'Meet the Press' transcript for April 13, 2008

MR. TIM RUSSERT:  Our issues this Sunday:  In just nine days, the Pennsylvania primary.  Then, on May 6th, showdowns in Indiana and North Carolina.  Obama and Clinton, another heated exchange.

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON (D-NY):  Senator Obama's remarks are elitist, and they're out of touch.  They are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans.

SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D-IL):  And she says I'm out of touch?  No, I'm in touch. I know exactly what's going on.

MR. RUSSERT:  All the while, John McCain is thinking running mate and plotting a general election strategy.

With us:  he helped put Bill and Hillary Clinton in the White House in 1992--Democrat James Carville; she worked for Bush 41, Bush 43 and Dick Cheney--Republican Mary Matalin; he worked for John McCain on his 2000 presidential campaign--Republican Mike Murphy; and he worked for Kerry, Gore and Barack Obama's key supporter Ted Kennedy--Democrat Bob Shrum.  The race for the White House through the eyes of Carville, Matalin, Murphy and Shrum, only on MEET THE PRESS.

Welcome, all.  That--what a week in politics.  The very latest delegate count, polls, strategies, issues.

Here's the latest delegate count:  Obama, 1416; Clinton, 1252.  That's 164 lead for Obama.  Superdelegates:  230, Obama; 259, Clinton.  Add them all up, 1646 to 1511, a lead of 135 for Obama.  Contests won:  28-14, Obama over Clinton.  Total votes:  13.4 million, 12.7 million--that's 49-to-47, that's a cumulative vote.

Next stop is Pennsylvania a week from Tuesday.  Latest Time magazine poll: Clinton, 44, Obama, 38.  Two weeks later it'd be Indiana.  Look at this race: 49-46, Clinton-Obama.  And in North Carolina the same day, May 6th:  Obama, 35; Clinton, 26; undecided, 39 percent.

But latest development:  last Sunday Barack Obama went to a fundraiser in San Francisco, made some comments.  They became public late on Friday afternoon. He was asked, according to his campaign, could he appeal to blue collar voters?  And this was his answer:  Everyone "just" describes "it to `white working-class don't wanna work--don't wanna vote for the black guy.' ...

"Here's how it is:  in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long.  They feel so betrayed by government that when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn't buy it.  And when it's delivered by--it's true that when it's delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama, then that adds another layer of skepticism.  ... You go into some of" those "small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in" "Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years, 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 to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Hillary Clinton responded this way:

(Videotape)

SEN. CLINTON:  Now, like some of you may have been, I was taken aback by the demeaning remarks Senator Obama made about people in small town America. Senator Obama's remarks are elitist, and they're out of touch.  They are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  Senator Obama, in Indiana, sought to clarify his comments this way:

(Videotape)

SEN. OBAMA:  So I made the statement--so here, here's what's rich.  Senator Clinton says, "Well, I don't think people are bitter in Pennsylvania, you know.  I think Barack's being condescending." John McCain says, "Oh, how could he say that?  How could he say that people are bitter?  You know, he obviously is out of touch with people." Out of touch?  Out of touch?  I mean, here--John McCain, it took him three tries to finally figure out that the home foreclosure crisis was a problem and to come up with a plan for it, and he's saying I'm out of touch?  Senator, Senator Clinton voted for a credit card-sponsored bankruptcy bill that made it harder for people to get out of debt after taking money from the financial services companies, and she says I'm out of touch?

No, I'm in touch.  I know exactly what's going on.  I know what's going on in Pennsylvania, I know what's going on in Indiana, I know what's going on in Illinois.  People are fed up.  They're angry and they're frustrated and they're bitter, and they want to see a change in Washington.  And that's why I'm running for president of the United States.

MR. RUSSERT:  But by yesterday Senator Obama was making this admission.

SEN. OBAMA (Muncie, Indiana, Saturday):  I didn't say it as well as I should have because, you know, 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're being listened to.

MR. RUSSERT:  James Carville, is this a real issue?

MR. CARVILLE:  Yeah, I think it is at issue, and, and the other thing is just some slight historical inaccuracies in here.  Jobs in Pennsylvania went up substantially under Bill Clinton.  Most of these jobs were lost in, in the early '80s in fact.  The gun culture has been part of Pennsylvania forever, for a long, long time.  I remember "The Deer Hunter," which is one of the really great movies in 1978.  I don't think that Senator Obama really understands the relationship of Pennsylvanians or Midwesterners or Southerners and, and their guns.  I mean, I, I have eight guns myself.  I'm hardly bitter about things.

And also that the, the people have been going to church in Pennsylvania for a long time, a really long time.  I can take you to Catholic churches in Scranton where my--Governor Casey was both before and after the Quecreek coal mines flooded.  But I don't know if it's devastating.  I think it was a poor choice of words.  I think the forum in San Francisco, like he was explaining, these people or somebody else, it was, was unfortunate and he's, he's going to have to do some more explaining about this.  But his cultural history is way, way off, way off.

MR. RUSSERT:  Bob Shrum.

MR. SHRUM:  Well, he's not running for sociologist in chief, he's running for president.  So I think he wishes he hadn't said it quite this way.  I think he wishes he'd said it the same way he did the second day around.

Now, the truth is, James and I, starting 25 years ago in focus groups in Pennsylvania and polling etc., heard a lot of anger, a lot of frustration. Jobs did go up in Pennsylvania when Clinton was president, but not in places like I was born in--Connellsville, Uniontown, those small towns that have been abandoned.  So there's an element of truth in what he said.  But the underlying question here is whether McCain and Clinton can tag him with the term elitist, which is what they want.  I mean, here's a guy who just finished paying his student loans, who was raised by a single mother and his grandparents, who doesn't know what it's like to have $100 million.  So I think Senator Clinton has to be a little careful in pushing this because, frankly, she hasn't lived in the real world for 25 years; she's lived in a bubble.  At a certain point I think it'll come back on her, but right now it's a blessing because it got the whole attention of the press off Bill Clinton's rewinding and replaying the tale of Tuzla, the tape that came back out of the network vaults about Mrs. Clinton's visit to Bosnia.

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