So what's up with Hillary? Everyone, including Madame Senator, knows very well she's hit the end of the line. Why the vow, then, to soldier on?

No problem. Hillary --and Bill-- just think it's a nifty idea to hold the whole Democratic Party hostage for a few more weeks. Why not? They did it for eight years, so what's another a couple of Sundays?

Clinton clearly wants something out of it all. Maybe it's as simple as wanting to recoup a bit of dignity and respect. You know, leaving gracefully on her own terms. Maybe after the coming victories she expects in next week's inconsequential West Virginia and Kentucky primaries.

Or maybe she's killing time on the stump hoping to raise back the $6 million of her own she plowed into her campaign over the last month.

But maybe it's something more complicated. Maybe it's all about Hillary staying in to build as big a constituency as possible so she can guarantee herself the second slot on the ticket. It's the grand historical vindication for running one of the skankiest of campaigns. Barack wins in November thanks to the generosity of Hillary who stooped to be on the ticket with him.

Until this week, I had mostly dismissed the idea of her wanting or accepting the nod for Veep. Maybe I've been wrong, as it now seems the only rational explanation for her not formally bagging it Wednesday.

I still find it hard to imagine. What on Earth would Obama do with Bill?

Won't we ever be rid of these folks? Ever?

Tuesday night Barack Obama effectively clinched the Democratic nomination -- again. He did it the first time when weeks ago he racked up a dozen primary victories and built his insurmountable delegate lead.

We've spent the last half-dozen weeks or so indulging in a Second Life fantasy that granted Hillary Clinton some sort of real viability.

That game ended tonight in North Carolina and Indiana. Obama has won a smashing victory in North Carolina and, as we write, will finish close behind in Indiana. When all the votes are tallied, Obama will finish the evening with a net gain in pledged delegates i.e. he will increase his lead as front-runner.  Whatever remote, if not impossible, shot Clinton had of snatching away the nomination went up in smoke tonight when she failed to win NC and failed to stage a blow-out in Indiana.

Now, more than ever, there remains no democratic way for Clinton to win the nomination (I believe this is the fourth primary night I have written the same words).

Within the next few days, there will be a public outing of Superdelegates endorsing Obama. I suspect that by next weekend he will have closed the gap among un-elected delegates.

The only question is how and when, not if, Hillary Clinton will throw in the towel. I don't think she can limp beyond Oregon -- two weeks from now.

It's all over now, except for the paperwork.

So long, Hillary.

I'm gonna concur with Josh Marshall that Hillary Clinton has now taken her demagouging of the gas tax issue  over the edge of any reality.

Now she promises to not only impose a levy on the oil companies this summer (somehow over the head of George W. Bush and the opposition of her own party and every "elite" economist in America) but now she's vowing to break-up the OPEC cartel.

To be honest, I'm actually pleased that Clinton is taking this tack. The longer she extends the race, the more she exposes herself -- and Slick Willie-- for the hack politicians they are. It's actually kind of wonderful to watch them burn up and exhaust the entirety of their historical reserves.

So much for all the lofty crapola of the last 25 years about needing a village, building bridges into the next century and yada yada. In the end, Hillary's trying to win the nomination by shaving the delegate seating rules of her own party and by promising poor people she's gonna bash the OPEC Arabs and save every American a nickel a gallon. All this while her husband, once dubbed by puddingheads as the first black president, is now dedicated full time to rallying the Bubbas to block the first black from being nominated. Don't you love it?

I write to you from a Bay Area airport after spending some time at a New Media conference at Yahoo and then a few days visiting with my daughter. Before hitting the road tonight, I unfortunately caught the live broadcast of Hillary Clinton's speech to the Indiana Jeff-Jackson Dinner.

Omigod.

We are quickly approaching the nadir of the campaign. That special moment every four years when one or more Democratic candidate ratchets up the populist Little Guy rhetoric and evokes images of Frederic March's brilliant, blustering performance of Matthew Harrison Brady in Inherit The Wind.

Listening to the $109 Million Baby rail  and fulminate against oil companies and push her McCain-inspired and totally bogus gas tax suspension was particularly revolting. We're mired in a war in Iraq, we're edging toward war with Iran, we've got 50 million without health insurance, a record deficit, a faltering economy, and Hillary's promising relief on the scale of 30 cents a day. It would be more transparent if she simply promised to send a crisp Benjamin to anyone craven enought to vote for her.

Does it get any phonier than this?

Answer: Yes!

As she cranked through her speech, Clinton essentially urged Indiana workers to vote for her by voting against all of her policies.

Hillary Clinton is running against herself.

She stigmatized China for its trade role with the U.S. but it was Senator Clinton who supported MostFavored Nation (PNTR) trade status for China.

She vowed to oppose free trade policies but, let's not kid ourselves, she was a full-on supporter of NAFTA (which was the first issue on which Bill Clinton triangulated his own party in Congress).

She said she would end, once and for all, the No Child Left Behind program -- which she supported.

She denounced the war in Iraq and promised to bring home the same troops she voted to authorize sending there in the first place.

She denounced a web of Washington special interests which is the same network that finances her.

She ridiculed Wall Street hedge fund managers who make "$50 million"  a year when her husband has just bagged $25 million from the Yucaipa investment firm in which he was a partner with Ron Burkle (and while Baby Chelsea builds a career precisely as a Wall Street investment manager).

And while Hillary was onstage, promising to "roll up her sleeves" and fight single-mindedly for the Little Man, Slick Willie was planning a ten-stop tour on Monday in western, rural North Carolina -- a direct appeal for, um, the White Man's vote.

What unbelievable, disgusting burlesque. I felt my IQ dropping by the moment as I watched her performance.

Sorry that I've been rather quiet. But have been spending the last few days in Northern California at Yahoo headquarters attending the Newstools 2008 conference. It's been rather all consuming and has left no time for blogging.

Was able, however, to help get out this great story  about Hillary Hack Sid Blumenthal written by my friend Peter Dreier over at Occidental College. Peter got pretty fed up by his email inbox filling up with daily attacks on and smears of Barack Obama, all originating from Blumenthal's hard disk. So he decided to blow the whistle on Sid and expose how the same guy who invented the term "the vast right-wing conspiracy" has exactly no problem using the same VRWC to spread smears about Obama being a commie.

Yet one more good reason to vote against Hillary i.e. to keep Sid far from the Oval Office.

It was refreshing to see an angry but steady Barack Obama cut off Rev. Wright at his knees. I thought the tone was pitch perfect and -- absolutely justified, of course.

Now, with a week to go before the May 6 primaries, and with Hillary pandering about a meaningless gas tax and McCain not flinching from smear-level campaigning, it would be nice to see Obama continue with that combative edge.

Early in the campaign, like 6 months ago, I thought he was wrong not to take a more confrontational stand toward Clinton. He proved me wrong. But now, it seems, he's got to be ready to punch his way to the finish line 'cuz the other guy -- better, the other gal-- ain't about to let up.

Granma always said no good deed goes unpunished.

Just ask Barack Obama. He went through some painful contortions to not toss Reverend Jeremiah Wright off a pier last month and, instead, made his rather wonderful speech about race.

His payback? Reverend Wright's rather horrifying, national magical mystery tour that erupted Monday at the National Press Club. Indulge my atheistic take on all this, but I suppose this is what happens to folks who claim (or worse who actually believe) that God speaks to them. It sort of inflates one's ego. And in the case of Rev. Wright, his is apparently the size of a larger-than-average aircraft carrier. He'd rather spend three days aggrandizing himself and blowing holes in the campaign of America's first viable black presidential candidate than he would keeping his trap zipped.

There are a few, like Chris Beam at Slate, who argue that Wright's circus-like performance will somehow, in the long run, benefit Obama. But I think not. Part of Obama's appeal has been his posture and promise of being a healer, of representing a new type of cross-racial, if not post-racial, politics.

Wright, on the other hand, seems dipped and anodized in an old-school and highly racialized paranoia. It's one thing to publicly sermonize against the hypocrisies and outrages of U.S. foreign policy and the inequities that are the historical residue of slavery and Jim Crow. But it's quite another to start arguing that the same American government has conspired to infect the the nation's black communities with AIDS.

What's Obama gonna do? What should he do? Wright's torpedo run has yet to terminate, so heaven knows what he's going to say in the next few days to come. I could be wrong, but I find it difficult to believe that the furor restarted in the last 24 hours is going to dissipate before next Tuesday's key primaries in North Carolina and Indiana. It seems unlikely that Obama can passively sit back and let Wright continue to yap unchallenged. I think he has little choice now but to publicly decapitate the Rev.

I'll be  on C-Span Book TV live today at 12 noon PST.  From The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, I'll be moderating a panel of four authors on California-centered biographies. Tune in or TiVo.

No post-Pennsylvania bounce for HRC.

Meanwhile, from Slate:

Cancel your cable news subscriptions, folks. Head-scratching time is over for you. I figure out for you What It All Means post-Pennsylvania. It's all contained in the below podcast/radio show from today's edition of "Air Talk" on Los Angeles-area public radio station KPCC. Host Larry Mantle had me on for an hour, and I refrained from breaking any chairs over the head of Clintonite spinner Chris Lehane (all kidding aside, it's a good show).

Listen here:

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As the good tidings for Hillary Clinton came in Tuesday night, Philly Mayor Michael Nutter told an amped crowd of her supporters that, as far as he’s concerned, “a win is a win.”

The Mayor is absolutely right. With a comfortable ten points of margin, Hillary Clinton handily won the Pennsylvania primary. Equally true, Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination more than two months ago on Super Tuesday.

The Obama campaign itself, in a purloined internal document that made the rounds of the Web weeks ago, conceded that Pennsylvania would be lost. And that it would matter little. There could be no suspense in a state that was demographically the most favorable to Clinton with 1/3 of voters Tuesday aged 65 or older.

The fundamentals of the Democratic nomination fight have not changed. After Pennsylvania, the only way Hillary Clinton can capture the nomination is the same way she could before Pennsylvania. By overturning the protocols of democracy and persuading un-elected Super Delegates to nullify the results of the primaries and caucuses, by taking the nomination away from the candidate who will have the greatest number of elected delegates and popular votes.

It’s about that simple. Clinton’s net gain of delegates this week is less than ten, still leaving her 150 behind. And still behind a half million popular votes. I’ll spare you the math, and the reality check that comes with it, but there still remains no plausible way for Clinton to make up the difference. On top of that, her campaign coffers are dry.

Not to say that Pennsylvania was some sort of picnic for Barack Obama. Hardly. The needed majority of Super Delegates who have yet to disclose their preference have been anxiously waiting for some signal event that will make it easy for them to come out and endorse Obama and get this thing over. Looks like they, and Obama, will have to wait a couple of more weeks until the next round of voting in North Carolina and Indiana (the former which Obama has no chance of losing and the latter where he’s up five in the polls).

In the meantime, the rest of us are about to wallow through the nastiest stretch yet of the Democratic campaign. Hillary Clinton has already amply proved she’s more than willing to take her crusade as deep as necessary into the muck. In the fight for Pennsylvania, she vowed to “obliterate” Iran if necessary, didn’t flinch from running attacks ads tying Obama to Osama, and readily joined in with Stephanopoulos and Gibson of ABC when they sandbagged Obama for his association with a gray-beard former 60’s radical. It was an appalling enough performance that only hours after her Pennsylvania win, a New York Times editorial as much as un-endorsed her, accusing Clinton of becoming “the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11,” running an ad “torn right from Karl Rove’s playbook.”

So we know what tack Clinton will take in the days to come. The ultra-negative tone was set during her Pennsylvania victory speech filled with adolescent mocking of Obama’s theme of hope. One can only imagine the millions of turned-off newly registered young Democrats who won’t vote for her even if she somehow steals the nomination.

There’s only one major piece of this puzzle that remains in play. Which way will Obama turn in the next two weeks? In the last few days, as Clinton slashed and trashed, Obama found himself drawn down into the fight. Some of his advisers want him to quickly regain the posture of a front-runner and not respond to Clinton’s baiting. Others around Obama are urging him to get a lot tougher, to once and for all punch her lights out and end the charade. But he already did that a few months ago. And there seems little point in swinging at a ghost.

Zero hour in Pennsylvania.

Or is it? We've had to somehow fill the gap of the  six weeks since the last primary, so we've sort of convinced ourselves that something momentous is about to happen Tuesday in Pennsylvania. Fact is, it's highly unlikely that the results of the voting will have some game-changing impact on the underlying fundamentals i.e. that Hillary Clinton is running close behind but definitively in second place to Barack Obama and, further, that is precisely the way the nomination process will end.

You can spin this stuff anyway you please but we're going to wind up always at the same point of departure --or if you prefer--  terminus: in America we have a simple tradition of declaring as winner whomever it is who gets the most votes, in some cases directly. In other cases, by count of delegate or elector. Period.

I fully expect Hillary Clinton to win Pennsylvania by as many as 10 points, perhaps more. When and if she does, she will pick up a net gain of a handful or two of delegates. And then, two weeks from now, she will lose them again in North Carolina and, most likely, in Indiana. That's her best case scenario. The worst case is an Iowa redux in which a surge of new Pennsylvania voters will cut deep into her margin of victory thereby effectively ending the race on Wednesday instead of two weeks from now.

In the meantime, the media has invented a now universal fairy tale about some dark, mysterious, almost primeval region known as Pennsylvania. How many times have we now heard that it is somehow exempt from the rest of America and is inhabited, instead, by some strange exceptional species of hairy-arm-pitted near-humans with sloping foreheads who spend their days dragging bowling balls through the woods and then waste away their nights oiling their .12 gauges and knocking back brewskies. Oh yes, and they're all sort of grumbling blue-collar trolls who wistfully wallow in the nostalgia of shuttered  assembly lines and Sunday afternoon trade union picnics off limits to uppity Nee-grows and Messicans.

What a fervent and totally manufactured fantasy.  And, man, am I tired of it. Aren't you? Pennsylvania is little different than most other places in this great land. Right here in Woodland Hills, California where I live, just a  few yards from the posh Motion Picture & Television Retirement Community, we've got --gasp!-- a real, live 48 lane bowling alley. And in it, they serve...beer! And just a mile up the road, we've got a Maserati dealership. And a store that sells...guns! Can you imagine?

Yet, someone over at MSNBC/McClatchy spent real money to conduct a Pennsylvania presidential poll this past weekend divvying the citizenry up  among "bowlers," "beer drinkers," and "hunters." The results, of course, are reliable predictors of absolutely nothing. This is like polling those who wipe with their left hands instead of their right and who drink 2% milk as opposed to 1%. Who thinks this stuff up?

All of this is hocus-pocus, a neat little narrative to keep the media story pot bubbling.  And a very good reason to soon be done -- at least until November-- with any more mindless yapping about the odd land of Pennsylvania.

The real predictor in the Obama-Clinton race isn't whether you drink Starbucks or Schlitz but, rather, something much more simpler and elemental: how old -- or how young-- you are.  As The New York Times reports:

In a campaign where demographics seem to be destiny, one of the most striking factors is the segregation of voters by age. In state after state, older voters have formed a core constituency for Mrs. Clinton, who is 60, while younger voters have coalesced around Mr. Obama, who is 46. Age has been one of the most consistent indicators of how someone might vote — more than sex, more than income, more than education. Only race is a stronger predictor of voting than age, and then only if a voter is black, not if he or she is white...

...According to exit polls conducted by Edison/Mitofsky in the states that have voted so far, 57 percent of voters 65 and older have supported Mrs. Clinton and 36 percent have supported Mr. Obama. Most of the Clinton voters say they want a candidate with experience.

Of voters age 30 and younger, 59 percent have supported Mr. Obama and 38 percent have supported Mrs. Clinton. Most of Mr. Obama’s supporters say they want change.

It's whether you're part of the past. Or part of the future. Let's get on with it.

Perhaps the most depressing aspect of the still evolving collapse in Zimbabwe is the role of moral mute being played by the president of the region's great superpower -- Thabo Mbeki of South Africa.

As my good pal Biped Twilight pointed out a week ago, if Mbeki had given the situation just a firm, little nudge, then deranged dictator Robert Mugabe would have alredy been out on his tuchas (as we say in French).

Instead, Mbeki waffled and weasled and, ultimately, has covered for Mugabe by insisting on what he calls the "natural process" of political evolution. Judging from the facts on the ground, the natural order seems to include one-man rule, massive impoverishment, kleptocracy, vote-rigging, fraudulent vote-counting and rising violence against the political opposition. The Chri Sci Monitor has a good, up-to-the-minute report from a reporter in Harare -- who has to remain anonymous.

In an eerie evocation of the verbiage used to justify the soft-on-apartheid policies of the Reagan administration --known cynically as "quiet diplomacy" -- Mbeki has said it he who is now employing, um, "quiet diplomacy." This weekend, Mbeki had to finally backtrack a few inches on his appalling stance, the South African government working up the courage to call the hellish situation in Zimbabwe "dire." Almost 170,000% inflation, food stocks almost gone and more than 150 people hospitalized by beatings from government thugs. Yeah, OK. Dire.

It's kind of embarrassing for Mbeki, I'd say, to start getting out-flanked on this issue by such a moral jellyfish as Condi Rice.

Yes, Mugabe and Mbeki are old comrades in the southern Africa liberation struggles and it's never easy to abandon an old ally. But Mugabe stopped being a friend of anything remotely linked to the notion of freedom many, many years ago and the moral capital accumulated by the South African government shouldn't be squandered on such an undeserving criminal.

Let's hope that Mbeki's heighted "mediation" efforts somehow leads to the rapid exile of a despot who refuses to recognize an election he lost. Let's hope this happens before the people of Zimbabwe are marinated in their own blood.

P.S. One personal note about Mugabe. At the time Mugabe came to power (first as Prime Minister) in 1980, ending British colonial rule of the former Rhodesia, I had just taken a job as news director at a Los Angeles community radio station. My buddy Tony (now at CBS) and I were doing some sort of story or another on Mugabe. So Tony decided to call the Prime Minister's office in Harare and take a wild shot at getting an interview with him. We had no special contacts or access and, frankly, I don't know how we even got the right phone number. Anyway, Tony did get some sort of direct phone number that we assumed would be the central government switchboard. He dialed it and when someone answered, Tony asked -- like any good journalist would-- to be put through to Prime Minister Mugabe, or to his office. The voice on the other side of the line answered, "This is he."

Nowadays, Mugabe is answerable neither to Man nor God.

P.P.S. No, I haven't abandoned domestic political coverage. Just taking the weekend off. And letting My Brilliant Daughter take over the campaign heavy-lifting on a temporary basis.

A week after Obama's "Bittergate" and in the spirit of equanimity, it is now Hillary's turn.

A previously unrevelaed audio tape secured by our friend, colleague, journalist and blogger Celeste Fremon, captures Clinton telling a small group of funders that her real problem is... Democrats! You know, that pesky "activist base" who are relentless in taking their rights seriously and who actually show up to caucus!

Read and listen to the whole thing here.

Here's my take on the shamefully shallow ABC-sponsored Obama/Clinton debate Wednesday night.

I tried to stay out of the over-heated gusting that blew through the comments section of my previous post (below) on Bittergate.  Sorry to be a bit patronizing here, but what the heck. But I just love it when folks who have NO idea what they're talking about on a certain matter have such sharp opinions. Long live the Web!

What we should have have been discussing --primarily-- was the political impact of what Obama said. Or the lack of impact. His acuity or his denseness. The media's frenetic response -- or was it a measured reaction. Those sort of things.

Instead, we witnessed pretty much a horrid gang rape of the the reporter who broke the story. Oh, excuse me, the blogger. Simply killing the messenger would have been, by contrast, an act of mercy compared to the dump-truck of innuendo, insinuation and outright slander piled onto her. And, by consequence then, also on to the very notion of citizen journalism, their outlets and, um, by extension on their editors.

Fascinating how True Believers who have always had a knee-jerk reflex to blame the (Old) media for their own shortcomings are just as ready to blame the New. Surprise, surprise.

This morning, however, comes (somewhat belatedly) official word from the Obama camp which ought to (but won't) douse the spoutings of those who have attacked Mayhill Fowler and her methods and her (and our) ethics. An excellent analysis of the whole dust-up appears in the San Fran Chron and in it we read this graph:

 Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton said Tuesday that while the San Francisco event was closed to traditional media, it was not off the record. The campaign has not denied or challenged Fowler's version of the event. Burton said there's an expectation now - even at private events - that everything will be recorded and posted.

Oh, how about that? Gag my commenters with a spoon, please. I believe that's what I've been saying for the last five days. And kudos to the Obama campaign for offering the most sensible and mature of responses -- on the record.

The Chron piece further notes that the fund raiser that Fowler attended was absolutely fair game for reporters because regardless of who was allowed in or not, there were no pre-conditions or ground rules established that over-ruled the First Amendment.

Since the campaign did not say that the event was off the record, Fowler did not violate any ethical agreement, said Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association. "When there are no rules of engagement defined, then everything is on the record," Cox said.

A generation ago, pop culture artist Andy Warhol said that everyone will be famous for 15 minutes, but now "everybody will be a paparazzi for 15 minutes," said Dan Manatt, executive producer of Politicstv.com, a video aggregating site.

Tuesday at TechPresident.com, Manatt wrote that "campaign managers should consider, on a daily basis, reminding candidates of their Digital Miranda rights.

"You have the right to be recorded - and should expect you are being videotaped and recorded 24/7. Anything you say can and will be used against you by your opponents. Beware that something that sounds OK in one setting may be a gaffe in another setting," Manatt wrote.

And as I had also predicted, Fowler was not the only person in that room recording and posting. She couldn't have been, given that she saw dozens of videocams blinking away as Obama spoke. Now another piece surfaces.

Palo Alto resident Glennia Campbell posted video Sunday from the fundraiser and wrote more positively about it at Momocrats (momocrats.typepad.com/momocrats), a blog she co-founded. "For me, it wasn't so much about reporting what he said, but expanding access to the event to people who might not been able to afford to go to it, " Campbell said.

So what do our armchair ethicists make of that? Please consider the question only rhetorical. Few are interested in your responses, I assure you.

On to the Clinton/Obama debate tonight. Please don't TiVO it. Those debate rooms are closed to the press. And unless you've got one of those shiny little "reporter" badges you got at the bottom of a Cheerios box, you're not official.

***Update***The latest updates on this story come from Jay Rosen, from The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times.

As the editorial coordinator of HuffPost’s OffTheBus project, I had the privilege and responsibility of doing the final edit and ultimately approving for publication the web story Friday that has set off a firestorm over Barack Obama’s remarks about a “bitter” attitude that sometimes plagues economically-pressed small towns. Specifically those in Pennsylvania.

Writer Mayhill Fowler’s story -- now with more than 2500 5,000 comments on it -- was picked up by The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, CNN.com, the Associated Press, Fox News, Reuters, Politico, the Lou Dobbs Show, Hardball, Olbermann’s Countdown, The Atlantic.com, The DailyKos, TalkingPointsMemo and myriad other outlets.

McCain and Clinton quickly jumped into the fray. And Obama released a video to respond to the controversy (posted below).

Here’s the background: Last Sunday, citizen journalist Mayhill Fowler – true superstar at OffTheBus and a declared Obama supporter-- was present at an Obama fund raiser in San Francisco during which the candidate got a little loose lipped with the crowd while her tape recorder was running. On Monday she filed an initial story – which also got a lot of attention—on his declarations that he doesn’t need a hawk to bolster him as VP.

Working from the same material, Mayhill then filed a second story early this morning – the one that has exploded. (You can also hear the audio of Obama’s speech here). Basically, Obama tried explaining to his tony crowd of San Fran funders why some folks in the Pennsylvania hinterlands might have, um, some cultural leanings that depart from those of the good people of the Sunset district or Marin County. Here’s what 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 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.

When the piece came across my desk for editing Friday morning, I honestly could not anticipate what sort of storm Obama's musings would touch off. I knew exactly what Obama was straining to say and while I recognized he did so in a rather clumsy fashion, I didn’t think they would elicit such intense reaction (Shows you what I know).

I think of all the ink spilled on the subject in the last 18 hours or so, Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic.com does one of the better jobs of unpacking the significance of the gaffe.

We're dealing tonight with a classic Kinseyian "gaffe," where a candidate says what he means and then is forced to account for it. Let's separate, for the moment, the politics of Obama's words from the argument he is making. In Obama's version, working class voters in the Midwest have been inured to promises of economic redress because both Democrats and Republicans promise to help and never do; since government is a source of distress in their lives, they organize their politics around more stable institutions, like churches or cultural practices, like hunting. The outlet for their economic duress is in lashing out, in giving voice to their grievances; In Obama's formulation, Republicans are especially eager and willing to exploit cultural trigger points.

Ambinder points out that this isn’t exactly an earth-shaking rumination and that even John McCain has made similar observations. But there’s a still a problem here for Obama.

[T]he perilous words for Obama are "bitter," "cling to," "guns" and "religion." Those disinclined to put themselves in Obama's head will read the sentences and see Obama dismissing both religion and American gun culture the opiates of the masses. Voters may believe that one's position on cultural issues is a better reflection of their inner values than one's position on economics.

But the politics are unquestionably dangerous for a candidate whose appeal depends on him transcending traditional political adjectives like "liberal" or "elite."

Despite his working class upbringing, Obama's hyperconfidence sometimes translates as holier-than-thou, elitist, aristocratic, Dukakis-esque. Republicans know that these attributes aren't popular in middle America, so they will use every opportunity to remind independents and moderates about them.

Obama's professorial disquisition at a fundraiser reinforces in real time these stereotypes. And the complexity of his subject matter does not lend itself to an easy response.

One bright spot for Obama: his campaign's response to the story was quick and strong.

Here's the video from Obama.

I want to say a few words about the author of the piece, Mayhill Fowler. A highly-educated, sophisticated intellectual as well as an ardent Obama supporter, she has become a mainstay of OffTheBus. She employs a highly-personalized, reflective narrative style to her unconventional reporting – an approach that would be, indeed, non-grata, within the official campaign reporting bubble. It violates almost all of the conventions of traditional reporting (though not its ethical code) and that's what makes it all so damn interesting.

I, personally, would have written her piece much differently than the way she chose. It would have been less about me and more about Obama. But Mayhill has developed quite a loyal and appreciative audience and with her most recent work demonstrates that citizen journalism can do many, many things still inaccessible to the MSM. It’s also quite a bit of fun to see how a report like hers can actually set the agenda for the entire national press. I've also been impressed with the way that Mayhill has struggled with her own conscience, her own values and as well her hopes and desires. She was and remains an Obama supporter. And it wasn't easy for her to write a piece that she knew, while truthful and accurate, would nevertheless be used by his political opponents. Not an easy task, I assure you.

Here’s just some of the links to and about Mayhill’s story.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/04/barack-obama-lu.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN1116676020080412?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&rpc=22&sp=true
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/12/us/politics/12campaign.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/11/AR2008041103965.html?hpid=topnews
http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/04/obamas_gaffe_some_perspective.php
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/4/11/211733/951/248/494024
http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=5107
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/188566.php
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0408/Obama_on_smalltown_PA_Clinging_religion_guns_xenophobia.html
http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/04/obama_on_guns_and_religion_in.php
http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2008/04/i-was-born-in-a.html
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/jpodhoretz/3325
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/04/obama-reaches-out-to-bitter-religious.html
http://www.slate.com/id/2188487/
http://instapundit.com/archives2/017761.php
http://michellemalkin.com/2008/04/11/snob-ama-disses-pro-gun-religious-anti-illegal-immigration-activists-in-penn/
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/04/11/obama-on-small-town-voters-bitter-xenophobic-religious/
http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2008/04/this_is_what_he_thinks.asp
http://hotlineblog.nationaljournal.com/archives/2008/04/small_town_stew.html
http://www.parapundit.com/archives/005130.html
http://www.floppingaces.net/2008/04/11/obama-small-town-voters-just-a-bunch-of-bitter-immigrant-haters/
http://hayhurstforamerica.wordpress.com/2008/04/11/obama-small-town-usa-clinging-to-religion-guns-and-xenophobia/
http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/04/11/obama-draws-fire-for-comments-on-small-town-america/

Here's my opening shot.

You know spring has come to Washington. Not just the cherry blossoms. But the flowering of all those pie charts and bar graphs lugged up Capitol Hill by General Petraeus. And then there's that unmistakeable whiff of cow dung in the morning air.

Here's a text version as it appears in my latest column.

Want to have some fun? Or, shall we say, something like fun -- but different. Then click here and paw through the droppings left on our comments door step by a flock of Hillaryite cyber-angels. Apparently, last night's post was circulated on some Clinton list-serve or another and, lo and behold, all of a sudden we've got dozens of zealots squatting, dropping trou, and spewing crud all over the site.

Cool.

No problem.

I appreciate the traffic.

I also have no intention of removing or erasing even the most vile comments. They stand, instead, as monument to the vapidity of most campaign politics and in particular those of Senator Clinton's moribund venture.

As one or two other regular commenters have noted, nary a one of these frothy Hillary advocates could articulate as much as one substantial argument to counter the thrust of my post i.e. that Mark Penn is a walking oil slick --from way back-- and that he embodies all of the worst aspects of the Clinton campaign.  The Guardian's lead blog editorial eloquently makes the point:

This was a disaster waiting to happen, and it speaks volumes about Mrs Clinton's mindset. Mr Penn is a figure from the mid-90s who kept Bill Clinton's campaign fighting for the centrist vote. He did the same for Mrs Clinton's Senate campaign in 2000. Both husband and wife owe Mr Penn a debt of gratitude for the quality of his past advice, but neither appreciates how much of a liability he has become today. Mr Penn's innate conservatism, which can be seen in anything from economics to Mrs Clinton's refusal to renounce her vote in the support of the Iraq war, is anathema in a post-Bush era where conservatism is discredited. What Democrat voters want, and arguably what America wants too, is not a reminder of how far right a centrist president can be pushed, (the leitmotif of the Clinton/Blair era) but how much distance a new president can put between him or herself and Mr Bush, possibly the worst president in US history. America's desire for a fresh start is so obvious it is hard to underestimate, but Hillary and Bill Clinton have been making a good stab at it, propelled by the need to re-fight the battles of the past.

The bad news for the Clintons continues to mount tonight:

The revelation that Penn isn't really out of the campaign. Like the Ace Rothstein character  in Casino, he's merely switched titles.   No longer Chief Strategist, now he's something more like Food and Beverage Manager.

New polls suggesting a Clinton collapse in Pennsylvania.

More superdelegates sliding toward Obama.

That said, far be it from me to suggest (as I am falsely accused) that Hillary Clinton should drop out.

No way!

I want her to run in every primary left on the calendar.  I want her to bend every rule, twist every principle, and bully every DNC member possible in order to re-stage the Florida primary. I want her to go all the way to Denver, thank you very much, and dump all the accumulated garbage of the last four months right onto the convention floor! Let her split the party right down the middle, shatter it into a thousand pieces, and demand that her Michigan delegates --elected Cuban-style with no opposition--be credentialed and seated.

Why not? Hill and Bill have already consumed the best part of their ill-deserved "legacy." Who am I to stop them from finishing off the last remnants?

I'm having a pretty good laugh reading the comments on The Caucus blog about the sudden resignation of Mark Penn, chief Hillary Clinton campaign strategist.  I LOVE the Hillaryoids clucking away that this is the best darn thing that's ever happened to their gal.

Right. Great news! Wonderful! Marvelous!

Poor victimized Hillary.  After that tough, tough life at Yale Law, after all that abuse at the white shoe Rose Law firm, after having to put up with that philandering hubby, after being mocked by Obama, betrayed by Richardson, let down by the blacks, she is now free! Free, I tell you, from the smarmy clutches of Mark Penn who -- somehow--mysteriously attached himself to her campaign and bungled an otherwise brilliant venture.

Next, these zombies will be telling themselves that it's even better news that the campaign is out of money because it will free Hillary up from the mundane distraction of deciding where to spend it.

Facts: Mark Penn is a long-time associate of Hill's and occupied the position he did because she wanted him to.  Penn was among the litter Hillary dragged into the Clinton White House in 1996 along with garbage man Dick Morris when the happy couple were strategizing Bill's re-election.  Penn's always been a dirt-ball. That his specialty. That's what he charges for. That's why the Clinton campaign has paid him many millions to date.That's why the Clintons relied on him  a dozen years ago. That's why Hillary relied him on until a few hours ago (and probably will continue to do so albeit in a more unofficial manner).

She had no problem with him when he, along with Morris, pushed successfully for the abolition of the federal welfare safety net. She had no problem with him when he was fronting for Blackwater. She had no problem with his links to union-busting efforts.  And I'm sure she had no fundamental problem with his meeting with Colombian officials to push a free-trade deal which she supposedly opposes -- except for the fact that he got caught doing it.

The bitter, bitter end is drawing near. Penn, I'm sure, was only too happy to bail now instead of waiting around for another 3-4 weeks and having to suffer the near-inevitable humiliation of formally conceding defeat of his execrable campaign.

Clinton will win Pennsylvania, it seems. But by half or even a smaller margin than she maintained only a few weeks ago.

And then, that will be that. The latest polls out of North Carolina now show Clinton down by a staggering 23 points, and sinking.  Vastly outspent in Pennsylvania, she has no resources to defend herself in the other nine pending contests. The nervous superdelegates continue to defect, despite the ill-advised and public recrimnations against Bill Richardson by the always repugnant Jim Carville.

You can use the Paypal button on the top of the blog to donate a buck or two to my newest humanitarian cause. I want to raise enough money to buy a carton of black crepe and Fedex it over to Clinton headquarters. It's just about time to start tacking it up.