DADvocate

Unless you live under a rock you've heard about Barack Obama's "bitter" remarks. In the company of fellow elitist snobs, Obama lets down his guard and shows his disdain for the average American.

You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, a lot of them — 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’ve gone 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. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, and they cling to guns, or religion, or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment, or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

After all the hate speech we've heard Obama's pastor, Jeremiah Wright, Obama dares to insult the religion of the people who make up the core of this country as well as snicker at their practicing their constitutional right to own a gun.

Another wonderful statement by Obama in the same speech:

When people tell me they've all stressed about racial discord, well, you know, try slavery for a while.

Has Obama tried slavery? Has anyone living in the United States been legally enslaved? What does this guy who grew up in Hawaii and attended Ivy League schools know about slavery that a factory worker in Pennsylvania doesn't? Whose life is closer to that of a slave? Who lives the life of the ultra privileged jetting around America and the world and someone else's expense?

William Kristol wrote a wonderful piece in the New York Times today regarding Obama's comments.

It’s another thing for an American presidential candidate to claim that we “cling to ... religion” out of economic frustration.

And it’s a particularly odd claim for Barack Obama to make. After all, in his speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, he emphasized with pride that blue-state Americans, too, “worship an awesome God.”

---

But Obama in San Francisco does no courtesy to his fellow Americans. Look at the other claims he makes about those small-town voters.

Obama ascribes their anti-trade sentiment to economic frustration — as if there are no respectable arguments against more free-trade agreements. This is particularly cynical, since he himself has been making those arguments, exploiting and fanning this sentiment that he decries. Aren’t we then entitled to assume Obama’s opposition to Nafta and the Colombian trade pact is merely cynical pandering to frustrated Americans?

Then there’s what Obama calls “anti-immigrant sentiment.” Has Obama done anything to address it? It was John McCain, not Obama, who took political risks to try to resolve the issue of illegal immigration by putting his weight behind an attempt at immigration reform.

Furthermore, some concerns about unchecked and unmonitored illegal immigration are surely legitimate. Obama voted in 2006 (to take just one example) for the Secure Fence Act, which was intended to control the Mexican border through various means, including hundreds of miles of border fence. Was Obama then just accommodating bigotry?

As for small-town Americans’ alleged “antipathy to people who aren’t like them”: During what Obama considers the terrible Clinton-Bush years of economic frustration, by any measurement of public opinion polling or observed behavior, Americans have become far more tolerant and respectful of minorities who are not “like them.” Surely Obama knows this. Was he simply flattering his wealthy San Francisco donors by casting aspersions on the idiocy of small-town life?

That leaves us with guns. Gun ownership has been around for an awfully long time. And people may have good reasons to, and in any case have a constitutional right to, own guns — as Obama himself has been acknowledging on the campaign trail, when he presents himself as more sympathetic to gun owners than a typical Democrat.

Obama's statament, "antipathy to people who aren’t like them," especially aggravates me. His condescending arrogance, like his ignorance of real people's lives, knows no bounds.

This past weekend I watched my daughter's basketball team play in a tournament. Looking out on the court the girls are nearly 50-50 black/white. The parents and relatives all sit together. My favorite guy to talk to and sit with is a black man. He's insightful, intelligent and straight forward.

The girls get along on and off the court. When they have sleepovers, all are invited.

My daughter's boyfriend came to watch. His step-father, with whom he lives, is black. Black and white children live in the same household in a nice middle class neighborhood in Maysville, Kentucky, population approximately 10,000. This is not considered strange or unusual. We're all happy and get along.

Barack Obama is using race to get votes. His arguments and comments are out of date and out of touch with reality. All my children have black friends but with the likes of Barack Obama teaching racial conflict while pretending to be a uniter, I wonder how long it will take until some begin thinking they shouldn't be friends.

Maysville has its share of immigrants. My church performs Spanish language Mass. While most, like myself, don't like illegal immigration, we have embraced Mexicans and other Hispanics as people. We have real Mexican restaurants. We have a Mexican grocery. Also, we have several local Chinese, and Japanese families. All are treated with respect and as friends.

Barack Obama has no idea of what the typical American's life consists. He's talking about race as if we're still in the 1950s or 1960s.

All this from the leading Democratic candidate for the presidency. The Democratic Party that former Democratic Party chair David Wilhelm claimed, "I remember asking my dad, an immigrant, why we were Democrats. He said, because they stand up for the little guy." Yeah, right.

Hillary Clinton looks better and better every day. We certainly don't need Barack Obama in the White House.