NYT editorial: Guns and Bitter

Editorial
Guns and Bitter
Published: April 16, 2008

We thought the Republican presidential primaries were over. So we are at a loss to explain why Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton have been wandering around Pennsylvania and Indiana and anywhere else they might find a vote or a dollar arguing about which one cares more about guns and religion....

Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton do raise important issues in their speeches. But the campaign, as seen on TV — the one that counts — has been consumed with the senators trading insults over Mr. Obama’s boneheaded remarks about working-class voters. They are not doing themselves or the country any good....

As has usually been the case in these spats, Mrs. Clinton is more the aggressor. After days of digging at Mr. Obama for saying that working-class voters turn xenophobic or “cling to guns and religion” because they’re bitter over lost jobs, Mrs. Clinton couldn’t resist a new nasty attack ad. What she has yet to figure out is that she ends up hurting herself — feeding her negative image — by attacking too long and with too much relish.

Mr. Obama is not a hapless victim. His comments made for just the sort of rookie error that the Illinois senator is prone to make, and they have reinforced a feeling that he can be too aloof, or, yes, elitist. His attempts to explain himself have fallen flat, as have his insulting Annie Oakley jokes and demands to see pictures of Mrs. Clinton in a duck blind. Sexist jabs are as offensive as racist jabs.

The fact is, on guns and religion, as on many other issues, there is no distance between the Democratic contenders. They each have their own religious faith, and they’re both, sensibly, in favor of registering guns and controlling weapons designed purely to kill people....

***

The reason this campaign started out as the Democrats’ big chance to take back Washington is that Americans face huge challenges on which the Republicans have an abysmal record: Iraq and Afghanistan, the trashing of America’s global image, inequitable taxes, a flagging economy, epidemic home foreclosures, lost jobs, soaring health care costs and struggling schools. These are the issues Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton should be addressing. We hope they get back to them, starting tonight at their debate in Pennsylvania.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/opinion/16wed1.html?hp

been a while...

referring to the NYT

including 35 million handgun owners.

HC & BO realize what Al Gore and John Kerry found out the hard way, you can't win a presidential election by being perceived as a gun-grabber.

A presidential candidate has to be stupid to alienate 80 million potential voters by refusing to support the right to keep bear arms.

IMO the only way HC & BO can shed their gun-grabber image is to promise voters, "I will veto every bill that comes to me as president that infringes on the natural, inherent, inalienable right of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms for self-defense."

I don't believe either HC or BO have the courage to make such a promise and that will cost them millions of votes and possibly the GE.

Hey voters are bitter that neither party has worked to help them financially for 30 years,
since saint Ray Gun.

That is the point.

People have given up on voting in heir own financial interest because neither party has worked for the
people for 30 years. THAT is why everyone is pissing a hissy about his remarks.
He dared to speak the TRUTH.

Most people (including white people, as Obama implied) do not purchase guns because they are bitter about the economy. They do so for self-defense, hunting and shooting sports. But the tag "angry white male" has been used with a number of issues by mean-spirited "Democrats" (usually white as well) to somehow bolster their arguments for some agenda they are pushing. How many times have we seen or heard: "Guns are bought by white men to defend their declining status so that they might lash out violently"? Check the archives of "Forums: Guns" for a refresher. This hateful characterization spawns stuff like "clinging to guns" out of "bitterness."

Millions of Pennsylvanians (including women, blacks, GLBTs, Hispanics, Asians, etc.) own firearms for a variety of reasons. Are they bitter as well?

You are quite right about both parties ignoring the interests of everyday folks, but sometimes our candidate, esp. Obama in this instance, indulge caricatures because of the tone set by many "angry" gun controllers and others with a worldview which blames white males. Obama and Clinton need to get out of the duck blind and pick up some books about guns; better yet, they should head to the nearest range and get an edumacation. They are ignorant concerning guns -- and the people who own them. And it shows.

Watching the debate right now and they are getting questions on their failures.