Obama's Honest Slip

Obama is receiving the 'elite liberal' treatment by Clinton and McCain after audio of the would-be nominee's remarks, recorded last week at a San Francisco fundraiser, surfaced Friday. The contested comments—which you can listen to here—were as follows:

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 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.

Two-part question: Why should Obama apologize for off-the-cuff remarks that happen to (1) lay out incisively the rather obvious relationship between perceived economic disadvantage and bigotry (can a stratified system function apart from the satiation of each stratum's desire for relative significance over the 'next one down'? The discourse simply gets less attractive the 'further' vertically one goes.), and (2) reflect his actual beliefs on the matter? We should further note the significance of these remarks' extempore nature—they were made in San Francisco at a press-free event—and the extent to which they are at odds with the more 'populist' message he is trotting out at official campaign stops. The comments may also be understood in the context of serious doubts over the sincerity of the candidate's anti-NAFTA posture. Let us hope that Obama follows the Henry Ford school of apology, while, meanwhile, we seek consolation in the success of a gentleman who, at least by Scheiber's account in The New Republic, is the least principle-bound candidate of our time. And I mean that in the best sense.

UPDATE: The inevitable.