Obama Responds to Small-Town Attacks in Ad

Barack Obama released a new ad today responding to Hillary Clinton’s attacks over remarks he made at a San Francisco fundraiser April 5.

Obama’s ad leads with Clinton being booed by a Pittsburgh crowd yesterday when she attacked Obama over the remark at a speaking engagement. It then labels Clinton’s attacks as “the same old Washington politics.”

At a private fundraiser in San Francisco April 5, Obama told supporters that small-town voters in Pennylvania “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” because they are “bitter.”

Since then, Clinton and John McCain have attacked Obama, and Clinton yesterday released an ad in which people on the street testify to Obama’s offensiveness. Obama has subsequently said he chose his words poorly but has also fought back, standing by his assessment of voters’ bitterness over losing jobs during the Clinton and Bush years.

The quote originally broke on The Huffington Post April 11; see the original post, including audio, here.