Obama's "bitter" comments treated as the race-changing moment Clinton has been waiting for

Could this really be it?

The controversy over Barack Obama's comments about Pennsylvania's "bitter" voters has acquired huge proportions and the media appears eager to hype it up further by portraying this as the race-changing moment that the Clinton campaign has been waiting for. From a political standpoint, it has become impossible to dismiss this controversy since it has become the dominant story that will inform the race over the next week. And while it is an absurd reach to claim that this will be the trigger of a superdelegate flight away from Obama, the Clinton campaign, knowing it will only have so many more opportunities to change the fundamentals of the race, is going for broke. And how far they are willing to go will likely determine how much of a political fallout Obama suffers.

There is no question that this would not have been this big a story if the Democratic primaries had been over. While Republicans would have been all over Obama's comments and while they might have brought them back successfully in the fall campaign, this has become a front-page story everywhere first and foremost because it fits admirably in the narrative of the Democratic race. Over the next two months, Hillary needs to not only win a string of elections convincingly but also bank on an Obama meltdown, one she was hoping would ensue (but didn't) from Wright. And the two most essential questions have long been: Can Obama win blue-collar voters? Can Clinton use his weakness in that group to peel superdelegates away from him and convince them that she is the most (only?) electable candidate in the fall?

Hillary knows that, this late in the game, she has to use anything she can to make her case and weaken her rival. She is now discussing the controversy at length in her stump speech (read full transcript here) :"Now, like some of you may have been, I was taken aback by the demeaning remarks Senator Obama made about people in small town America. Senator Obama's remarks are elitist and they are out of touch." Top Clinton aide Geoffrey Garin said today in a conference call that Obama's comments were "fair game" to use in an ad and that they would prove "damaging" in the general election. He also declared that the Clinton campaign would push the issue with superdelegates.

The Clinton campaign has deployed an army of surrogates to make the case that this is just further proof that Obama will be a very weak general election candidate. All day yesterday the Clinton machine pounded Obama over this. Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, for instance, was among the harshest of Obama's critics: "They’re going to say that we’re weak on national security, that we’re a bunch of high taxers and spenders, and out here in the middle of the country we don’t understand people’s values. The question is, have we given them some hook they can hang their hat on to make that argument?”

This all-out assault contrasts with their attitude of wait-and-see they had relied on in the first 2 weeks of the Wright controversy, probably because the "bitter" comments are not necessarily powerful enough by themselves to drive days of coverage (especially since there is no video, while a deluge of clips fed the Wright frenzy).

Naturally, what is so dangerous for Obama is that he has two rivals that are looking to damage him over this. Republicans are looking to use this controversy to start painting Obama as a liberal elitist, an attack they used so successfully against Michael Dukakis and John Kerry. As far as I know, Obama does not speak French, nor does he have French relatives -- so no "first French president" attack to be found here.

So will any superdelegates take the bite and move away from Obama on this? Hillary Clinton must be hoping that the media's hysteria is fed further if a few uncommitted supers now express reluctance to back Obama, and at least that Obama's momentum among superdelegates freezes. This seems to be asking for a lot out of a few sentences which, as condescending as they might sound, appear to be generating this much noise mostly because they broke on a Friday night of a slow news months with the political media having had little to dissect for a while.

There is a clear danger for Obama: If superdelegates sense that Republicans are already getting so much traction out of this and that they might come under pressure, that could lead them to reconsider in a way little of what Clinton says could. The NRCC is already using Obama's comments to put pressure on... Democratic congressmen (all superdelegates). Here is the statement they released against Rep. Altmire (PA-04):

Americans don’t want liberal politicians like Barack Obama who believe Washington is a substitute for faith, personal responsibility and belief that the Constitution guarantees our freedoms. It’s time for Congressman Altmire to make a choice. He can choose to stand up for the dignity of Pennsylvanians and their deeply held beliefs by rejecting the elitist rhetoric of Barack Obama, or he can continue to flirt with the Obama campaign in the hopes of getting his picture in the paper.

The NRCC is basically asking Altmire to cast his superdelegate vote for Clinton; the threat is that Obama's comments will be used as evidence that these congressmen are out-of-touch liberals if they stick with the Illinois Senator. Once again, this is certainly blown out of all proportions and there is very little that any congressional Democrat should fear from this. But in a volatile political environment in which many Democrats are paranoid that Republican smear attacks could doom them (see 2002, 2004), will any of them take the bite?