"This is not the kind of affirmation you can make about small town America in general."

In the rest of the fund raiser remarks, Sen. Obama added qualifiers that clearly say that these are generalizations and they don't hold for everyone.

One could argue that the use of generalizations is wrong, but it is difficult to discuss general voting trends without making generalizations.

I think Mr. Dickerson made a rather good, if obvious, point that these statements are politically hard to defend. It sounds like you agree.