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Obama: Hope & Anger Go Together

11:31 AM, Apr 16, 2008 • By BRIAN FAUGHNAN
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I missed this yesterday, but it seems that most blogs did as well. Is it just me, or is this an awfully tortured construction for someone as eloquent as Barack Obama:

ABC News' Eloise Harper and Sunlen Miller report: Barack Obama made a new argument in trying to quell the fire that his remarks over "bitter" Pennsylvania voters have drawn: that hope and anger go hand and hand.

Obama, who has run most of his candidacy under the message of hope, interwove that message with the message that has dusted up the controversy: that people are frustrated and have anger and bitterness because they feel the government is not listening to them.

"Sometimes hope and anger go hand and hand," he said today at the Philadelphia City Committee's Jefferson-Jackson dinner. "People really are angry, they really are fed up, some of them are bitter because Washington's forgotten them. And because it's not me that's out of touch, it's folks who think that folks are happy when they are out of a job and they have lost their pension and they don't have health care and their schools are under-funded."

Imagine the ridicule that would be heaped on George Bush if he tried to explain the relationship between hope and anger this way. Further, it seems rather silly and defensive to cry out against those who think people are happy after they've lost jobs, pensions, and health care. Can Obama point out exactly who he's contrasting himself with?

Sometimes anger and hope go together. And hunger and appetite go hand in hand. And joy and pain. And peas and carrots. And Sonny and Cher. Is this any less clumsy than 'I voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it.'

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