Now I understand

During the Democratic Pennsylvania primary Sen. Obama informed a group of supporters in California why certain voters might not support him.

You go into some of 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. 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.

Now Sen. Obama has clearly repudiated those remarks.

Speaking to the New York Times in an interview set to be published Sunday, Obama said his now-infamous comments at a San Francisco fundraiser last April — during which he said some small town Americans "cling" to guns and religion — was "my biggest boneheaded move"

Fortunately for us Sen. Obama's supporters have clarified what he meant to say about Pennsylvania voters. For example Rep. John Murtha stated yesterday

There is no question that western Pennsylvania is a racist area

Pennsylvania Gov. Rendell had previously stated

You've got conservative whites here, and I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African American candidate.

Gov. Rendell did further elaborate on those comments recently by suggesting that even the racist voters of PA will vote for Obama due to economic circumstances

If you're drowning, and you're in the middle of the river, and you see a guy on the riverbank, and he's got a coil of rope, you don't care whether he's black, white, green, purple. All you care about — whether he has a strong enough arm to get that rope out to you in the middle of the river

And from nearby Ohio, the democratic governor discussed the clingers in the Buckeye state

Ted Strickland, tackled the issue head-on as he crisscrossed the state with Obama in recent days, calling the discomfort felt by some working-class whites with a electing a black president the "elephant in the room"

Now I understand why someone might vote for George Wallace er.... John McCain. Somebody will need to clue in Lynn Swann