Obama on Bitter Small Town Americans

It's quite difficult to defend Obama's latest comments in San Francisco regarding bitter small town voters. There's no way around the condescension that can be read into the remarks. No doubt all you're going to hear in the media now is "cling to guns and religion," but here is a more complete citation:

“[T]he truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Ironically, I think he was trying to explain that they are NOT racist for not supporting him. Personally, I think there are limits to which a presidential candidate should be trying to psychoanalyze one set of people or trying to explain their actions to another group of people. However, TPM has a 2004 clip of Obama's comments on Charlie Rose that, perhaps, explain those words a little better. Note to the candidates: This is the age of the 30 second clip. Stay on message even if you're singing in the shower.