as well as I should have.”
But Obama also argued that he “said something that everybody knows is true”: That many voters are bitter and angry over the state of the nation.
“And so they pray, and they count on each other and they count on their families,” Obama said. “You know this in your own lives, and what we need is a government that is actually paying attention.”
Obama’s campaign also hosted its own conference call Saturday, with the mayors of Braddock and Lancaster voicing their support for the candidate.
Braddock Borough, like Johnstown, is a financially distressed community.
“We are firmly behind the senator and really see him as a change agent,” Mayor John Fetterman said.
Obama strategist David Axelrod added that, if Clinton or GOP presidential contender John McCain believe voters are optimistic about the economy, “they need to spend a lot more time out here and a lot less time sniping.”
Ray Wrabley, an associate professor of political science at Pitt-Johnstown, said the damage to Obama’s campaign may depend on how media coverage portrays his remarks.
But he added that, in a race this close, a shift in even a small number of voters can make a difference.
“When one campaign can put the other on the defensive this close to an election, it gives them a leg up,” Wrabley said.