Obama Still Facing Fallout Over Private Comments - Made Public - Disparaging Small-Town Voters

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) was still dealing with negative reactions to his unguarded, disparaging comments over the psyche of white small town voters during a televised forum on faith and politics on Sunday.

Rival Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) called Obama's comments "elitist" after they became known on Friday.

At the Sunday forum, she said that the comments raise legitimate concerns about Obama's character.

Obama had not been aware that one of the supporters attending the closed-door private event was a citizen-journalist who was recording his speech when he explained to the group what he thinks motivates working-class voters in small towns that have lost industrial and other jobs and fallen on hard times. "

They get bitter, they 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," Obama was recorded as saying, according to media reports.

The comments were not made known until April 11 because after recording Obama's speech at the private fundraiser in San Francisco on April 6, Obama supporter Mayhill Fowler spent several days conflicted over what to do about the comments.

Fowler was part of an experiment by the Huffington Post in citizen journalism that uses 1,800 unpaid journalists and researchers.

Finally, Fowler published Obama's comments on Friday after deciding, "As a citizen journalist she had a duty to report the event, despite her support for Barack Obama," Amanda Michel, the director of the project, told the Guardian.

Obama had initially stood by his comments, but as more criticism arose over them, he changed his stance saying that he probably could have worded things better or that his comments have been misunderstood.

At the forum on Sunday, Obama added Scripture to the mix of his explanation of his disparaging comments about small-town voters and religion saying that Scripture "talks about clinging to what's good," according to The Washington Times reports. He continued, "This is something that I've talked about before, something I've talked about in my own life, which is that religion is a bulwark, a foundation when other things are not going well.

However, Clinton is having none of that argument and is still holding Obama responsible for comments she labels "elitist."

"Someone goes to a closed-door fundraiser in San Francisco and makes comments that do seem elitist, out of touch and, frankly, patronizing," she said on the "Compassion Forum" broadcast on CNN. "That has nothing to do with him being a good man or a man of faith."

Republicans are also criticizing Obama's comments as being elitist. They are intimating that because Obama made the comments in private with an expectation that they would not be made public, that the disparaging comments about small-town voters reflect what Obama thinks and that they are a barometer of his character.