That's a clear reading of his statements, and an answer few of us can relate to.

Listen to McCain, and ask: why is someone unpatriotic? Because they've had it so good they take things for granted, or they've had it so bad, they feel no gratitude.

What's wrong with that answer? I think almost all of us can relate to it.

It's really that simple.

But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that democrats can win national elections when there’s no evidence of that in their political lives. You go into some of these big cities on the coasts, and like a lot of big cities on the coast, the national elections have been going against them. And they lost in 2000, and in 2004, and each successive election the party said that somehow the elections are gonna be different and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to abortion or global warming or antipathy to those who believe in God or anti-republican sentiment or anti-free market sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

The second problem with Obama's comments is the sheer liberalism of the ideas expressed. How could the federal government stand by and allow those companies to fail and people lose jobs. Why wasn't there a law that would force the companies to stay in business or keep the companies from firing people (see European socialism). These people can't be expected to think or act for themselves. Only the federal government can give them any direction or hope. But Obama can convince them that if Obama is elected that market forces will be stopped by the power of an Obama administration, they will give up such ideas as believing that the 2nd amendment is just as important as the first amendment. That God does exist and is important in their lives. With Obama in power, all racism will magically stop. We will no longer distinguish between those who come to the country legally and those who come illegally. Because after all, Mr. and Mrs. Obama feel their pain when they struggled to raise two children on two or three hundred thousand a year. (Given Obama wanting to pull out of NAFTA, I have no idea what he thinks he is saying about free trade).

All hail saint Obama whose words of hope change everything.

Let's face it. Obama needs to work of prepared speeches or his off the cuff remarks are going to sink him.

If you look at the context of Obama's remarks, it's clear that he's not saying that people cling to guns and religion per se because of economic issues, but rather that people in bad economic situations VOTE on gun issues, religious issues, etc. because they don't think that voting either party will make a difference on economic issues. I don't know if the data is there to say that is certain, but it's a FAR CRY from the words that others are putting into his mouth.

As for McCain, he's not just claiming that Americans are cynical, but that they are also unpatriotic as a consequence of economics.

On the other hand, Obama's comment came off like he was reinforcing the "dumb hick" stereotype. Saying that people turn to religion and hunting because of an economic downturn is a slap in the face to those people for whom religion and hunting is a way of life, not a temporary crutch that they turn to when things are bad and then abandon when things are good. I also take issue with the comment about PA residents being anti-immigration. It sounds to me like he is making an excuse for racism, that it's OK for PAers to be racist against Mexicans because they took yer jobs. I'm surprised there hasn't been more of a kerfuffle about that.

Your interpretation might be right, but you are clearly in the minority. Even the folks at Slate appear to be reading comprehension challenged and seem to be taking it the same way as the racist gun nuts outside of San Francisco.

Well, the primary problem is that the passage looks to be quoted out of context, and if you don't have the context of "these are the issues that people are VOTING ON", then I can see where it can be misinterpreted.

I grew up in a small town in Ohio and have lived in NYC and for many years in the SF bay area. People from the NE or west coast rarely visit "fly over country" and consequently have very odd impressions of the rest of the country.

I don't dispute that. I grew up in Kansas, where I still live, but spent five years "abroad" in Massachusetts, where everyone assumed that I grew up on a farm and listened to country.

And, Alex, if you disagree with me obviously your parents did not hire the right governess to raise you!

Governess? Heck, we didn't even have cable! :)

Your interpretation might be right, but you are clearly in the minority. Even the folks at Slate appear to be reading comprehension challenged and seem to be taking it the same way as the racist gun nuts outside of San Francisco.

I grew up in a small town in Ohio and have lived in NYC and for many years in the SF bay area. People from the NE or west coast rarely visit "fly over country" and consequently have very odd impressions of the rest of the country.
That doesn't stop them from being utterly convinced they "know these people" and know what's best for them. I think a major tenet of elitism is lack of intellectual humility. How in the world is Obama going to have a clue about what's going though the head of people he has never met?

And, Alex, if you disagree with me obviously your parents did not hire the right governess to raise you!

My reading of the bolded lines from McCain (which are frankly a little impenetrable) is that he's arguing that because we're rich and soft, people have lost sight of the sacrifices others made to get to that point, let alone the need to defend their freedoms.

That's half of it. The other half is that economic dislocations have made the working class more cynical (ie, less patriotic--in McCain's view).

He's probably right, as far as it goes. It's even more true in Western Europe than here.

That may or may not be true (I doubt it, myself), but true or not, where was the outrage about McCain impugning the patriotism of the middle and working classes? Where were the cries of condescension? They weren't there because they didn't fit the media narrative.

C. Wagener -

It's quite ironic that when defending Obama against elitism the suggestion is made that to conclude otherwise indicates lack of basic reading comprehension. No elitism there!

It's elitist to expect that most people should be able to comprehend simple sentences in the context in which they are made? If I overestimated the general intellectual abilities of the population, then I made a mistake, but not, I think, an elitist one.

It's quite ironic that when defending Obama against elitism the suggestion is made that to conclude otherwise indicates lack of basic reading comprehension. No elitism there!

he's arguing that because we're rich and soft, people have lost sight of the sacrifices others made to get to that point...It's even more true in Western Europe than here.

That is not my experience at all. The Europeans I know, primarily Dutch but many others, are much more aware of the sacrifices made (particularly in WWII) to secure their lifestyles than the Americans I know.

Obama articulates something a majority of the country already feels, that things are not right. They're not right in Iraq and they're not right in the economy and they're not right at the top in the Bush white house where this week we learned that our most senior administrators spent hours discussing ways to break the law, hours laying out, in minute detail, how best to torture people.

And it works. I've just flicked back through 30 posts here on OTB and not one mention of the ABC news revelations, but already four on Obama's perfectly reasonable suggestion that many of us are bitter at Washington's BS and turn from politics to other things in an effort to change our lives.