Obama camp seizes on 'divorced' comment

After a week on defense, Barack Obama's campaign is roaring back with a new theme for attacking John McCain: “out of touch.”

In a conference call with reporters on Friday morning, the Obama campaign seized on a comment by McCain in Thursday night’s ServiceNation forum in New York, where the candidates appeared separately on the seventh anniversary of 9/11.


McCain was defending his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, population 9,800. Asked by Judy Woodruff of PBS about Palin's stint as “a small-town mayor,” McCain replied: “Listen, mayors have the toughest job, I think, in America. It's easy for me to go to Washington and, frankly, be somewhat divorced from the day-to-day challenges people have.”

Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) told reporters on the call that is “a critical comment by John McCain that evidences why he really isn’t going to bring change.”

“I have been with John McCain in Washington, and I think what he said reflects the reality of many people,” Durbin said. “But even worse is the situation that his economic policies that he wants to continue with George Bush have failed. If he would, you know, be in the real world of American families in New York, Illinois or Florida, he would understand that.”

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.): “I think he said it because he knows, in fact, he’s removed from the day-to-day challenges people have faced in their lives. And you see it manifest itself in the thing when he says, you know, I don’t use a computer. I don’t use e-mail. There’s a whole economic revolution going on. And it fundamentally changed the economy, and fundamentally changed people’s lives, and he is removed from it.”

Democrats say the remark could open him to the sort of attacks that undermined President George H.W. Bush when he lost to Bill Clinton in 1992.

A new Obama ad out this morning uses the phrase “out of touch” and mocks McCain’s confession that he was still learning to go online by himself: “Things have changed in the last 26 years. But McCain hasn’t. He admits he still doesn’t know how to use a computer, can’t send an e-mail. Still doesn’t understand the economy. And favors $200 billion in new tax cuts for corporations, but almost nothing for the middle class. After one president who was out of touch, we just can’t afford more of the same.”

An Obama official says the campaign’s message is “out of touch, out of touch, out of touch.”

“John McCain can’t bring about change when he is completely out of touch with the lives of regular Americans,” the official said.

Obama made a similar coment about mayors at the forum: "Mayors have some of the toughest jobs in the country, because that’s where the rubber hits the road. We yak in the Senate. They actually have to fill potholes and trim trees and make sure the garbage is taken away."