Obama backs down a bit over comments
Posted: Saturday, April 12, 2008 1:19 PM by Mark Murray
From NBC/NJ's Aswini Anburajan
MUNCIE, IN -- After a defiant defense of his comments yesterday that Americans in small rural towns in Pennsylvania feel bitter,
Obama today toned down the rhetoric and appeared more contrite in talking about his controversial comments from last weekend.
Re-addressing the issue, which he labeled “a political flare-up” Obama told the crowd that he said something “that everybody knows is true.”
“So I said, 'Well, you know when you’re bitter, you turn to what you count on,” Obama continued. “Some people, they vote on guns or they take comfort from their fate 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 have changed. That’s a natural response.”
But this time he added: “Now I didn’t say it as well as I should have. Now these traditions are passed on from generation to generation, those are what sustains us. But what is absolutely true is that people don’t feel like they are being listened to. And so they pray and they count on each other and they count on their families, you know this in your own lives.”
