Obama comments fuel accusations of elitism

Barack Obama faced growing charges yesterday that he was elitist and out of touch with the blue-collar white voters he needs to win over in Pennsylvania and other key primary states after he was caught on tape suggesting ordinary Americans "cling" to God and guns because of bitterness over their economic prospects.

Hillary Clinton, his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, gleefully seized on the remarks – originally made at a closed-door fundraiser in San Francisco – and immediately tried to demonstrate her own working-class bona fides by downing whiskey shots with pizza on the campaign trail in blue-collar Indiana.

She did everything she could to suggest Senator Obama had insulted the values of heartland America. "The people of faith I know don't 'cling to' religion because they're bitter," she said. "People embrace faith not because they are materially poor, but because they are spiritually rich."

Likewise, she said hunting and shooting were deeply embedded in working-class culture, and told stories of being taught to shoot duck by her grandfather on trips she made as a girl to Pennsylvania.

It was not immediately clear how damaging the furore might be to Mr Obama, who had been campaigning strongly in Pennsylvania, where he still trails Mrs Clinton by some distance ahead of the 22 April primary there, and was hoping to deliver a knock-out punch to her in Indiana on 6 May.

Mr Obama responded quickly, telling an audience in Muncie, Indiana, he may have worded his thoughts wrongly but that the underlying sentiment was accurate. "Lately there has been a political flare-up because I said something that everybody knows is true," he said, "which is that there are a whole bunch of folks in small towns in Pennsylvania, in towns right here in Indiana, in my hometown in Illinois, who are bitter."

"So I said, well, you know when you're bitter, you turn to what you can count on. So people, they vote about guns, or they take comfort from their faith and their family and their community."

In some ways, this is a battle about semantics, but the issue carries considerable risks for Mr Obama. Mrs Clinton has sought for some time to depict her opponent as an elitist, comfortable with the pampered liberal crowd on the coasts but unable to connect to ordinary heartland Americans.

Mr Obama yesterday faced fire on two fronts – the Clinton campaign and also the Republicans. Steve Schmidt, a top adviser to the Republican presidential nominee John McCain, said his remarks showed "an elitism and condescension toward hard-working Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking".

Senator Obama was lucky that the story broke on a Friday night – traditionally a graveyard for news stories – and that his original remarks were caught on audio rather than video tape. Since the Pennsylvania primary is still more than a week away, he also has time to recover. The San Francisco fundraiser was closed to the media, suggesting to Obama supporters that he wasn't as careful about his language as usual, and suggesting to his detractors that he was showing his true colours.

What he said was that small towns in Pennsylvania and the rest of the Midwest have essentially missed out on the American Dream for a generation. "And it's not surprising then," he said, "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."

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