Calling Barack Obama “elitist and out of touch,” Hillary Clinton hammered her Democratic rival Sunday for describing rural voters as “bitter” people who “cling to guns or religion.”
Obama countered by accusing Clinton of “trying to misconstrue my words” and lamented that she was waging the kind of campaign in which “we try to tear each other down instead of lifting the country up.”
At a candidate forum on faith in Pennsylvania, which holds its primary April 22, Clinton said Obama’s remarks made him vulnerable to the same allegations of elitism that hurt Democrat John Kerry’s presidential bid in 2004.
“You know, the Democratic Party, to be very blunt about it, has been viewed as a party that didn’t understand and respect the values and the way of life of so many of our fellow Americans,” Clinton said at the forum at Messiah College near Harrisburg, which was broadcast by CNN. “So this is a legitimate political issue.”
Clinton expressed outrage that Obama “goes to a closed-door fundraiser in San Francisco and makes comments that do seem elitist, out of touch and, frankly, patronizing.”
She was referring to Obama’s remarks about voters in “small towns” in Pennsylvania and the Midwest who have suffered job losses.
“They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment,” Obama told wealthy donors.
The remarks provided Clinton, the underdog in the Democratic race, an opening against Obama, who has had to work hard to win over rural, white Midwesterners.
“If I worded things in a way that made people offended, I deeply regret that,” he said over the weekend.
Obama stopped short of reiterating his apology at Sunday’s forum.
“What I was referring to was in no way demeaning a faith that I embrace,” said Obama, who appeared separately after Clinton had departed. “My words may have been clumsy, which happens surprisingly often in a presidential campaign.”
He went on to defend his use of the word “cling.”
“Scripture talks about clinging to what’s good,” he said. “Religion is a bulwark, a foundation, when other things aren’t going well.”
Religion has proved a troublesome issue for Obama, whom many voters have mistaken for a Muslim. Obama says he grew up in a nonreligious household and chose to becomea Christian in his late 20s.
