Obama: Small-Town People Cling to Religion, Guns, and Xenophobia

Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 2:36:43 pm PDT

Obama’s latest misstep is recounted by Politico’s Ben Smith: Obama on small-town PA: Clinging to religion, guns, xenophobia.

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.

Wow, is he feeling the strain or is he really that tone-deaf to how incredibly arrogant this sounds to average Americans?

AP has more; the McCain camp has issued a statement.