[Drolefille]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

I think you're being too generous because you're fundamentally more optimistic about Obama.

I think his take was dismissive of the genuine beliefs of the people he was talking about. Most people do vote on issues, and conservatives often vote on issues to intentionally avoid changing the way things work.

It may be more cynical to be conservative, especially when it comes to the ability for government to effect positive change, but it's isn't "clinging" to issues because you're economically bad off, which is what he implied in the original statement.

It's quite possible my view is being colored by my previous opinion of him.

Here's the chunk of the original quote applicable

“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,” Obama responded, according to a transcript of the fundraiser published Friday on The Huffington Post.

“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,” Obama went on. “And it's not surprising then 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."

I think that the bolded portions address his intent.
Now, the clarification he made later

"Lately there has been a little typical sort of political flare up because I said something that everybody knows is true, which is that there are a whole bunch of folks in small towns in Pennsylvania, in towns right here in Indiana, in my hometown in Illinois who are bitter," Obama said Saturday morning at Ball State University. "They are angry. They feel like they have been left behind. They feel like nobody is paying attention to what they're going through."

"So I said, well you know, when you're bitter you turn to what you can count on. So people, they vote about guns, or they take comfort from their faith and their family and their community. And they get mad about illegal immigrants who are coming over to this country."

After acknowledging that his previous remarks could have been better phrased, he added:

"The truth is that these traditions that are passed on from generation to generation, those are important. That's what sustains us. But what is absolutely true is that people don't feel like they are being listened to.

"And so they pray and they count on each other and they count on their families. You know this in your own lives, and what we need is a government that is actually paying attention. Government that is fighting for working people day in and day out making sure that we are trying to allow them to live out the American dream."

The bold, again, I think addresses the main thrust of his point.

I do think that a lot of the criticism is because of his comment including religion. And I get the impression, though I may be wrong here, that the same people who take offense to it, think that Obama somehow isn't as Christian as they are either because he's liberal, because he's a member of the UCC, or because they think he's really a Muslim. So clearly he's mocking religious people because he isn't really one of them. All speculation I guess.