In the canon of political bloopers, no officeholder (outside of Dan Quayle, of course) has ever uttered anything as self-destructive as Barack Obama did on April 2008, when he called the working class “bitter” and accused it of clinging “to guns or religion.” And yet after doing so, Obama clobbered both Hillary Clinton and John McCain.
The gaffe problem—if it exists—exists mostly in the mind of the press. While it’s the duty of political journalists to sift a candidate’s comments for the stupid and the embarrassing and then showcase it, reporters have oversubscribed to the notion that gaffes destroy on contact.
As Trump and Biden have shown recently, the gaffe has limited power to ruin the stubborn candidate. The gaffe is a snake, for sure. And it bites. But its bite contains no venom.
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