An absolute must-read article in tomorrow's Times.

McCain ties Obama to Hamas in fundraising letter.

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds calls Sen. Obama "recklessly dishonest" for quoting McCain's own words at a rally in Erie.

Make your own judgment.

What Obama said ...

"John McCain went on television and said that there has been quote "great progress economically over the last seven and a half years," Obama told a Pennsylvania crowd. "John McCain thinks our economy has made great progress under George W. Bush. Now, how could somebody who has been traveling across this country, somebody who came to Erie, PA, say we've made great progress?"

What McCain said ...

Interviewer: I'm going to ask you a version of the Ronald Reagan question. You think if Americans were asked, are you better off today than you were before George Bush took office more than seven years ago, what answer would they give?

SEN. MCCAIN: Certainly, in this time, we are in very challenging times. We all recognize that. Families are sitting around the kitchen table this evening and figuring out whether they're going to be able to keep their home or not. They're figuring out whether they're - why it is that suddenly and recently someone in their family or their neighbor has lost their job. There's no doubt that we are in enormous difficulties.

I think if you look at the overall record and millions of jobs have been created, et cetera, et cetera, you could make an argument that there's been great progress economically over that period of time. But that's no comfort. That's no comfort to families now that are facing these tremendous economic challenges.

The McCain message is that if you don't spin McCain's statements for him you're recklessly dishonest.

Late Update: ABC actually swallowed this one from the McCain Camp hook, line and sinker. It's a tour de force of special pleading, and not even by the McCain campaign but by ABC. You've got to read it.

From TPM Reader JS ...

Much as I, too, would like to read Lieberman out of the Democratic caucus, I'm not sure it is a good idea. You need 60 votes to get something done in the Senate, and the Republicans will be in maximally obstructionist mode come January. I'm pretty sure we will have at least 54-55 Democrats, and am cautiously optimistic we will be up to 57-58. 60 is very unlikely. Not impossible, but we would have to run the table to get it.

That still means that we have to pick up 3-4 Republicans for each piece of legislation. (You can't always count on Salazar or the Nelson boys.) If we keep Holy Joe in the caucus, that's one less vote we would have to scrap for. And that could make an enormous
difference.

The deal: He could still vote any way he wanted on the floor, but would have to vote caucus on cloture to keep his chairmanship. It won't cost the Ds much. It should be a Democratic administration for the next four years, and Joe is only head of Government Oversight.

Prominent Clinton backer circulates how-to for Republicans sliming Obama in the fall over Weather Underground.

For the first this month, Hillary has slipped ahead of Obama in the Gallup daily tracking poll -- by one point.

Ed Kilgore: Face it. Lieberman's not a Democrat.

Hopefully once the Dems pad their majority in the senate this November, he'll be expelled from the congressional party. He's gone well past the point of simply not being acceptable as a Democrat. He's doing and saying things that would make him disgusting as a Republican. He's way beyond the pale.

You've probably seen today the news that Bob Reich, political economist, author and former Clinton Labor Secretary, has endorsed Barack Obama. That's an honorable and important endorsement. But I want to correct the misimpression some people seem to have that Bob's endorsement is a defection or that Bob is a Clinton loyalist of any sort.

He's not. I don't have any deep insights into the relationship between Bob and the Clintons but since the late 90s he has been in what I would call polite opposition to the Clintons in the context of Democratic politics. Some of this was signaled in his 1998 memoir, Locked in the Cabinet. And just as much in his decision in 1999 to endorse Bill Bradley over Al Gore for the 2000 nomination.

Now the Clintons and Gores have their own issues. But at the time that endorsement was seen, I believe rightly, as part of his desire to turn the page from the Clinton years.

This is such a fraught time in Democratic politics. That it's easy to have one's meaning be misunderstood when noting even such a minor point as this. So to be clear, this is not a negative reflection on Obama or Clinton and certainly not Reich who I know and like. It is just to make the small point that this is not a case of someone close to the Clintons politically deciding to jump ship and go with Obama. If anything I would have been very surprised to see him endorsing Hillary.

What if Hillary Clinton released her income tax records showing relatively unremarkable (by senate standards, where almost everyone is fairly wealthy) income and said that Bill files separately and he's a private person so he wouldn't be releasing his?

I do not think she'd get a very easy ride from the press since Bill now makes all the money and it's against his sources of income that any potential conflicts of interest or sources of embarrassment would likely arise.

So why does John McCain get to pull the same stunt with his wife? I was thinking of this when I saw McCain's tax return release today since I know McCain is actually an extremely wealthy man. His wife is reportedly worth more than $100 million because she is the heir to her father's beer distributorship, which played a key role in McCain's political rise. And if you note down on his disclosure page it states that "In the interest of protecting the privacy of her children, Mrs. McCain will not be releasing her personal tax returns."

Over the last four days the Gallup tracking poll has charted Obama's lead declining from 11 to 8 to 7 to 3.

We just received a press release from the Obama campaign announcing that former Sens. Nunn (D) and Boren (D) have come out in support of Sen. Obama. This continues to be one of the most striking features of this campaign -- the tendency of politicians who do or did make their careers on the votes of people from small towns and rural areas to come out for Obama.

It's been going on for three months.

I've always been highly skeptical of Hillary Clinton's argument that she's a stronger candidate in rural areas and red states. But the pols who know these areas best seem to be even more confident she's wrong than I am.

I was mulling over the ABC debate this morning and the moderators' claim that knocking Obama with a more or less uninterrupted stream of Swift Boat gotchas was justified by focusing the debate on 'electability'. And it occurred to me that we have now crossed an important threshold where the Republican operative cadre has sufficiently disciplined and trained the press (and more than a few Democrats) that their own role may simply be redundant.

Think about it. Organized campaigns of falsehoods, distortions and smears used to be something most people thought of as a bad thing, if not something that's ever been too far removed from American politics. Now, however, members of the prestige press appear to see it not as a matter of guilty slumming but rather a positive journalistic obligation to engage in their own organized campaign of falsehood, distortion and smear on the reasoning that it anticipates the eventual one to be mounted by Republicans. In other words, we've gotten past the debatable rationale that journalists have no choice but to cover smears and distortions once they're floated into the mainstream debate to thinking that journalists need to seek out and air smears and distortions on the grounds of electability, as though the mid-summer GOP Swiftboating was another de facto part of the election process like primaries, conventions and debates.

It's an expansive rationale under which Gibson and Stephanopoulos may have failed their civic responsibility by not pressing the point of whether Obama is a hereditary Muslim or his mother had a predilection for dark-skinned socialists.

As I've noted it's pretty nauseating and disillusioning that Sen. Clinton has now also convinced herself that she's providing a service by mounting her own Swift Boat campaign. But she is after all running a campaign.

In any case, at this stage it's not even clear the GOP slimesters ever have to come on the field. Journalists recognize their obligation to seek out potential Swift Boat tactics and do the job for them.

The EPA floats a new "public confusion" exception to complying with congressional subpoenas.

The Iraq War is a debacle whose outcome is in doubt, according to a report from the Pentagon's National Defense University.

From TPM Reader JA ...

The post on Nash McCabe reminded me of a couple earlier debates, the MoveOn Town Hall events, where citizen questions were alternated with questions from Eli Pariser, all on one topic that had been selected by member vote. The second was the YKos debate, which also featured citizen questions.

In both cases, citizens asked questions that weren't obvious or oriented toward sound bytes. They were the kinds of questions that would not, for whatever reason, be asked by these tv moderators. Moreover, these were their questions. In this case, the producers put the producers' question into the mouth of a voter, because it made the question seem more authentic, as if people care in large numbers about the flag pin question. That is, the woman was used to legitimize the traditional media's focus on these frankly trivial and, yes, distracting issues.

So it's not just bad that they sought out someone to ask the question, but that they did it in order to avoid asking the question themselves because, you know, it's sort of embarrassing. It's not about content; it's about TV content and TV optics. There's no way for Gibson to ask that without looking petty and stupid. So they used this woman.

I think McCabe's question stands out more than the citizen question for Hillary on Bosnia because the moderators spent so much time going at him with other gotcha question. But I think the above applies equally to Hillary's question. The point of using a voter was that Gibson would have been embarrassed, and rightly so, to have asked that question himself.

Remember that woman from the debate last night who the moderators showed videotape of asking whether Barack Obama "believes in the flag"? Her name is Nash McCabe.

I remember thinking it was sort of odd to have a couple one-off uses of ordinary voter questions when it didn't really seem like it was part of the format. But I was too distracted by the general inanity of the debate to focus on this issue too closely.

Well, it turns out TPM Reader JL did give it some thought. And he came up with something very interesting (see JL's post at the DrexelDems blog). He did a little googling and found out Nash is pretty popular with the traveling press now in Pennsylvania. It turns out McCabe was featured in an April 4th story in the Times which begins like this ...

Ask whom she might vote for in the coming presidential primary election and Nash McCabe, 52, seems almost relieved to be able to unpack the dossier she has been collecting in her head.

It is not about whom she likes, but more a bill of particulars about why she cannot vote for Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.

"How can I vote for a president who won't wear a flag pin?" Mrs. McCabe, a recently unemployed clerk typist, said in a booth at the Valley Dairy luncheonette in this quiet, small city in western Pennsylvania.

Mr. Obama has said patriotism is about ideas, not flag pins.

"I watch him on TV," Mrs. McCabe said. "I keep looking for that lapel pin."

Now, it does seem like McCabe is not a fan of Sen. Obama's. And I think we can assume that it's not a coincidence that McCabe managed to show up featured in the Times and also as the sole outside questioner in the ABC debate. Presumably, a researcher for ABC or Gibson saw the piece in the Times, figured, hey, this lady hates Obama and is seriously ginned up about the lapel issue. Let's send a camera crew and film her slamming Obama to his face. It'll be great in the debate.

Now, as JL noted in his email to TPM, I'm not sure precisely what's any less ethical about finding Nash at random to come on and slam Obama about whether he believes in the flag versus seeing her in the Times and saying, 'Wow, this woman clearly has it in for Obama. Wouldn't that make for great TV giving her a chance to crap on Obama's head in front of a nationwide audience?

I think there's something wrong with it. And part of it is that you usually assume that these citizen questions come from people who are at least partly conflicted about their support if not undecided. But it does reinforce my sense that the disgraceful nature of the debate wasn't just something that came together wrong, some iffy ideas taken to far, but was basically engineered to be crap from the ground up.

(ed.note: Remember, there was also Tom Rooney from Pittsburgh who said he'd been a Clinton supporter up until the Bosnia flap and asked what she could say to get back his vote. In that case, this was at least someone who'd been a Clinton supporter at one point and suggested he could be again. But it's still basically, "Hillary, can you apologize to me for being a liar?" Not exactly a question. Anyone have more details on Rooney?)

Late Update: Turns out McClatchy is on this case and has plenty of details about how ABC tracked McCabe down.

Ed Kilgore discusses whether making the debate about 'electability' washes as an explanation or excuse for what happened in Philly last night.

Theda Skocpol offers her recollection of that Camp David powwow in the mid-90s where Hillary reportedly said "screw 'em" about Southern whites who were voting Republican.

If you were spared watching it in real time, relive the awfulness of last night's ABC debate in today's episode of TPMtv ...

Watch this episode on YouTube.

A final note -- for now -- on the investigation into the Coconut Road earmark.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, defending her chamber from unwanted Senate oversight, says the House Ethics Committee should be the one to investigate Rep. Don Young's mucky earmark.

The problem? The House Ethics Committee has been sitting on a complaint about Coconut Road from a government watchdog group since last year.

The Washington Post has obtained a Pentagon inspector general report that finds the award of a $50 million Air Force contract was "tainted with improper influence, irregular procurement practices, and preferential treatment."

In many respects, it's just the usual sort of bid-rigging, contract favoring, and inside-dealing that the Pentagon is notorious for. But one thing in particular jumps out.

Among the high-ranking Air Force officials pushing for awarding the contract to a well-connected company called SMS, formed for the purpose of securing this particular contract, according to the Post, was Air Force Maj. Gen. Stephen M. Goldfein:

Goldfein, who is now the vice director of the Pentagon's Joint Staff, was found to have gone to great lengths to see the contract awarded to SMS, while senior Air Force leaders socialized with the company's partners. According to the report, Goldfein even arranged for President Bush to videotape a testimonial in the White House Map Room that was included in the SMS contract proposal as a demonstration of the company's credibility and access.

The President videotaping testimonials for government contractors? Is this commonplace in the Bush White House? Can we find out more about that? Inquiring minds want to know.

Meet the GOP front-runner in the race to replace retiring Rep. John Peterson (R-PA):

Fifth Congressional District front-runner Derek Walker was charged Thursday with two felonies and four misdemeanors in connection with an incident last August at his former girl friend's house in Clearfield.

Walker said this morning before the charges were filed that Clearfield County District Attorney William Shaw Jr. had been pressured to file the charges less than a week before the primary election by Walker's chief rival for the Republcan nomination, State College businessman Matt Shaner.

Asked why the charges against Walker were filed today, Shaw said: "We finished our investigation yesterday -- we got the last two statements yesterday."

The criminal complaint, filed in District Judge Richard Ireland's Clearfield office, charges Walker with burglary and criminal trespass, both felonies, and the misdemeanors criminal attempt, invasion of privacy, disorderly conduct and stalking.

The complaint, filed by Clearfield police Chief Jeffrey Rhone and signed by Shaw, accuses Walker of using his cell phone to videotape a former girlfriend in an intimate moment with another man on Aug. 25, 2007. The complaint also alleges that he had contact with her on two other occasions, despite being told by a police officer on Aug. 25 that he should avoid further contact and that charges were pending.

[Thanks to TPM Reader MM for the tip.]

Voting is underway now in the Senate on whether -- and how -- to investigate Rep. Don Young's Coconut Road earmark.

Late Update: The Democrats' preferred measure -- the Boxer amendment, which requests that the Justice Department initiate an investigation of how the earmark was sneaked into the bill after passage -- passes.

Later Update: A separate measure sponsored by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) that would have created a joint House-Senate panel to investigate Coconut Road has failed.

George Stephanopoulos defends ABC's trainwreck of a presidential debate in an interview with TPM Election Central.

Just your run-of-the-mill case of a GOP official assaulting a Democratic congressional candidate and a newspaper reporter. So why shouldn't local GOP bigwigs get to see the sheriff's investigative report about the incident before the local Democratic prosecutor does?

The Delaware County [Indiana] prosecutor wants to know why Republican Party officials were given access to police reports on a fight involving a voter registration deputy, a reporter and a candidate before the documents reached his desk.

"The Republican Party chairman is not a member of the law enforcement community and does not have access to police reports," Prosecutor Mark McKinney, a Democrat, said Wednesday. ...

McKinney said GOP officials had access to investigatory documents such as witness statements that are not part of the public record and said he would look into how they were released.

[Thanks to TPM Reader MS for the link.]

The GOP is trying to knock off U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy (D-CT), a first-termer who defeated longtime Republican incumbent Nancy Johnson for the CT-5 seat in 2006. So they're sneaking President Bush into town later this month for a fund-raiser at Henry Kissinger's house to help the GOP candidate, state Sen. David Cappiello.

But let's just say the President doesn't hold the same cachet that he used to:

Area Republicans and local town officials who have been invited to, or informed of, the president's visit to a small rural town known for its art galleries, chocolate and scenic beauty were told not to publicize or discuss the event.

However, an invitiation released to The Litchfield County Times by a member of the GOP confirms the president's visit and provides details of a fund-raiser meant to inflate the war chest of the candidate hoping to unseat U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy (D-Cheshire) after only one term.

Attempts to reach Mr. Cappiello Thursday for comment on the fund-raiser were unsuccessful. A Danbury resident, Mr. Cappiello represents the 24th District in the General Assembly.

Reached by phone, one person working to raise money for Mr. Cappiello's campaign gave a phone number for the press office at the White House in response to questions. A spokesman there said he could not confirm the president's trip to Kent.

[Special thanks to TPM Reader CM for the tip.]

Turns out last night's debate was the most watched of the entire campaign.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) posts at TPMCafe on a "Credit Cardholder's Bill of Rights" and the various proposals currently pending in Congress for greater protections for consumers from credit card companies.

I just wanted to flag for your attention that at TPM Election Central we recently started posting audio recordings of the conference calls the presidential campaigns regularly hold for reporters.

If you're really into the nuts and bolts of the campaigns and the spin cycles, you'll want to listen. As you might guess, some days' calls are mundane even for the political junkie, but on a day like today, following a debate, they can be illuminating, in a meta-narrative kind of way.

We've got today's Hillary camp call up now.

Late Update: You can listen to the Obama call here.

For all the GOP's money woes, the RNC is one Republican entity that is out-raising its Democratic counterpart.

Reed Hundt agrees: ABC's debate was no public service.

Indeed, a debate only a Republican could love.

The office of Rep. Don Young (R-AK) fessed up yesterday that Young aides on the transportation committee he chaired were the ones who inserted the Coconut Road earmark, after the transportation bill had already passed both chambers but before the President signed the bill into law.

Mystery solved? Stay tuned . . .

If there wasn't a record, you might think that Obama was heading for a major upset victory in PA next week. Zogby has Obama just one point behind Clinton at 45%-44%.

But remember, Zogby was out in front this year predicting Obama's big wins in California and Ohio too. So it's hard for me to put too much weight in this sounding.

That said, I always try to remind myself to watch the actual numbers, especially when the polls are slipping out of sync with conventional wisdom. And the last four polls released have Clinton's lead at 1 (Zogby), -3 (PPP), 6 (Franklin and Marshall) and 5 (LAT/Blooomberg).

From TPM Reader JB, a former hill staffer ...

You had a post late this morning about the conservative columnists granted Op-Ed space by The New York Times.

As a rule I don't worry much about which columnists get regular columns in the major newspapers, though many people seem to get very exercised about this. There are a lot of columnists who get space simply because they've been around for a long time, and others who benefit from personal relationships with newpaper management. And, you know, big deal. It's not as if Mel Kiper is out there rating prospects for major newspapers to draft (you know, the Times needs a conservative columnist, good motor, never takes a column off, good in the newsroom, etc. I guess that joke kind of depends on whether you know who Mel Kiper is).

Seriously, though, what is a conservative columnist these days. Specifically, how has the definition of "conservative" changed in the last few years? I'd argue that it's changed quite a lot. At least part of the litmus test for whether one is a conservative involves one's perspective on George Bush. By that standard, William Kristol is a conservative and I am not. By the pre-Bush standard, of course, I'd be considered more conservative than Kristol (even Kristol, a McCain supporter in 2000, was not viewed by some Republicans as the conservative he is now seen to be).

Kristol can be counted on to take the pro-administration position on most issues, and to a lot of people, that's what conservatism is all about right now. Unfortunately (from my point of view) the equation of conservatism and support for the Bush administration is made not only by much of the GOP's hard core but also by many voters now paying serious attention to politics for the first time -- as well as the media.

Bill Buckley, as you'll recall (anyway, I recall this, since Buckley was my first employer out of college), was one of a relatively small group of people whose work and writing helped keep conservatism in the 1970s from being permanently stigmatized as the ideology of Richard Nixon. There's no one like that today. So when they need a conservative on the Op-Ed page, the Times goes for Kristol and the Washington Post for Michael Gerson. Of course I don't like it, but the fact is that in the battle to decide the Republican Party's identity, people like these won and people like me lost -- lost, in fact, a long time ago.

Let me add one more thought before signing off. I don't think this debate will have much effect on the direction of the race. In fact, I've learned from past (often bitter -- yes, his initials are AG) experience that the candidate who wins on points in a debate often doesn't come out with the best result.

What I didn't like about the debate, though, was the debate itself. Not only were most of the questions on partisan gotchas and frivolous points. But more importantly the questions upon which the candidates were pressed the most were ones that presumed the correctness of Republican agenda items, sometimes explicitly so -- on taxes, capital gains taxes, gun rights, Iraq, etc.

There are issues like health care, and whose proposal will achieve universal coverage; some question about the credit crisis; perhaps some question about Iraq that presupposed that getting out is a necessary objective -- like, noting ways that each has hedged on their promises to leave Iraq, rather than a question, the subtext of which was 'what will you do when the serious people tell you we shouldn't leave'; something executive power -- a legitimate questions since presidents are seldom willing to renounce powers grasped by predecessors; the environment; perhaps, what will these candidates actually do -- concretely -- to crack down on executive branch corruption since Democrats have made such political hay of the issue at President's Bush's expense; perhaps a single question on the environment?

Do these questions presuppose concerns and priorities of Democrats? Yes, sure. But then, this was a Democratic debate. If they'd wanted Hannity to moderate, I'm sure he would have made himself available.

As noted previously, I need to preface my thoughts by noting that I was unable to watch the first thirty of so minutes of the debate. I'll stipulate, to get it out of the way, that the moderators, mainly Charlie Gibson, but not exclusively, were awful. And apparently I missed the worst of it in the first half hour. And not simply for Obama, who probably got the worst of it, but for Hillary too. In a debate it's not out of the ordinary to have a couple gotcha type questions. But this seemed to be almost all that.

Setting that aside though, on the questions that touched in some way on policy -- taxes for instance -- Obama looked weary and had what I can only think to compare to the look of a staggering boxer. The discussion of the capital gains tax was a painful example. Most of what Charlie Gibson said was complete nonsense and there were fairly clear, good responses. But Obama stumbled through them.

On the policy questions, on the other hand, Hillary had what she almost always does in these settings which is a series of well prepared and clear answers which hit on the political points she's trying to make.

In this sense I don't think there's much of any way to say that Clinton wasn't the winner on points. And this isn't even taking into account that a lot of the debate was taken up with the moderators teeing up virtually every attack that's been made during this campaign against Obama.

How this will all play politically I don't know. The last week of 'bitter' seems to have had zero effect on the poll numbers in Pennsylvania. And this debate was basically 'bitter' writ large.

Reject and Denounce!

I guess I'm not enough of a Gibsonologist. But I guess there's a history of Gibson knowingly spouting off with his complete lack of comprehension of what sorts of incomes most Americans make.

Continuing Debate: Looking around other sites, I guess I'm not the only one that thought this debate was unmitigated travesty. Maybe the embargo on debate rebroadcast was a pro-human rights stand.

8:36 PM ... So I'm coming in a bit late here. I was on the Polk panel this evening at Long Island University, which ended at 8 PM. And rushed home to get here. So what'd I miss?

8:44 PM ... Hillary: The Republicans are so bad that I have to become one to save the Democratic party.

8:48 PM ... Can Hillary just come out and embrace a culture-war, swift-boating campaign against Obama? Please? Instead of this gonzo Lee Atwater by proxy stuff? Sigh...

9:01 PM ... She certainly seems more self-assured on the Iran question than Obama did. The question of extending an American security umbrella to Israel is very dicey. And he could clearly see he was on delicate territory. Are we really extending to Israel and Saudi Arabia the nuclear guarantee we made to Europe under NATO? Is it only for nuclear attacks? Conventional attacks?

9:09 PM ... Obama's making a good point on the capital gains tax. But he's making it in a very bedraggled, painful, drawn out way. This is not good at all. All the right points are there but just not put well ... Charlie Gibson's 'history' of the capital gains tax? Please. There's a good answer to that. But he didn't seem to have it.

9:16 PM ... Did someone tell Charlie Gibson that he knows something about economics? There are a heck of a lot of people people who make over $97,000 a year? Really? I think like 12% of the population makes more than $100,000 a year. And his capital gains point is a canard.

9:24 PM ... I was disappointed that Charlie Gibson seems to spout off right-wing bromides as established facts. I was even more disappointed that Obama didn't seem able to knock them down.

9:29 PM ... I don't watch a lot of nightly news. Is Charlie Gibson usually this bad?

9:31 PM ... This is awful.

9:35 PM ... Are there any questions in this debate that aren't based on Republican attacks? Is affirmative action a major issue in this campaign? Did I miss that?

9:40 PM ... I like Stephanopoulos. But using former presidents? Is this a major issue?

9:44 PM ... TPM Reader KB checks in: "Josh, ABC's News' posture tonight makes perfect sense. Don't you get it? In GOP primary debates the media inquisitors take on the role of the true conservative pressing candidates to clearly and unequivocally state their answers on hot button social issues and economic talismans like the capital gains tax. In Democratic primary debates, by contrast, the media inquisitors take on the role of the true conservative pressing candidates to clearly and unequivocally state their answers on hot button social issues and economic talismans like the capital gains tax." Now MB gets in the mix: "When gas hits $4 a gallon will the average American making $250,000 a year be able to afford to drive to work?"

9:46 PM ... No Charlie. It hasn't been a "fascinating debate." It's been genuinely awful.

9:50 PM ... What happened to the League of Women Voters? Can we give the debates back to them? This sort of episode really sickens me. KB's point above is sadly accurate. It's stuff like this that really makes me think that whole big chunks of the established press needs to be swept away.

9:56 PM ... As I noted above, I missed roughly the first half hour of this debate. But from what I heard about those thirty minutes and what I saw of the subsequent ninety minutes was basically debate by gotcha line with basically no discussion of any of the big questions the election is turning on.

Is this really the 26th Democratic presidential debate of this cycle?

No wonder we all groan at the mention of another debate. But it's been about six weeks since the last one (if you don't count the faith forum whatchamacallit the other night), so we're good to go.

Standing by for 8 ET start . . .

7:59 PM ... Can we expect the candidates to bring any blue collar props on stage? A bowling ball? Maybe a shot glass?

Josh will be joining us later. He has other professional obligations at the moment.

8:00 PM ... No Wolf? No Tim Russert? Peace.

8:02 PM ... No blue collar props. Maybe they're packing heat.

8:05 PM ... Amy Poehler's Hillary is so dead-on that I can't watch Hillary speak without conflating the two in my mind.

8:06 PM ... Blessedly short opening statements. Someone must have reminded the candidates that this is the 26th time they've done this.

8:07 PM ... Commercial break. A good time to point out that ABC is imposing a blackout on its debate footage until tomorrow morning -- or trying to.

8:08 PM ... Charlie Gibson stumps them right off the bat with Mario Cuomo's suggestion that the winner pledge to make the loser his or her running mate.

8:11 PM ... By "stumps," I mean moment of awkward silence. They both manage to avoid answering the question directly.

8:12 PM ... Straight to the bitter clingers question . . .

8:14 PM ... Obama addressed the question and admitted he "mangled" his words but seemed defensive -- and didn't really address the subtext to the question.

8:15 PM ... For a moment, I thought Hillary was going to throw back a shot of whiskey before answering the question.

8:18 PM ... Here he goes. Obama circles back to elitism and condescending subtext.

8:22 PM ... He got in a few shots about Hillary learning the "wrong lessons" and adopting GOP campaign tactics. She only mildly engaged, also sidestepping the subtext of the charge.

8:26 PM ... The Wright question to Obama almost seems like a blast from the past. But oddly enough, I think the Wright controversy erupted between the last debate and this one, so first time Obama had a chance to be quizzed on this in a debate.

8:28 PM ... Ding, ding, ding, ding. Hillary just invoked 9/11 in explaining how Wright would have been "intolerable" to her as her pastor.

8:32 PM ... Speaking of mangled, I doubt Obama meant to say he "disowned" Wright.

8:33 PM ... Another blast from the past: Tuzla.

8:36 PM ... Both candidates seemed unprepared in a sense for a reprise of these earlier gaffes. Getting bogged down in the minutiae.

The President bears the greatest responsibility for the catastrophe of the Iraq war. He was the key decision maker at every point. And he's fundamentally accountable. But if you look into the innards of the process that led to war there is probably no one who was either responsible for or involved with more of the bad decisions, more of the conscious decisions or horrible ideas than Doug Feith.

You'd think someone like that would be keeping a low profile. But in fact he's got a new book out explaining how Iraq was a great idea, how nothing was his fault and sticking it to his enemies. Trainwreck is an overused term, but in today's episode of TPMtv we look at some choice moments from Feith's book release media tour where he explains how you've got the whole thing all wrong ...

High-res version at Veracifier.com.

John Judis, on the historical currents Obama is swimming against.

In case you hadn't heard there's a Democratic debate tonight, starting at 8 PM on ABC. And we'll be blogging it live here at TPM. This could be the final debate, though of course, that's been the case with the last three or four. So no promises.

Netanyahu: Israel benefiting from 9/11 and Iraq War.

As I mentioned last week, we're refocusing our attention on the congressional races. And for the kind of coverage we're trying to provide we really want and need your tips -- the kind of leads and insights that only you can have because you're watching the media in your area. For more on the kind of tips we're looking for, please see this earlier post. And accept our thanks in advance.

An insightful analysis on what the polls show and the "bitter" controversy from one of our reader-bloggers at TPMCafe.

With the new campaign money numbers out we're awash in stats showing Democratic candidates with lots more money raised and money on hand. That's why this stands out a little. In the rematch between Jeanne Shaheen and Sen. John Sununu, he actually has more than twice the money on hand that she does, $4.3 to $ 2 million.

Just to give you an idea of how much of an opening the Hillary camp sees Obama's bitter gaffe giving her in Pennsylvania, her "small town" ad is the only spot she has running in most of the TV markets in the state, TPM Election Central reports.

In general, Sen. Clinton's claims to be the stronger general election candidate are belied by most available evidence -- polling, favorability ratings, quality of the campaign each candidate has run so far, etc. The one exception is Florida. And Florida's no small exception. You can see a list here of all the polls of Florida. And Sen. Clinton consistently does better than Sen. Obama against Sen. McCain.

Why this should be is an interesting question. Softness of Jewish support for Obama suggests itself as one possibility, though national polls I've seen show little difference in Jewish support for both Democratic candidates. If the issue is older Jews and retirees in South Florida, though, it could be a different story. And I believe the whispering and emailing campaign against Obama targeted at the Jewish community is far more significant and pervasive than reporting has let on (a point I've been wanting to address and hope to soon.)

Obama supporters would probably also note that Hillary and McCain are known figures and Obama has yet to run a campaign in Florida, something which usually substantially increased his numbers. But I'm skeptical of how much that matters at this point given how nationalized the campaign has become.

Clinton supporters might say that he's getting hurt by the non-delegate seating issue. But again, I'm skeptical.

One related point is that I believe both Clinton's and Obama's number vis a vis McCain are depressed by their bashing each other and McCain's waltzing around with no one attacking him. A lot of Dems are fretting at the moment. And I'll admit to a touch of fretting myself. In fact, Florida is a major fret for me. But one also has to keep this point squarely in mind. McCain is now in his ideal environment. He's getting a bump from securing the nomination. And he has essentially no opponent. No one is attacking and thus there are no attacks for the media to churn through. Meanwhile, both Democrats are getting hit right and left. And attacks on each are the media's regular diet. And with all this, both Dems appear to be running essentially even with McCain. That's not a good sign for McCain.

Late Update: TPM Reader ST adds some more thoughts ...

Re: your recent post on why Obama is doing worse in Florida relative to Clinton. I'm from CA by way of NJ, so I have no special insight on Florida politics, but I think you're skipping over the reasons without really addressing them. First, a lot of the Florida population is retirees, which is Clinton's strongest demographic. And while FL often seems much like a "Northern" state below the South, that's largely an illusion based on the fact that most Yankees who go to FL spend most of their time in the Northern-retiree and tourist places. Most of the native whites are very deep-south oriented. Plus, the state is on the higher end of the Race Chasm (15% black).

Regarding the fact that Obama hasn't campaigned in FL as a potential reason why his numbers are weaker, you say "But I'm skeptical of how much that matters at this point given how nationalized the campaign has become." But that's totally belied by what's happened in PA, where (bittergate notwithstanding), he has closed a solid 20-point gap to something between 5 and 12 points, in another state with demographics tailor-made for Hillary.

So ultimately, I don't think it's confusing why Hillary is out-performing Obama in Florida, and I don't think it's necessarily permanent.

And finally, I will say what I always say about these head-to-head polls: They are just meaningless 7 months out, while one party has a hotly contested nomination going on and the other doesn't. I don't know what's gonna happen in November, and I just don't believe that there is any information available to make a confident prediction of what will happen.

Obama meets with rabbis and Jewish leaders in Philly.

Sometimes you just need to move on. During the silly summer of 2006, one moment of comic relief came when the feds did a major bust of an alleged terror cell, which turned out to be a group of guys camping out in a warehouse wearing ninja gear and gathering around a charismatic or schizophrenic leader who, as Paul Kiel put it at the time, they looked to for "religious leadership, karate instruction and contracting work." As I put it at the time, the FBI rolled up the group "in such preliminary stages of launching their jihad that they hadn't yet set aside time to become Muslims."

Now it seems the DOJ has flubbed their second attempt to convict the guys. A second mistrial.

In today's column, Maureen Dowd explains why she's from salt of the earth and Obama's a member of the cozened elite. And you know she's got it bad when she has the bit so firmly in her teeth that she even finds herself saying good things about Hillary.

On a separate note, perhaps it's time for the Times board to reconsider having a man who writes as a campaign operative occupying one of their slots on the oped page. The best evidence of the Times estrangement or I guess we're supposed to say, out-of-touchedness, is not any lack of conservatives on their oped page but choosing one who writes caricatures of conservative writing. Conservative commentary is not limited to clownish analogies and character assassination. At least not entirely.

Late Update: A typical elitist reader adds the following ...

You write that your critique of Kristol sounds "a separate note" than your take on Dowd, but I rather find them to be in perfect harmony. The two are equally guilty of employing "clownish analogies and character assassination" to enliven their columns. And that's the real issue with both columnists; that instead of offering readers novel evidence or arguments, they just dress their trite and tired claims in flamboyant language, and pass them off as something new. There are no ideas in their prose, just a relentless focus on personalities in place of policies.

The columns I most enjoy aren't necessarily the ones with which I agree, they're the ones that force me to think. When was the last time you could say that of either Kristol or Dowd?

The latest FEC filings show Rep. Don Young (R-AK) and convicted Alaska businessman Bill Allen playing hot potato with a $37,000 check Young sent to Allen after the public corruption scandal up there broke.

It was an effort by Young to "reimburse" Allen for fund-raising expenses incurred on behalf of Young's re-election campaign, expenses being scrutinized by the feds.

Allen didn't want the money any more than Young did and refused to cash the check. The money ultimately wound up in the U.S. Treasury.

A new Reuters/Zogby poll out this morning, with this finding:

McCain was seen as a better steward of the economy than either Democrat despite their repeated criticism of his economic credentials. He led Obama by 3 points and Clinton by 5 points on the question of who would best manage the economy.

In the overall matchup, McCain beats Hillary 45-41 and ties Obama at 45 apiece. The bulk of the poll was taken before the "small town" dust-up.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), who just published Never Give In: Battling Cancer in the Senate, has been diagnosed with a recurrence of his Hodgkin's disease.

ABC, sponsor of tonight's Democratic presidential debate, has gone off the deep end:

According to the usage guidelines circulated by ABC, other news organizations are only allowed to excerpt half a minute from the broadcast.

That means choosing only one 30-second clip to use on television and the Web between 11 p.m. Wednesday and 5 a.m. Thursday. ...

"We have an obligation to our West Coast affiliates to not make chunks of the debate available until their viewers have had a chance to see them," an ABC spokesman said.

By tape-delaying the debate for its West Coast television stations, the network seems to be treating the debate as a television show rather than as a live news event. When cable news channels sponsor debates, they telecast the forums live across all time zones.

As the NYT article goes on to note, fair use doctrine probably allows circumvention of this attempted blackout. But if broadcast networks are going to package public events this way, should they count toward the various public interest obligations that networks and their affiliates are supposed to fulfill under FCC regulations?

According to Doug Schoen, estranged partner of Mark Penn and one-time pollster for Bill Clinton, says Hillary Clinton should abandon her purely positive campaign and instead go negative on Obama.

From tomorrow' WaPo ...

Hillary Clinton took an important step Monday toward winning the Democratic nomination by launching an ad targeting Barack Obama's recent comments about working-class voters clinging to "guns or religion." The ad is a marked change from her recent determination to use a positive message until the Democratic convention, but for Clinton to capture the nomination she needs to completely abandon her positive campaign and continue to hammer away at Obama.

It pretty much goes on from there. But, seriously, what is Schoen smoking? Hasn't Clinton been going after Obama pretty much tooth and claw for like eight weeks? Politics ain't bean bag. And if you're going to take down the establishment candidate you need to expect an onslaught, especially one with a potent and resilient base of support in the party. Perhaps the hothouse environment has simply gone on too long at this point. But it's getting really hard for me not to conclude that a lot of these guys in the Penn/Clinton consultant world have simply gone insane.

There's this meme I've heard recently that contrary to popular impression this campaign has been defined by what the Politico calls its "essential prissiness." I guess if the point of comparison is one of the campaigns Karl Rove ran in Alabama or Texas in the 1990s that may be true. But it is hard for me to see where this is not the most bitter and negative Democratic primary in the last forty years. '92 had some harsh moments. But Bill Clinton had it wrapped up too quickly for it to get too intense.

In any case, Schoen was once joined at the hip with Mark Penn, his polling and consulting partner. My understanding was that they were barely on speaking terms anymore -- though Penn apparently reached out to him at one of the points earlier this year when he was swirling down the bowl of the Clinton campaign. And I notice he's no longer listed as being a part of what was their firm Penn, Schoen & Berland. So I don't know if we're supposed to see this as in some sense coming from that direction.

But here's the advice ...

Clinton needs to argue that despite what Obama has said, he has done very little to actually promote and create bipartisan solutions in Washington and that he is, in fact, probably the Senate's most liberal member. She needs to argue that his values are out of step with voters, as evidenced by his recent comments about why people are religious or seek to own guns. She also must argue that because of Obama's lack of legislative accomplishments, he is ill-equipped to achieve what he sets out to do.

By making these arguments compellingly in public appearances, through television and radio advertisements, and direct mail, Clinton can take advantage of the clear majority of American voters who have already said that they wholeheartedly disagree with the views Obama expressed last week in San Francisco.

In other words, to win the nomination Clinton must portray Obama as an effete liberal, with San Francisco values, who is out of touch with ordinary Americans, who can't reach bipartisan compromises and is an extreme liberal. Or to put it another way, she must run against him as a Republican.

I won't put this on Clinton. The last I heard Schoen was working for Bloomberg. And his current connection with Penn is unclear to me. But I do think he is representative of some part of the consultant class. And from a Democratic perspective he represents something deeply malignant.

I'd be curious to hear from friends of mine who have or in other cases do work with, just what is up.

Late Update: Several readers have written in to point to 1980 as a campaign that rivals or surpasses this one for bitterness. That and 1972 probably qualify. So I'll amend my statement above with those qualifiers. Giving it a little more thought, while I'll stick to my general point about relative acrimony and bitterness, I think there's something distinct about this race precisely because there is so relatively little in policy terms separating the two candidates. The 1972 campaign would be an example where there was a vast chasm dividing the Democratic party. I won't begin to dispute how bitter those divisions were. But I think the relative inability of partisans on both sides of this current contest to point to clear ideological or policy divisions separating them from the other side has given the acrimony of this race an especially personal edge. Also, as I've noted before, this long period without any contests but only spin and war-room bloodsport has really untethered the debate.

E.J.Dionne in TNR: "But here are the two remaining Democratic candidates, Obama by speaking carelessly and Clinton by piling on shamelessly, doing all they can to make it easy for Republicans to pretend one more time that they are the salt of the earth."

Still more news coming out about Colorado Sen. candidate Bob Schaffer (R) and his efforts to bring the Marianas island sweatshop system to the mainland. In today's episode we bring you the latest on Schaffer and video from the Marianas sweatshops themselves ...

High-res version at Veracifier.com.

We're pleased to have Kevin Phillips blogging this week at TPMCafe about his new book, Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism.

In it he propounds his thesis for why the current global economic crisis threatens to undermine U.S. economic leadership and points to a convergence of factors which have emerged since the 1980s: massive public and private debt and repeated government bailouts of the financial sector, among them.

Times/Bloomberg has new polls of Pennsylvania, Indiana and North Carolina.

Pennsylvania
Clinton 46%
Obama 41%

Indiana
Clinton 35%
Obama 40%

North Carolina
Clinton 34%
Obama 47%

If you needed more reasons to worry about McCain-onomics, Jared Bernstein has some.

I'm not quite sure what to say to this reasoning from TPM Reader PB but I think it nicely captures the thinking of those who think Obama's downfall is nigh ...

I agree, the Wright issue did not have individual effect that I thought it would. But there is beginning to be the appearance of a pattern now, of Obama's remarks and behaviors, that is truly disturbing. Is it anti-white? Or at least not sufficiently "white-sensitive"? I don't know. But, man, if there's a third thing at some point - something else he says, or fails to say, or something that is dredged up from his past that Hillary gets to before McCain gets to it... then everything that came before it -- including "bitter," including Wright - gets re-examined in that new light. If it becomes part of a pattern, the Wright issue may come back with a vengeance.

So which is it? 'Bitter' is going to take a toll on Obama over time? Or, the whole thing is just another pundits' tempest, a week of yakking back and forth that ends up making no difference in the real world of public opinion?

As noted earlier, the first big crop of polls seems to show literally no movement whatsoever, when each is added together. Maybe it hasn't had time to show up yet -- a speculation there is no way to disprove. I've heard endless arguments on both sides dissecting the few sentences in question. And the vast proportion of the analyses come from rich people from New York and DC, people who really have little entre or insight into how blue-collar people in rural and small-town America think.

Meanwhile, the two national tracking polls (Gallup and Rasmussen) show Obama's lead either remaining steady or slightly expanding.

TPM Reader RS's strong opinion ...

Here's my problem: If Hillary were currently contending in the general election, Obama's "bitter" remark would (unfornunately) be fair game and hammering him for it, par for the course. But she's not in a general election, she's in a primary, and everything she uses against Obama now, will be dredged up and used by Republicans. The ruse that Republicans will use his comments against him anyway begs the point because if McCain uses Obama's comments against him, that's "politics." If McCain uses Hillary's comments against Obama, that lends credence to his criticisms ... "See, even Hillary Clinton said..." That, quite simply, is the Jim Jones' school of politics: she is doling out the "kool aid" to her constituancy, to Obama and his supporters and ultimately, to herself. Who wins if everyone's dead? That would be John McCain. No matter how you slice it, that's just plain stupid!

According to the right-wing Human Events online: Barack Obama's "complicity with rappers dates back to at least 2006."

TPM Reader EF ...

Given the clear and longstanding cleavages in the Obama and Clinton primary coalitions, the fact that polls haven't moved much in response to the furor over Obama's "Bitter" comments is perhaps not terribly surprising. Most of the working class whites who might have been offended (that word is overused, perhaps "irritated" is better) by the comments are already Hillary backers. The more interesting/relevant metric for how much damage the flare-up has caused Obama's candidacy is the percent of Clinton supporters who say they will back McCain in November if Obama is the nominee.

That is the first way this could hurt Obama. The second way is by planting a seed of doubt in some superdelegates' minds and thus holding them back from coming out for him in June. If the flood of superdelegates fails to materialize, Hillary will have a much easier time taking the campaign all the way to Denver, which has the potential to hurt Obama badly in advance of a dramatically truncated general election campaign (he'll be fighting one-against-two all summer, won't have a clear shot to define McCain, will be asked constantly about "party unity", etc.). This second mechanism is harder to measure but the first will be in the next poll that asks the question about general election support.

I don't see this denying him the nomination, but it's making Obama's path the presidency much more perilous.

Another reader notes that the Clinton camp's aim in pushing the "bitter" stuff is not so much to stoke resentment which, if it actually exists, shows little sign of moving the numbers but rather to keep ginning it up in the rolling pundit conversation to create a negative drumbeat of news for Obama. That could well show up in the polls by next week or simply hold Obama in place and prevent him for making any more gains.

Obama has his biggest national lead over Hillary to date in the latest Gallup tracking poll: 11 points.

M.J. Rosenberg, on the new liberal rival to AIPAC.

Following up on TPM Reader AY's note below, we seem to have a pretty good read now, which WaPo's Chris Cillizza says he was waiting for, on the effect of "bitter". We have three polls out today -- one shows a 2 point gain for Hillary, one shows a 2 point gain for Barack, and one shows no change at all.

So after four days of the story nonstop it appears to have had zero effect on public opinion.

Now, there is one possible counter-argument. Obama had been gaining ground up until this last run of polls, though SUSA had him falling. So it's plausible to speculate that he would have continued gaining if not for the latest controversy. That would suggest a parallel to Texas and Ohio, where Obama appeared to be making headway until the Nafta controversy and (possibly) the 3 AM ad blunted his momentum.

But based on what we know today it appears that all the sound and fury has signified nothing.

(ed.note: You'll note that two polls came out yesterday. ARG has a huge Clinton lead and huge Clinton gain and Susquehanna had a very small Clinton lead -- 3 points. ARG's record this year has been very poor however; and the Susquehanna sounding was a small sample, which in any case stopped sampling on the 10th, before controversy erupted. Here's the full list of all recent polls.)

From a longtime TPM reader ...

There are really only three polls out this morning (Susquehana released yesterday and was in the field only until April 10, before we got all "bitter"). The key measure here isn't the size of the lead, it's how they stack up to the previous polls taken by the same organizations last week. Of the three, one shows a slight tightening, one shows a widening by the same margin, and the third shows no change. None of these changes are statistically significant.

Survey USA:
Clinton 54 (-2), Obama 40 (+2)
Rasmussen:
Clinton 50 (+2), Obama 41 (-2)
Quinnipiac:
Clinton 50 (+0), Obama 44 (+0)

You wrote that "what each shows is Clinton halting Obama's advance and taking back some of her lead." In fact, I think that the data show the race remaining unchanged. Despite a media maelstorm, we're exactly where we were a week ago. Given the ferocity of the attacks and rebuttals, that's well worth noting.

On the eve of congressional hearings, the White House retreats from the contractor-friendly anti-fraud loophole it sneaked into a proposed rule change.

Yesterday we reported on the ARG poll showing a 20 point spread for Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania. Three more today so far. Quinnipiac gives Clinton a 6 point margin; SurveyUSA gives her a 14 point edge; and Rasmussen gives Clinton a 9 point margin.

There's a big range in numbers, if you include yesterday's ARG poll. But what each shows is Clinton halting Obama's advance and taking back some of her lead.

Late Update: See this subsequent post, for a closer and more accurate analysis.

Though I really know little about sailing and have little experience of it I have a recurring fascination with naval vessels and especially the big capital ships. So when I went to Times site just now, even though it was a civilian liner, I started reading this article about a new theory (with some compelling evidence) of why the Titanic sank.

Now, for myself, I don't think I realized there was a mystery. It hit an iceberg. It sank. Tragedy, great melodrama, sure. But what's the mystery?

But apparently one of the things that became clear after the wreckage of the Titanic was discovered in the 1980s (besides the fact that there was no one still living in it like in those corny made-for-TV movies) was that the expected massive gash in the ship's starboard hull actually wasn't there. Instead there were "six narrow slits where bow plates appeared to have parted." And this in turn cast suspicion on the rivets.

The theory has been circulating for a decade. But the authors of What Really Sank the Titanic use a combination of physical evidence obtained from the wreckage (48 recovered rivets) and archival evidence from the archives of the ship's builder, Harland and Wolff, which is still in business, to make the case that the builders were building on such a vast scale and under so much time pressure that they simply couldn't come up with enough high quality rivets or riveters. So they cut corners. The result of which was that the ship's plates split open much more quickly than they might have with better materials. Better construction would have kept the ship afloat long enough for many more passengers and crew to be rescued.

In any case, not everyone believes the authors have made their case. And high on that list is Harland and Wolff, the Titanic's manufacture now accused of faulty or slipshod practices that resulted in the deaths of 1500 people. "There was nothing wrong with the materials," company spokesman Joris Minne said primly, before noting that one of Titanic's sister ships, Olympic, sailed for a quarter century without a hitch.

I suppose this isn't surprising. Corporations don't make a habit of admitting negligence. But there aren't that many corporations that can trace their history back more than a century -- at least not undivided and unmerged. But, more than that, the story of the Titanic seems so embedded in history that there's something oddly incongruous about the thought that there's still an institution, a company, so invested in defending the quality of its workmanship. Not that it's not understandable. A shipbuilding company is probably never going to want to trumpet having built the titanic. But somehow I would have imagined that some sort of emotional or moral statute of limitations had run out.

SurveyUSA has a new sounding out of Indiana -- Clinton 55%, Obama 39%. Would be interesting if Indiana ended up being her better state.

There must be something wrong with me that I can still be surprised at how low Joe Lieberman (Joe-CT) can sink. Via Think Progress, Joe getting interviewed on Fox ...

NAPITALIANO: Hey Sen. Lieberman, you know Barack Obama, is he a Marxist as Bill Kristol says might be the case in today's New York Times? Is he an elitist like your colleague Hillary Clinton says he is?

LIEBERMAN: Well, you know, I must say that's a good question. I know him now for a little more than three years since he came into the Senate and he's obviously very smart and he's a good guy. I will tell ya that during this campaign, I've learned some things about him, about the kind of environment from which he came ideologically. And I wouldn't...I'd hesitate to say he's a Marxist, but he's got some positions that are far to the left of me and I think mainstream America.

David Brock's Progressive Media U.S.A., the new pro-Dem indy group, has its first TV ad out, an anti-McCain small cable buy in the DC market.

Hillary whacks Obama's small town remarks in new Pennsylvania TV ad.

I was going to add a John Mellencamp reference, but I see they've already queued up Small Town for at least one Hillary rally.

In case you missed it, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley has his Himalayan nations all confused in yesterday's This Week appearance:

Jay Rosen, the NYU journalism prof who helped create the Huffington Post's "Off the Bus" project, explains how Mayhill Fowler came to break the story of Obama's "bitter" remark.

Turns out the job market isn't that strong for disgraced former U.S. attorneys general.

Rep. Geoff Davis (R-KY) on Obama: "I'm going to tell you something: That boy's finger does not need to be on the button. He could not make a decision in that simulation that related to a nuclear threat to this country."

Both NRCC (that's the House GOP campaign committee) recruits for special elections in Louisiana and Mississippi have played footsie with white supremacist groups.

I've gotten asked by a lot of readers what I make of this whole "bitter" controversy. So a few thoughts.

In cases such as this I think it is always crucial to distinguish in our own minds between what we find offensive and what we've been conditioned to believe that others will find offensive. And perhaps even more importantly, what others will be able to twist and distort into something that other people will find offensive.

Each of those categories is important. But I find the exercise marvelously clarifying in thinking about how to understand these blow-ups when they happen.

In this case, I didn't think what he said was offensive. Of course, I don't live in a small town or in rural America. But then again, neither do any of the other people I've heard sound off on this topic. So I'm in good company. (This has been one of the more comedic aspects of this 72 hours -- watching a cavalcade of extremely wealthy pundits, editorialists and political operatives from New York and Washington tell me how rural Americans won't stand for this.) My understanding is that Obama was answering a question from someone who planned to go canvass for him in Pennsylvania and what they should expect since it's portrayed as being unfriendly ground for him. And what I understood him to be saying is that years of economic abandonment have left many communities in middle America even more reliant on community, tradition, their religion, etc. -- and from a political standpoint very protective of it.

I think he said much the same thing in this interview from 2004 which I published over the weekend. He said it more artfully, probably less apt to being spun out of control in a campaign echo-chamber.

So, with the obligatory, yes, he could have worded it better, do I think it was offensive and condescending? No. I don't. Do I think it can be spun into something offensive and condescending? Sure. That was obvious right off the bat. And how effective will it be against him or damaging to him? I'm not certain. From recent, bitter experience we all know of many instances where someone has been badly damaged politically for remarks which while inoffensive or explainable in themselves, nonetheless get spun and eventually received in a damaging way. So in a very real way, what's 'fair' in these cases is beside the point.

I'm skeptical that this will be as damaging to Obama as a lot of people seem to think. But who knows? We'll know in a few days.

What I do know is that this basic thought, often expressed in much less charitable ways, is commonplace in Democratic policy and political circles. And I have little doubt they've been expressed many times by both of the Clintons and her advisors. So speaking for myself I've spent too much time over, what, 15 years now? ... defending both Clintons from similarly ginned up nonsense to have much energy left to help out as they pull the same puffed up outrage act against another Democrat. I guess I'm just not feeling it.

With the Wright business and now with this, the more nuanced version of the Clinton line has been that what 'we' think is not really the point. It's what Republicans will do with it in the fall. And that's a real concern that I definitely have. I won't deny it. I've never thought Obama was a perfect candidate. But as we get deeper into the primary calendar, increasingly so, this 'what the Republicans will do' line has become more of a simulacrum, or a license, if you will, to do what Republicans actually do do. That is to say, to grab for political advantage by peddling stereotypes about Democrats and liberals that are really no less offensive than the ones we're talking about about Americans from small town and rural America.

And seeing Hillary go on about how Obama has contempt for folks in small town America, how he's elitist, well ... no, it's not because I think she's either. I never have. But after seeing her hit unfairly with just the same stuff for years, it just encapsulates the last three-plus months of her campaign which I can only describe as a furious descent into nonsense and self-parody. Part of it makes me want to cry. But at this point all I can really do is laugh.

It's unanimous: DC Sunday show pundits all agree: Obama's "bitter" remarks will be bad in small towns. We give you it all in today's Sunday show roundup ...

High-res version at Veracifier.com.

ARG has had a pretty unreliable record this primary season. But this is a pretty stark shift. ARG's Pennsylvania poll taken on April 5-6 had a Clinton-Obama tie at 45%. Today they have a new poll out, taken April 11-13, shows a 20 point spread. Clinton 57%, Obama 37%.

As a control, the two national tracking polls seem to show no discernible shift. Rasmussen's held steady since the 11th, with a small and statistically insignificant increase for Obama. Gallup's has also been essentially static. But their number for today has yet to be released. But it's also true that coverage of this story in Pennsylvania has likely been as intense as anywhere in the country.

It's not often that a politician's acknowledgment of sexual misconduct gets him off the hook.

But David Vitter has avoided testifying in the trial of the DC Madam because his lawyers made it clear that he would take the Fifth on the stand, undermining her claims that the only service she offered was sexual fantasy role play sans sex.

Republican county commissioner in Pennsylvania is exonerated on rape charges after it is revealed that he secretly videotaped his hundreds of encounters with male prostitutes.