Obama tries to temper 'bitter' comment

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Barack Obama struggled yesterday to fend off a barrage of criticism for saying small-town voters were "bitter" and clinging to guns and religion — remarks that the senator's opponent, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, harshly denounced as elitist and demeaning.

Mr. Obama, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, apologized for choosing his words poorly at the closed-door San Francisco fundraiser, and he somewhat backed off his characterization of gun owners and churchgoers.

"I didn't say it as well as I should have," the Illinois senator said at a campaign rally at Ball State University in Indiana while dismissing it as "a typical sort of political flare-up because I said something that everybody knows is true."

Later in the afternoon, he made an apology in an interview with a North Carolina newspaper, although it was phrased in the conditional and he stood by his substantive point.

"Obviously, if I worded things in a way that made people offended, I deeply regret that," he told the Winston-Salem Journal, but "the underlying truth of what I said remains, which is simply that people who have seen their way of life upended because of economic distress are frustrated and rightfully so."

Mr. Obama was contrite after a furor began late Friday when his remarks at a closed-door San Francisco fund-raiser were first posted on the Huffington Post Web site. The criticism grew yesterday to dominate the weekend political news cycle and the conversation on political Web sites.

Mrs. Clinton, campaigning in Indiana yesterday, made her strongest rebuke yet of Mr. Obama, saying the remarks are "demeaning, elitist and they are out of touch."

She said Americans own guns because they hunt or believe in gun rights, and they go to church because they believe in God — not because they are desperately clinging to antiquated views.

"Americans who believe in the Second Amendment believe it's a matter of constitutional right. Americans who believe in God believe it's a matter of personal faith," she said. "The people of faith I know don't 'cling' to religion because they're bitter. People embrace faith, not because they are materially poor but because they are spiritually rich."

She also said that "I don't think it helps to divide our country into one America that is enlightened and one that is not. ... People don't need a president who looks down on them."