Obama is having trouble shaking "Bittergate" because it seems to confirm a couple of worries about him: One, that he's a terrific but untested politician who's gotten a remarkably easy ride from the media, and might stumble more in a long, tough race.

Obama continues to gain on Clinton in the polls. He continues to outpoll Clinton versus McCain in the general election. The only place where Obama can't "shake" this latest ____-gate is in the fevered mind of navel-gazing pundits like yourself.

Why are you calling me a troll? What is your evidence?

Why are you calling me a troll? What is your evidence?

Trolling: v.,n. 1. A series of electronic postings designed to attract predictable responses or flames.

I love watching the hysteria build into a tsunami among the actual elitists of the absurdly word-parsing punditocracy. Meanwhile, Obama continues to gain on Hillary.

Do you actually think his "gaffe" -- which was an artless statement of the truth -- is anywhere near as revealing as Hillary's rush to tell that charming little story about learning to shoot a gun out back of the family cottage? Or her slamming back beer and whiskey in a bar or blithering about her deep and abiding faith in the lord god almighty?

The true elitists in this nation are the myopic pundits who are completely out of touch with Americans, who have been consistently wrong in their predictions and observations throughout the last 7 years. If you for one moment think the average American isn't more repelled by Hillary's becoming a gunslinger than by Obama's garbled comment, whose underlying empathy is easy to discern, you really need to take a tour of reality.

I am one of those voters who had actually not made up his mind until this entire episode regarding "bitter" came up. Perhaps it's as Bob Somerby states: that the Obamaphiles are getting their just due after their hysterical race-baiting of the Clintons. But I would appreciate some insight into the entire controversy and we really need to change the narrative. I am tired of verbal gaffes now getting tagged with the "-gate" label: it has the effect of simultanously trivializing one of the most serious abuses of power and Constitutional crises in our nation's history and elevates the most mundane political issue to a major scandal. This just has to stop. If educated members of the journalistic profession have such little imagination or knowledge of our political history perhaps they should find more suitable employment in food service. Now regarding the statement itself, I think it is unfair to categorize the statement or sentiment as "elitist" which means snobbery or someone who despises people or things as inferior. I didn't hear that. Obama said nothing that Frank Thomas in "What's the Matter With Kansas" expressed so it's probably best to review this thesis: it is that people have been voting against their own best economic interests by voting for Republicans and policies that benefit the rich because they are alienated from the political process and are diverted by "social" issues raised by right wing demagogues. It is possible as Somerby posits that this thesis is essentially calling people rubes. But there is a more valid and stronger interpretation: perhaps it's a comment on human nature and how people can be manipulated by certain economic elites. It is true that Obama is part of an American elite--as are Clinton and McCain and most previous presidents and presidential candidates--but that is different from being "elitist." The elite are those gifted with educational, economic or social success in some measure. We don't expect any less from our presidents given the importance of the position, though we seem to have gone wide of the mark on Bush II, confusing inheritance with acquired attributes. I have found that Obama has engaged all of the people in this country with courtesy and without malice, assuming that they are good and have the capacity for understanding, as he did in his speech regarding his pastor (regardless of the fact that the controvery in that case was mischaracterized and overblown when the entire sermons were heard). Yes, people are bitter and they have had their attention diverted from the real problem in the past but, he says, not this time. Perhaps it's not good politics but it speaks to us as adults. I now support Mr. Obama.

Yes, of course we aren't enough to carry an election. I know that. I don't understand why we are somehow "elite." We are a demographic from which to disassociate. Democrats and Republicans talk about us as if we are wholly undesirable.

No one talks about our bitterness.

Obama's remarks have always sounded familiar to me, and behold:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/13/bill-clinton-flashback-al_n_96433.html

As the rumination continues over Barack Obama's comments about economically-depressed small town voters, statements made by Bill Clinton on the same topic -- uttered while he was running for president in 1991 -- have now surfaced.

"The reason (George H. W. Bush's tactic) works so well now is that you have all these economically insecure white people who are scared to death," Clinton was quoted saying by the Los Angeles Times in September 1991.

A couple months later, Joe Klein, writing for the Sunday Times, reported that Clinton made the following remarks:

"You know, he [Bush] wants to divide us over race. I'm from the South. I understand this. 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. They know if they can keep us looking at each other across a racial divide, if I can look at Bobby Rush and think, Bobby wants my job, my promotion, then neither of us can look at George Bush and say, 'What happened to everybody's job? What happened to everybody's income? What ... have ... you ... done ... to ... our ... country?'"

So, people get scared and frustrated, and they focus on what they control, and they vote for whoever says that they're going to protect what it is that they feel they can control, and can give them someone to blame for their troubles. Even though the people that they're voting for screw them over pretty much every single time. But they play on their fear that someone is going to come along and take away whatever it is that they have left. Fear leads to people voting against their own self-interests.

You know. WHAT OBAMA SAID.

So, there this quote is, picked up by Huffington, out there on the internet, in the PRESS, and "bittergate" has been going on for a week now, and has anyone confronted Clinton on this? Was her husband talking down to poor people, or was he telling the truth? And no one has has so much as mentioned this quote. A little scary, don't you think? Pro-Obama media bias, my ass.