Tell Us What You Really Think, Barack!

Did you hear what B. Hussein Obama said at a San Francisco fundraiser on April 6? No? I didn’t think so. Trailing by double-digits in the upcoming Pennsylvania primary, Obama described Keystone State residents- many of whom had suffered from years of economic hardship and unemployment- as “bitter” and clinging “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.”

While his comments were well-received by enthusiastic donors on billionaires’ row and by Obama’s legion of left-wing zombies on college campuses, they were not quite as popular among “these small towns in Pennsylvania” and “a lot of towns in the Midwest.” While Obama’s red meat snobbery would appear to be little more than a gaffe (one of many his campaign has committed in the course of the primary race), they are in fact much more serious. They reflect an attitude of scorn which unfortunately is held by a healthy majority of affluent, urban-core inhabiting liberals.

To make sure he wasn’t talking over the heads of those bitter, gun-owning, bigoted, xenophobic, protectionist, religious zealots (meaning people who live between Manhattan Island and the California coastline), Obama issued a forceful defense in Muncie, Indiana. Lucky for him, Muncie boasts an NPR station and a couple of Starbucks. Instead of shying away from or apologizing for his earlier comments, Obama defended them head on and turned it in to criticism of his rivals:

“Lately there has been a little typical sort of political flare-up, because I said something that everybody knows is true, 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.” He continued, “So people, they vote about guns, or they take comfort from their faith and their family and their community. And they get mad about illegal immigrants who are coming over to this country, or they get frustrated about how things are changing. That’s a natural response.” His “explanation” was greeted with thunderous applause by the heavily-Democratic audience.

Obama’s Freudian slip is the latest view of a wealthy urban elitism now dominant in the Democratic Party, which looks down upon the Red States and their inhabitants and treats them with ridicule. Northeastern blue-bloods, Manhattan socialites, and California wine-drinkers can’t stand the ordinary red-staters and view them roughly how Obama described them. The liberal elites, mind you, aren’t like the uncivilized Neanderthals from the Red States- they don’t cling to tacky, outdated superstitions like religion, or own murderous firearms, or fly the Confederate flag on the back of their internal-combustion-powere

d moving vehicle. They think of themselves as uniquely positioned above the ordinary folks and don’t dare stray outside the coverage area of an NPR affiliate. The only thing compelling Democratic candidates to visit the plebs in the great nothingness known as “fly-over country” is the Electoral College (which they also want to scrap . . . for some reason).

Instead of being cheered with the fiendish delight of tens of thousands of brainwashed college leftists, Obama’s comments should be seen for what they really are: the latest in a series of remarks, associations, and incidents which shed light on the real B. Hussein Obama, the Obama his media cheerleaders don’t want us commoners to see. Recall that his wife Michelle is proud of her country for the first time in her adult life. This came after conceiving a racially-divisive thesis at Princeton and describing America (the country which I assume she was only now proud of) as “just downright mean.” Obama’s friends include Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers (who said in a New York Times interview, coincidentally published on September 11, 2001, “I don’t regret setting bombs, I feel we didn’t do enough”) and of course, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Tack on to that the most liberal voting record in the United States Senate and a resume about as empty as mine, and you have a man who is drastically out of touch with mainstream Americans and dangerously ill-equipped to be President of the United States.

There’s no question that working and middle-class Americans are under a great deal of strife thanks to a solid economy situated on quicksand. While property in Silicon Valley might have skyrocketed and stock prices might have dropped a few points in the last eight years, real Americans from Nevada to Pennsylvania, from Florida to Idaho, are in real trouble. What’s more, based on the reactions Obama’s comments received, those bitter Pennsylvanians and those frustrated Midwesterners rather resent their lifestyle being ridiculed. While it might not be so for liberal Democrats, traditional institutions like the Second Amendment and the free exercise of religion are still important to many millions of Americans. While cosmopolitan liberals shun notions of borders and national identity, the rest of us are being hurt by the federal government’s inability and unwillingness to deal with immigration and trade issues. Instead of looking down on ordinary Americans, Democrats might think it prudent to defend some of their interests and issues. That is, if they dare to tread outside of the Blue States.