Två smarta kommentarer om "Bittergate"

Bob Herbert skriver i New York Times att Obama valde en olycklig formulering därför att han försökte komma runt det faktum att det finns många på vischan i Pennsylvania som inte kan tänka sig rösta på en svart kandidat.

"In his San Francisco comments, Senator Obama fouled up when he linked frustration and bitterness over economic hard times with America’s romance with guns and embrace of religion. But, please, let’s get a grip. What we ought to be worked up about is the racism that still prevents some people from giving a candidate a fair chance because of his skin color.

Are working people bitter? There’s no doubt that many are extremely bitter over the economic hand they’ve been dealt. Those who believed that America’s industrial heartland was secure and everlasting have been forced to adjust over the past several years to an extremely bitter reality. Jobs and pensions have vanished. The value of the family home is sinking. Health care is increasingly unaffordable. For many, the cost of college is out of reach.

But 'bitter' has a connotation that is generally not helpful in a political campaign. Bitter suggests powerlessness and a smallness of spirit. Most people would prefer to be characterized as “angry” — a term that suggests empowerment — rather than 'bitter,' with its undertone of defeat."

E.J. Dionne skriver i Washington Post att Obama bröt mot en kampanjtaktisk grundregel när han gav sig in på att försöka analysera väljarkåren som om han varit en sociolog eller statsvetare. "A candidate should never play the role of a political scientist or sociologist analyzing a key electoral swing group from afar and should never dissect the motivations of less privileged people when talking to a group of privileged people."

Vilket inte ursäktar Hillary Clintons nya attacker på Obama:

"But something doesn't parse when a Wellesley and Yale Law School graduate whose family made $109 million since 2001 relentlessly assails a former community organizer on the grounds that he is an elitist. (McCain enthusiastically dittoed the charge Monday.) It's also disappointing that Clinton, whose husband bravely battled the National Rifle Association over a ban on assault weapons, now presents herself as a Second Amendment hero."
"It has been sickening over the years to watch Republicans, who always rally to the aid of the country's wealthiest citizens, successfully cast themselves as pork-rind-eating, NASCAR-watching, gun-toting populists. To have the current White House occupant (Yale, Harvard Business School, son of a president) run as a good old boy should have been the final straw.

But here are the two remaining Democratic candidates, Obama by speaking carelessly and Clinton by piling on shamelessly, doing all they can to make it easy for Republicans to pretend one more time that they are the salt of the earth," avslutar E.J. Dionne.

Hans Sandberg