[UGAalum94]

Attributing peoples' beliefs to economic circumstances beyond their control is going to be insulting to the people who hold those beliefs though, and that's a big political problem with his comments.

It may seems strange to die hard Democrats, but some people would choose to hold onto religion, gun rights, immigration law even if their economic circumstances did improve. They don't believe what they believe because they are economically bitter; they believe it because they believe these ideas are valuable and true. (It's certainly possible that being more well off makes you be more tolerant as you are exposed to more, but there may be a point where tolerance becomes decadence culturally too.)

It may be true that the Republican party has been more able to exploit this group of voters, but it's also true that if these issues are important to you, the Democrats haven't offered you anything on these issues.

BigRedBeta, I don't doubt for a minute that Republicans are more effective at exploiting the type of voters Obama was talking about and it probably is something that needs to be discussed within the Democratic party, which may have been what Obama thought he was doing. However, that group of voters is going to be even less likely to embrace a politician who tips his hand the way Obama did, especially while he's in the middle of trying to become one major party's Presidential candidate. It basically floats the idea out there that the candidate, not only doesn't take the issues of gun rights, religion and controlling immigration seriously, but also regards the people who hold such beliefs as somehow being delusional. That's not helping bring them in to the party. Maybe we could right another book called The Only Thing More Wrong than Kansas is the Democratic Party's Response.