What Obama Meant, and Why His Appologies Aren't Working

It started here where Obama gave a speech to a small, private fund-raiser in California. This was attended by a Huffington Poster who had some reservations about his tone. It quickly got picked up by both the Clinton and the McCain campaigns.

What he said:

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.

Clinton picked up on the bitter part and her campaign handed out "I'm not bitter" stickers in North Carolina.

Obama's first reaction was to insist that rural Americans are bitter and that Clinton and McCain are out of touch if they think otherwise. But that doesn't address the rest of what he said. To paraphrase:

People in a lot of these small towns lke guns and religion too much. They don't like people who aren't like them or are immigrants and they don't like world trade. But it isn't their fault that they are like this. The jobs went away 25 years ago and never came back. This made them what they are - bitter. But if we can bring back the jobs then they will get over their bitterness and be like the rest of us.

I think I am being fair in this restatement. He said that they are bitter then he gave a list of presumably undesirable traits that he ascribes to her bitterness.

At least he didn't throw in a comment about "typical white people."

I don't doubt that Obama has heard from some people who are angry about the lack of jobs Some of them probably qualify as bitter. But this doesn't matter. He applies a stereotype to rural (white?) people then offers bitterness as an excuse for their undesirable traits.

How many of the bitter Pennsylvanians Obama talked with would be willing to give up guns and religion in exchange for jobs?

And the worst thing is that he still doesn't seem to understand what he said. He's still apologizing for the "bitter" part without understanding how offensive the rest of it was.