Obama an Elitist?

They are piling on! El Rushbo, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain. What a trio with the same message. Obama is an elitist? Say what? Obama’s coments about people in small towns being bitter about the state of life has added to the preception that only the intelligent, young, and idealists are for the Barack-star.

Barack Obama, under attack for his “condescending” remarks about small-town America, told Pennsylvania voters on Tuesday that it’s just “silly” to call someone who was raised by a single mother and who was on food stamps an elitist.

Makes sense to me, but hey. This is politics!

Both Hillary Clinton and John McCain have assailed Obama for saying that small-town voters are clinging to guns and religion because they are frustrated with Washington. Clinton, who has repeatedly broached the issue with voters, launched an ad in Pennsylvania Tuesday featuring five residents criticizing Obama’s remarks.

Asked about the flak he’s been taking, Obama said the charges make little sense to him.

“I am amused about this notion of elitist, given that when you’re raised by a single mom, when you’re on food stamps for a while when you were growing up, you went to school on scholarship….” he said, also talking about his wife Michelle’s money troubles.

“So when somebody makes that argument, particularly given that I spent my entire life working with workers, low-income communities to try to make people’s lives a little bit better, then that’s when you know we’re in political silly season,” he told a veterans forum in Washington, Pa.

“Hopefully it’ll come to an end fairly soon and we can start focusing on the issues that the people of Pennsylvania and the American people care about.”

The individual who asked about the comments suggested the charges of elitism had racial overtones.

“As a white person, this term, the way it is being used against you, it isn’t far from ‘uppity,’ OK?” the man told Obama angrily. “And I think the Clintons are getting away with something that they must be called on. They will continue to do it until somebody states, ‘Mrs Clinton, you’re really close to prejudice here. This is wrong.’”

In a counter to Clinton’s ad, Obama’s campaign release an ad Tuesday that showed footage of Clinton being jeered for bringing up Obama’s “bitter” comments at a Pittsburgh event the day before. “There’s a reason people are rejecting Hillary Clinton’s attacks,” the narrator says. “Because the same old Washington politics won’t lower the price of gas or help our struggling economy. Barack Obama will represent all Americans. He offers a new approach”