Obama: 'Bitter' Words Were Ill-Chosen

Barack Obama acknowledged today that he’d chosen his words poorly when he said small-town working-class voters are “bitter” and “cling to guns and religion.” “I didn’t say it as well as I should have,” Obama said, but he insisted that working-class frustration is real. Hillary Clinton–who called the comments “elitist and out of touch”–and John McCain immediately pounced.

“Lately there has been a little typical sort of political flare-up because I said something that everybody knows is true,” Obama said today. “A whole bunch of folks in small towns...are bitter," he said. "When you’re bitter, you turn to what you can count on. So people, they vote about guns, or they take comfort from their faith and their family.” (More Obama 2008 stories.)