Facing an outcry from Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain, Barack Obama expressed regret Saturday for saying that small-town Americans embittered by job losses cling to religion, guns and hostility toward immigrants to explain their frustrations.
Obama's move underscored the political damage wrought by his remark last weekend at a San Francisco fundraiser. Clinton, his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, made it the focus of her campaign Saturday.
Trying to drive a wedge between Obama and working-class Democrats in states with upcoming primaries, Clinton's campaign also deployed an army of surrogates to echo her condemnation of the Illinois senator. Among them were the mayors of Scranton, Bethlehem and several other cities in Pennsylvania, where the Democratic contest is nine days away.
Campaigning in Indiana, Clinton said she "was taken aback by the demeaning remarks Sen. Obama made about people in small-town America."
"Sen. Obama's remarks are elitist and they are out of touch," she told a crowd in Indianapolis.
The New York senator went on to proclaim the importance of gun rights and religious faith. "Americans who believe in the 2nd Amendment believe it's a matter of constitutional rights," she said. "Americans who believe in God believe it is a matter of personal faith."
Recalling her father's "working-class" childhood in Scranton, Clinton said she "grew up in a church-going family."
"The people of faith I know don't cling to religion because they're bitter," she said.
As for guns, she added, "people of all walks of life hunt, and they enjoy doing so because it's an important part of their life, not because they are bitter."
The Clinton campaign also tried to turn Obama's comments against him among superdelegates -- the party and elected officials who are all but certain to settle the Democratic nomination fight. As they weigh which candidate stands the best chance of defeating McCain, Clinton's team argued, superdelegates should consider Republicans' success in defining previous Democratic nominees as culturally out of sync with mainstream America.
"The far right wing has a very good track record of using things like this relentlessly against our candidates, whether it's Al Gore or John Kerry," Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, a Clinton supporter, told CNN. "I'm afraid this is the kind of fodder they might use to harm him."
