Hillary Clinton and John McCain both ripped into Barack Obama Friday for reportedly saying residents of small-town America “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them” out of bitterness over lost jobs.

His opponents interpreted the remarks as arrogant, but Obama stood by the statement Friday and even elaborated on the argument that many people in small towns are bitter and frustrated with the status quo in Washington.

Obama made the original comments while speaking to a group of wealthy California donors in San Francisco over the weekend. The Huffington Post quotes him specifically singling out towns in Pennsylvania, where he’s trying to woo voters and overcome Clinton’s lead in the polls before the state’s April 22 primary.

“Our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives,” he said. “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 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 going to 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.”

The comments, which can also be heard in an audio recording later posted on the Huffington Web site, immediately became fodder for the campaigns of Clinton, Obama’s rival for the Democratic nomination, and McCain, his potential Republican challenger.

“Pennsylvanians don’t need a president who looks down on them. They need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them,” Clinton said Friday afternoon at a campaign stop in Philadelphia. She said the Pennsylvanians she’s met aren’t bitter, but “resilient” and “positive.”

McCain adviser Steve Schmidt called Obama’s statement “remarkable” and “extremely revealing.”

“It shows an elitism and condescension towards hardworking Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking,” Schmidt said. “It is hard to imagine someone running for president of the United States who is more out of touch with average Americans.”

Schmidt also said it shows Obama views the people he’s trying to relate to with “contempt.”

Obama directly addressed the growing furor Friday at a campaign stop in Indiana. Many working-class people have lost jobs to overseas operations, lost their pensions, lost their health care and haven’t gotten any help from Democrats or Republicans, he said.

“And of course they’re bitter. Of course they’re frustrated,” Obama told a crowd of supporters. “You would be too — in fact many of you are, because the same thing has happened here in Indiana. … Nobody is thinking about you.”

He also said that this disillusionment with government’s inaction on economic issues makes people base their votes on other issues, such as guns, gay marriage and religion.

The response set off another round of complaints from the Clinton and McCain campaigns that Obama is out of touch with ordinary people.

Obama, who consistently leads Clinton among highly educated and wealthy voters, has tried to make up ground with middle-class America, where Clinton is strong. He has managed to score several wins in rural states like Idaho, Kansas and North Dakota.

But recent comments from him and his wife Michelle have occasionally been interpreted as too high-minded.

Michelle Obama, for instance, drew criticism in February for saying she was “proud” of her country for the first time in her adult life.

“It comes off very badly,” Democratic strategist Kirsten Powers said of Obama’s small-town America remarks. “They are things that I think in a liberal world sound totally normal, and outside of that world I don’t know that he appreciates how it sounds. And it just sounds very elitist, and it sounds like he’s looking down on people.”

Pennsylvania GOP Chairman Robert Gleason Jr. even weighed in, releasing a statement saying the comments “reveal a condescending elitism.”

Of course, Clinton would have a hard time arguing she’s just like those small-town Pennsylvania voters. She and her husband’s newly released tax returns showed they earned nearly $110 million since leaving the White House, compared with the Obamas’ meager millions earned in the same period.

Click here to read the story and hear Obama’s comments in The Huffington Post.