Obama Says “Shame” on Clinton, She’s Not “Annie Oakley!”

Obama Says “Shame” on clinton, She’s Not “Annie Oakley!”

After taking a beating for his “bitter-gate” comments about small-town America turning to “guns or religion” when bad times come, Barack Obama lashed out at his rival, Hillary Clinton, castigating her as “running around…talking like she’s Annie Oakley.”

His comments came after the firestorm of Obama’s controversial remarks over a week ago at a San Fransisco fundraiser where he said this:

“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 going to 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 immediately jumped on the comments.

“I saw in the media it’s being reported that my opponent said that the people of Pennsylvania who faced hard times are bitter. Well, that’s not my experience,” Clinton told a Drexel University crowd in Philadelphia. “As I travel around Pennsylvania, I meet people who are resilient, who are optimistic, who are positive, who are rolling up their sleeves. They are working hard everyday for a better future, for themselves and their children. Pennsylvanians don’t need a president who looks down on them, they need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them, who works hard for your futures, your jobs, your families,” she said.

A McCain adviser, Steve Schmidt, called Obama’s remarks “remarkable” and “extremely revealing.”

“It shows an elitism and condescension towards hardworking Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking,” Schmidt said. “It is hard to imagine someone running for president of the United States who is more out of touch with average Americans.”

Schmidt also said it shows Obama views the people he’s trying to relate to with “contempt.”

But instead of apologising, Obama tried to take the controversial remarks head-on, even reinforcing them Friday at a campaign stop in Indiana.

“And of course they’re bitter. Of course they’re frustrated,” Obama told supporters. “You would be too — in fact many of you are, because the same thing has happened here in Indiana. … Nobody is thinking about you.”

Clinton kept hitting hard at Obama for his remarks at virtuously every opportunity.

Both Democratic contenders addressed the Compassion Forum at Messiah College in Grantham, PA. In response to the first question, Clinton repeated her charge that Mr. Obama’s remarks were “elitist, out of touch and, frankly, patronizing.”

“We can’t afford for people to believe that the Democratic Party is elitist and out of touch,” Clinton said before the forum. “Honestly, how do we expect people to listen to us if we don’t hear them and we don’t respect their values and their way of life?”

“We had two very good men, and men of faith, run for president in 2000 and 2004. But large segments of the electorate concluded that they did not really understand or relate to, or frankly respect, their ways of life,” Clinton said, referring to Al Gore and John Kerry.

“Senator Obama has not owned up to what he said and taken accountability for it,” she said in front of reporters during an informal news conference at a different time. “What people are looking for is an explanation. What does he really believe? How does he see people here in this neighborhood, throughout Pennsylvania, Indiana, North Carolina, other places in our country? And I think that’s what people are looking for, some explanation, and he has simply not provided one.”

“You don’t have to think back too far to remember that good men running for president were viewed as being elitist and out of touch with the values and the lives of millions of Americans,” Clinton added, an obvious reference to defeated 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry.

“I think it’s very critical that the Democrats really focus in on this and make it clear that we are not (elitist). We are going to stand up and fight for all Americans,” Clinton said.

“She knows better. Shame on her. Shame on her,” Obama told a Steelton, PA. audience at a union hall.

Obama said that he expected criticism form Arizona Senator GOP nominee-in-waiting John McCain, but was “a little disappointed” to hear Clinton’s criticism of him.

“She is running around talking about how this is an insult to sportsmen, how she values the Second Amendment. She’s talking like she’s Annie Oakley,” Obama mocked.

Annie Oakley was a famed female sharpshooter immortalized in the musical “Annie Get Your Gun.”

“Hillary Clinton is out there like she’s on the duck blind every Sunday. She’s packing a six-shooter. Come on, she knows better. That’s some politics being played by Hillary Clinton,” he continued.

Clinton, campaigning in Scranton on Sunday, castigated Obama’s “bitter” remarks yet again as “elitist and divisive.”

But Obama wasn’t going to take Clinton’s remarks easily.

“I just have to remind people of the track record,” Obama said.

“This is the same person who took money from financial folks on Wall Street and then voted for bankruptcy bill that makes it harder for folks right here in Pennsylvania to get a fair shake. Who do you think is out of touch?” Obama asked.

“This is the same person who spent a decade with her husband campaigning for NAFTA, and now goes around saying she’s opposed to NAFTA,” Obama remarked.

But the Clinton campaign issued a quick response to Obama’s latest remarks.

“For months, Barack Obama and his campaign have relentlessly attacked Hillary Clinton’s character and integrity by using Republican talking points from the 1990s,” said Clinton spokesman Phil Singer. “The shame is his. Senator Clinton does know better - she knows better than to condescend and talk down to voters like Senator Obama did.”

As far as the Clintons’ are concerned, NewsBusters has some information about Bill’s past race-baiting techniques:

[For instance, the Los Angeles Times reported on September 17, 1991 (emphasis added, h/t Huffington Post):

In complaining that President Bush has been exploiting the race issue to divide the Democrats, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, a probable presidential contender, said: "The reason (Bush's tactic) works so well now is that you have all these economically insecure white people who are scared to death."

As Clinton sees it, Bush has been telling worried white workers: You're right. I won't do anything for you. Government can't do anything for you. But at least I won't do anything to you.

In fact, if media did a little digging, they'd find this to be quite a common theme of Clinton's back then:

Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, trying to convince Alabama Democrats to support his presidential bid, accused Republicans of trying to woo white voters by preying on unfounded racial fears.

Clinton told a meeting of the Alabama Democratic Party black caucus that Republicans "find the most economically insecure white folks and go scare the living daylights out of them." -- AP, October 13, 1991

Why does the President refuse to let a civil rights bill pass? Because he knows that the people he is dependent on for his electoral majority -- white working class men and women, mostly men, have had their incomes decline in the 1980s and they may return to their natural home, someone who offers them real economic opportunity. And so he is dredging up the same old tactic that the hard right has employed in my part of the country, in the South, since I was a child. When everything gets (hyped ?) and you think you're going to lose those people, you find the most economically insecure white people and you scare the living daylights out of them.-- Georgetown University, October 23, 1991

1,000 Illinois Democrats had gathered in Chicago for their annual fund-raising dinner. Clinton, 45, was determined to give them his best shot. And he did, vigorously attacking George Bush: ''You know, he wants to divide us over race. I'm from the South. I understand this,'' Clinton croaked. ''This quota deal they're gonna pull in the next election is the same old scam they've been pulling on us for decade after decade after decade. When their economic policies fail, when the country's coming apart rather than coming together, what do they do? They find the most economically insecure white men and scare the living daylights out of them.'' -- Sunday Times, November 3, 1991

"If you were in the do-nothing faction and you were about to get voted out, you just found the most economically insecure white people and scared the living hell out of them. We were raised on his. . . What did it do for us? Nothing. Kept us down. Kept us flat. All the progress we've made in the South, we've made since we started working together again.'' -- Houston Chronicle, June 7, 1992] - Noel Sheppard, NewsBusters

Meanwhile, Vice president Dick Cheney has put out a challenge to Hillary Clinton to join him in a shooting match to test whether her professed love of guns is genuine or not.

“To be frank, Hillary Clinton’s stories about her adventures with guns don’t exactly pass the smell test,” Cheney said on ABC’s ‘Meet the Press’ on Sunday.

“If she really wants to show that she knows how to handle a rifle, there’s an easy way to do that: meet me in the woods.”

But shortly after Cheney’s challenge, Clinton said she had “misspoke” concerning her gun experience as a child. “I fired a gun once, but I didn’t like it, and I didn’t recoil,” she said.

Cheney accidentally shot Texas attorney Harry Whittington, wounding him slightly in the face with a shotgun during a 2006 quail hunting trip.

As far as the other controversy surrounding Barack Obama, namely his ex-pastor, Jeremiah Wright, the reverend delivered a sermon at Bank Street Memorial Baptist Church in which he castigated FOX News.

First reported by The Chicago Sun Times, Wright told mourners at the eulogy for a late congregant of Trinity United Church of Christ— former appellate judge R. Eugene Pincham, that Pincham’s faith “was not the jingoistic, chauvinistic ‘you’re either with us or against us’ demonizing kind of faith.”

“FOX News can’t understand that,” Wright remarked to cheers and applause. “[Bill] O’Reilly will never get that. Sean Hannity’s stupid fantasy will keep him forever stuck on stupid when it comes to comprehending how you can love a brother who does not believe what you believe. [Pincham’s] faith was a faith in a God who loved the whole world not just one country or one creed.”

Wright also said Pincham befriended “Jews, Muslims, rabbis, imams, fathers in the Catholic church and (Louis) Farrakhan in the Islamic faith.”

In other political news, a ‘Report: Carter and Gore to Team Up Against Clinton to End Her Presidential Bid’

Read here about ‘Obama: “Men Have the Sense to Know Abortion Helps Them” (and other disturbing comments)‘ - video is included with this blog entry

‘Sinclair Files $3 Million Defamation Suit Involving Drug and Sex Allegations Against Obama‘

Go McCain-Romney 2008!