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• Thursday, April 17, 2008 03:56 AM

  I sincerely doubt it.

  Though it is the opinion of the Hillary Clinton campaign, and therefore (unsurprisingly) Ms. Walsh's, this won't spell the "doom" of Barack Obama's campaign. If anything, the non-issue of his "bitter" comment has allowed him to speak with even more depth on the economic problems facing the most embattled Americans.

  Pulling his phrasing out of context is the only way this can be used against Obama, because he made the comment as part of an in-depth answer on why working-class Pennsylvanians shouldn't be spoon-fed campaign talking points, but instead be addressed as thinking individuals capable of understanding substantive issues. As a result, I'm not sure how anyone could consider this an example of Obama being highfalutin, or of pandering.

  Consider also that while Ms. Walsh's champion of the people, the upright Hillary Clinton, chose to take corporate client after corporate client and earn top dollar as an attorney while Barack Obama chose to work with the most impoverished citizens in Illinois for little money. He struggled with student loans like an ordinary, college-going American and certainly didn't spend the last few years earning in excess of $100 million.

  I'm sure that if/when Hillary Clinton wins in Pennsylvania it will be touted by Clinton supporters like Ms. Walsh as evidence of a stunning comeback, despite the fact that Hillary has led in every poll in that state since the two-person primary race began. The Rev. Wright smears will be repeated ad nauseum (scary black man!) and we'll be told time and again how "out of touch" Barack Obama really is, all evidence to the contrary. And in the end, Hillary Clinton still won't get the Democratic nomination, just as she wasn't going to get it before Wright, before Bittergate, before any of Clinton's attacks. The attacks that will do more lasting harm to her standing with the party than to the object of her scorn.

  —Hawken Read Hawken's other letters
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