Some “old media” and new media pundits, as well as TV talking heads, political analysts and journalists, have concluded that Senator Hillary Clinton’s campaign’s strategy is to make Senator Barack Obama unelectable that they can go to the Superdelegates at a deadlocked convention and say Obama is…..unelectable.

(UPDATE: A new Gallup Poll, in fact, finds that Clinton and Obama would perform about as well against McCain. Key Gallup passage:

There are two notable findings in these data. First, despite the fact that the Democratic Party, in a generic sense, is better positioned than the Republican Party at this point in time, the Republican nominee is running neck and neck with the two possible Democratic nominees. Second, despite continuing focus on the relative electability of Obama versus Clinton , there is no difference in the way either stacks up against McCain.)

Today, a top Clinton campaign strategist jumped the gun by saying it outright now, raising eyebrows, bringing in some critical fire — and causing a quick if clumsily executed backtrack:

Though the campaign later argued that he hadn’t said it, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s chief campaign strategist told reporters this morning that Sen. Barack Obama “can’t win the general election.”

Mark Penn made the comment during a conference call in which the Clinton campaign and two of her supporters — Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell and Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter — argued that Obama has sent Pennsylvanians a bad signal by allegedly downplaying the importance of that state’s April 22 primary. They made the case that this memo from Obama campaign manager David Plouffe (which Nutter said the author should be fired for writing), would come back to haunt Obama in the fall if he is the Democratic nominee.

Here is what Penn said. We’re posting a little more than 2 minutes of his opening statement because we want to make sure you get the full context. It’s in the last 20 seconds or so that he says Obama “really can’t win the general election.” As you’ll hear, he also says that “if Barack Obama can’t win” in Pennsylvania, “how could he win the general election?”

In fact, polls show that Obama would beat Republican John McCain right now in Pennsylvania — that (right now…before the heavy remaining-primary artillery is unleashed) Obama is electable.

Meanwhile, even though reporters heard Penn say it with their own ears, a Clinton official later insisted they had not heard what they heard — that Obama was unelectable (before the Clinton campaign had finished making him unelectable):

Later, a reporter asks what he meant. Clinton campaign communications chief Howard Wolfson jumps in to say that “Mark did not say that.”

Then Penn says that if Obama doesn’t win the Pennsylvania primary, it “raises serious questions” about whether he can win the general election.

(Click on the story link and you can actually hear the audio).

The emerging Clinton strategy is a risky one, indeed.

Obama will likely face a barrage of negative campaigning and be caught in a Catch 22: if he doesn’t respond and deal with it, he looks weak or charges are believed — and his poll numbers go down. If he loses his cool, he can make fatal mistake or look like a mean guy or like any other gut-fighting politician.

The problems are:

(1) If Clinton wins the nomination this way, she will most likely have split the 1960s-forged strong relationship between the Democratic Party and African-American voters.

(2) If she does win the election, she’ll have Republicans against her and a chunk of the Democratic Party. Unless she wins in a landslide, 1990s-2000s polarization will continue worse than ever.

Writes The New Republic’s Jonathan Chait:

As I said, Obama was running well ahead of Clinton in head-to-head matchups a few weeks ago, and now they’re tied. After several more weeks of Clinton reinforcing McCain’s message against Obama, Clinton will probably be performing better than Obama against McCain. This is the point I made in my TRB column. She needs to convince the remaining uncommitted superdelegates to split for her by about a 2-to-1 margin. The only way she can get a split like that is if she can persuasively argue that Obama is unelectable. And the only way she can do that is to make him unelectable. Some people have treated this as an unfortunate byproduct of Clinton’s decision to continue her campaign. It’s actually a central element of the strategy. Penn is already saying he’s unelectable. It’s not true, but by the time the convention rolls around, it may well be.

My DD’s Jonathan Singer on Penn’s comments about Obama:

If this charge were not so absurd on its face it would merit a long-winded takedown, here and elsewhere. However, in short I’d point readers to a couple of things: One, state-by-state polling showing Barack Obama to be at least as strong a competitor to John McCain as Hillary Clinton, as well as national polling that quite consistently shows Obama either leading McCain or tied with him (and running at least as well as Clinton against McCain); and two, the analysis of non-partisan election tracker Marc Ambinder, who doesn’t have a dog in this race and generally calls these things fairly and evenly.

Jules Crittenden:

Obama can’t win the general election, says Clinton strategist. They keep up with this ugly truth thing, sooner or later they won’t be Dems anymore. Speaking of ugly truth, bad news, Hill. Unless McCain’s heart starts skipping beats or he goes seriously Manchurian, you won’t be winning the general either. He’s got the moderates and you, or Obama, will bring the con-cons around.

Mark Ambinder:

Of course Obama can win the general election; it’s illogical to generalize from the vote totals alone, as I and others have pointed out. Yes, Obama’s Gary Hart-Jesse Jackson coalition is untested in modern general elections, but we live in hyperpartisan times, Democrats have an enormous partisan identification identification advantage, and Democrats are much more enthusiastic about their candidate than Republicans are. There’s just no way to justify Penn’s assertion from reading a poll.

It is worth pointing out that several polls suggest that Obama may lose white working class voters, especially men, to John McCain. That’s something to keep an eye on. But it’s not a reason to pre-emptively declare that he can’t win the general election.

Cartoon by RJ Matson, Roll Call