Hillary Clinton Ad Raises Stakes In Her Use Of Obama Small-Town Bitter Issue

Senator Hillary Clinton has a new hard-hitting campaign ad aimed at continuing to keep rival Senator Barack Obama’s comments about people in small-towns being bitter alive as a potent “wedge” and “electability” issue — but NBC Political Editor Chuck Todd points out some intriguing things about it:

Question: How often do you see a politician — who’s leading a contest in high single digits — launch a negative TV ad? Well, that’s what Clinton (who’s ahead in Pennsylvania but trailing in the overall nomination race) did yesterday, when her campaign unveiled a man/woman-on-the-street TV ad in Pennsylvania that criticized Obama over his comments. “I was very insulted by Barack Obama,” says one person in the ad. “It just shows how out of touch Barack Obama is,” adds another.

This is a gamble in this respect: It means the Clinton camp is going for the political kill on this issue, both with PA voters and undecided superdelegates.

If Clinton doesn’t win Pennsylvania by bigger margins than, say, where polls have things now, will supers deem this tactic as having failed and pressure the Clinton camp to stop the constant hits? Expect Obama to respond on the paid airways in some form today. Meanwhile, the Obama camp has launched a Web ad (i.e., no money behind it) that slams Clinton on her ties to lobbyists. And don’t miss the fact that liberal (“elite?”) op-ed writers have begun coming to Obama’s defense.

Here’s Clinton’s ad which could well get her more votes and halt some Superdelegates who might want to jump ship…and make Obama suppporters more….”bitter.” (Uh, oh…will TMV now be denounced on the stump??)

Obama earlier unveiled his own ad which featured a prominent Pennsylvania politico — and here it is:

Can obama pull himself out of this one? The Politico, in a piece that needs to be read in full, notes Obama’s counterpunching response style:

The response was signature Obama: Attack first, sort out the details later, if at all. No apology, no immediate regret, just a sharp counterattack. For a candidate sometimes mocked for being too soft to win a political fistfight, he has shown an uncanny ability to take a punch and then rear back and deliver one in return.

When Obama responds this way, it leaves him open to charges that he’s undermining his so-called politics of hope. But, showing remarkable dexterity, he has a knack for using these flare-ups to pivot back to the central theme of his candidacy: that politics is broken, and he knows how to change it.

Obama, it turns out, has been a devout observer of a philosophy future President Bill Clinton laid out in 1981.

“When someone is beating you over the head with a hammer, don’t sit there and take it,” then-Gov. Clinton told Time magazine. “Take out a meat cleaver and cut off their hand.”

Shall we call this style “Leave It To Cleaver?”

But, in fact, in a polarized political world shaped by Lee Atwater (Bush family contribution to American politics), Dick Morris and James Carville (Clinton family contribution to American politics) and Karl Rove (Bush family contribution to American politics) political survival means working within the political culture in order to advance to a level where you can start to shape and change the political culture.

The present flap over Obama’s words is fascinating because it raises the questions:

–Will Hillary Clinton jump the shark? Is she in danger of having to destroy her party to win the nomination so that even if she wins the general election she takes office with a reservoir of bad built up among Republicans and many Democrats? Good will is a kind of safety net that Presidents need when things go wrong.

–Can Barack Obama bounce back from this? Will he prove to be the teflon candidate or the velcro candidate — or perhaps somewhere in between…sort of like the discount no stick frying pans where a bit of food sticks to the bottom of the pan but not enough so it’s unuseable?