My random thoughts on Bittergate:
- Does this really help Hillary ? Isn't this one of these moments (unlike Wright where she ignored the story while it was unfolding) where the party realizes it does not help when Clinton is calling Obama "elitist and out-of-touch" thereby giving some legitimacy to a GOP attack that a united party could have dismissed as a "There they go again ..."But notice how the whole spiel by the campaign seems aimed at the Superdelegates. They don't even seem to say this hurts with voters. Rather they say the Republicans will use it to hurt with the voters. So if it doesn't hurt on its own merits, what's their point here ? And why would Evan Bayh be arguing that SDs should switch to Hillary because Obama might be painted as an elitist like Gore and Kerry was when two days ago, he said Hillary would be painted as a serial liar like Gore was. Where is the difference ?
- The funny thing is that most of the coverage all around seems to be more on whether this hurts Obama rather than the substance of the quote. It is to the credit of the Clinton campaign that they have somehow convinced the media to buy their frame of "Obama is one controversy away from collapsing". If he survived Wright with all the visual evidence (which this does not have) and much more directly raw quotes, why would THIS be a "meteor crashing into the campaign" as the generally much more level-headed Mike Allen puts it ?
- And didn't it give Obama an incredible opportunity to pivot to an Edwards-style populism that does not come naturally to him ? I don't like it but I have been obsessing over this story and I am stunned that the comment sections on national and local blogs seem to include a LOT of people saying "hell yeah I am bitter". It was a huge mistake on Hillary's part to issue her first statement on the bitter part of the statement rather than the gun-and-religion part which is more problematic. It allowed him to make this about people being angry and bitter and as far as I can tell, Edwards proved that it resonated very well with blue-collars. And if Obama succesfully makes the Thomas Frank case (a more dubious proposition since it is complex) this may turn out to be even more of a positive we think.
- Funny that everybody seems to miss the most damaging part of the statement: the implication on trade. So far the Obama campaign has handled their response better than Hillary has handled her attack.
UPDATE
- Btw When Hillary lectures Obama on religion and guns (in spite of her own checkered past on those issues) to gain what she thinks will be an edge in the blue-collar vote, isn't she proving his point about politicians using those as wedge issues which distract from the real (economic) choices ?