[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

The statement was made at a San Francisco big big money fund-raiser. It's probably what they expected to hear.

Half of all dwellars are in rural Pennsylvania, or have family and friends there in spades. Here's the deal.

Pennsylvania small town provincialism didn't start 25 years ago. It started as soon as the society became mobile. People interested in constant change, creativity and exploration started moving to the urban areas.

Obama's real gaffe here is that his statement is the entire opposite of what his campaign has been so far. It's negative, when his campaign has been all about the positive. It's divisive when the campaign has been about unity.

Most of all, it's wrong. The differences here aren't easily explained by frustration or jobs or promises. They're just different schools of thought.

One of my own recent themes in life has been strenuously avoiding characterizing those who have different points of view as "stupid", or "broken", or "bitter", or even "wrong", because our harsh divides are too harsh now and somehow we must resolve our differences and stop being assholes. So this one hurts a little.

I believe he was trying to pander to the donors and the electorate at the same time. On the one hand he agreed to the sterotype and in the same way he was trying to to not completely ignore the predicament of many rural areas in the US. He got it wrong on both accounts. Each area is distinctly different from others. Many of the rural areas in decline have been heading that direction for a long time and due to many factors. The guns and religion comment was just ignorant on his part and shows that he really is from an elitist part of society. I am not really convinced that his comments will hurt him much but they do give his rivals talking points for which they can beat him about the head relentlessly. He is learning the value of choosing his words carefully.