You go into 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.

And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

This latest outburst worries me, because it may mean the premature end of Obama. I think Rand Simberg hits the coffin nail right on the head:

I think that this could be a campaign killer in the fall. That sound bite will be shown over and over again. I just regret that it came out this soon. Unfortunately, the Democrats still have a chance to eject him before he gets the nomination. But even if they do, it will still be an electoral disaster for them. The problem is that it isn't just Obama. Most of them are just smart enough not to voice their bigotry publicly, but this is how much of the party itself views rural and middle America, and it's going to hurt them all through the fall. And justly so.

(Emphasis added.)

The good news is that McCain can beat Obama. The bad news is that so can Hillary.

Of course, news is news, and strategic thinking is not.

(I'd hate to think that news should depend on "news strategy.")

MORE: Lest anyone think Obama's sentiment are much different from the liberal sentiments around here, consider this cartoon which ran in the Pittsburgh Post and the Philadelphia Inquirer in February:

As I said at the time, "no matter how they vote, they're suspect!"

Obama's attempt to "understand" the frustrated small town folk, while condescending, is less insulting.

UPDATE: Sean Kinsell (who grew up in the sort of area Obama claims to understand) has some choice words:

My mother has two handguns and takes shooting lessons because my father works nights quite a bit. If someone broke into the house, she'd have to fend for herself until the township police arrived. That's been a fact of life since long before manufacturing jobs started leaving.

Seekers of religious freedom were numerous among Pennsylvania settlers. William Penn was a Quaker whose beliefs had riled his father and the king. In Pennsylvania Dutch country, we're famous for having Amish communities. Lots of old Moravian and Lutheran churches, too. A combination of religious fervor and tolerance is movingly woven into Pennsylvania history from day one, and people in small towns have been going to church regularly since long before the decline of the rust belt economy. The insinuation that people just kind of started turning to religion to give them a sense of shallow comfort when the layoffs started is deeply offensive. I rejected the theology I'd been brought up with years ago as an accurate explanation for the origins of the universe, but it's just plain low to take cheap shots against the faithful.

Obama really stepped in it this time. Frankly, I think he did a better job (if a superficial one) when he claimed to "understand" why people might need a gun in rural Iowa.

And thanks, Sean, for the link!

MORE: And now it's Hillary Clinton, pro-gun churchgoer!

Who could have imagined that Hillary would cling to guns or religion?