Obama Plays Defense

"A lot of stuff that Obama doesn't [want] Pennsylvanians to think about were the subject of fairly detailed questions. Obama's supporters are already blaming the 'establishment' -- that is, the powerful institution of the mainstream media -- for the tone of the debate. This sets up a blowback scenario wherein his supporters will rally to his defense and lash out at the media very loudly."

The "bitter" debate continues to echo across the blogosphere, with Michelle Malkin weighing in:

"The odor of elitism is like onion breath: It's quick to acquire, hard to mask. Try as he might, Barack Obama cannot camouflage the political stink he exhaled when he dissed small-town Americans as "bitter" Neanderthals "clinging" to their guns, faith, and belief in strict immigration enforcement. It wasn't the first time the effete Snob-ama revealed himself.

"In Philadelphia, he passed up the hometown cheesesteak -- gloppy, artery-clogging, and blue-collar (yum!) -- for a nibble of Spanish-imported, $100/pound ham. In Iowa, he moaned to voters about the price of arugula at Whole Foods. (Fun fact: There aren't any Whole Foods markets in Iowa.) And at an Altoona bowling alley, he couldn't even score his age. Superficial but telling glimpses of a condescending core."

But Malkin doesn't neglect the Republicans:

"Take Obama's GOP presidential rival, John McCain. The New York Times--endorsed media darling got a standing ovation from the nation's newspaper editors at a big journalism powwow in Washington this week. Some maverick. While McCain eagerly criticized Obama as an 'elitist' for his derisive comments about small-town Pennsylvanians, Obama's got nothing on McCain when it comes to insulting average Americans who oppose illegal immigration. Pandering to the open-borders lobby as cozily as Obama panders to San Francisco billionaires, McCain has attacked grassroots enforcement activists as bitter racists and xenophobes, cursed his Senate opponents and mocked the 'goddamned fence' in front of his deep-pocketed business supporters. And who can forget his disdainful admonition to conservatives, whom he berated to 'calm down.' "

Salon Editor Joan Walsh defends Frisco:

"I've seen a lot of dumb excuses for Barack Obama's regrettable remarks about 'bitter' Pennsylvania voters who 'cling' to God, guns and narrow-mindedness in the last few days. But maybe the dumbest are the ones that blame my city, San Francisco. According to the New York Sun, Obama backer Daniel Gerstein opined that 'Obama's mistake was not just what he said . . . but where he said it -- in San Francisco, a center of liberalism often derided by Republicans as culturally apart from the rest of America. The first rule for Obama is: Stop going to San Francisco.' My MSNBC buddy Pat Buchanan picked up that refrain from the right, complaining that Obama's remarks were made 'behind closed doors to the Chablis-and-brie set of San Francisco, in response to a question as to why he was not doing better in that benighted and barbarous land they call Pennsylvania.'

"Of course that's silly. Clearly, Obama could just as easily have made his gaffe at a fundraiser on Wall Street or K Street . . .

"Clinton's caricature of him based on the 'bitter' remark seems unfair. On the other hand, it was a mistake on Obama's part, and as Clinton has noted, it's a particular type of mistake -- seeming out of touch with blue-collar Americans -- that has doomed Democrats in the last 40 years."

The O team isn't worried, Marc Ambinder reports, and he has a theory:

"When you ask various members of the Obama campaign about polling after Obama's remarks, they're likely to respond with a variant of a single answer: the coverage of these remarks are media-driven -- old media driven, at that. (It's true: once this story left the confines of the Huffington Post, it pretty much became a staple of the cablers, the newspapers, and the evening news.) Whenever the media tells them that they've misbehaved, Obama's supporters and the penumbra of undecided Democrats (who are really not undecided between two candidates -- they're just unsure whether they're going to vote for Obama) respond in equal fashion, exerting upwards pressure and reversing the trend of the storyline . . .