The Note: Genuine Draft

April 15, 2008 -- What do you say we settle this thing with a friendly game of beer pong?

History will record that the Democratic primary campaign descended into full pander-a-thon mode somewhere in Pennsylvania, around the time that one millionaire senator took a shot of Crown Royal and another (having polished off a Yuengling and gone gutter surfing at a bowling alley) made fun of her for it.

It's silly season, but behind this fight over who's the real man (or woman) is a battle for an authenticity that has -- for various reasons -- eluded both Democrats to this point in the race.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton -- trailing in the race -- needed a game-changer, and her campaign (rightly) thinks that every day consumed by the "bitter" remarks is a day where Sen. Barack Obama is on the defensive.

Clinton, D-N.Y., is pushing for another such day now, with a TV ad that quotes "real" Pennsylvanians in specific denunciations of Obama. This is piling on: "I was very insulted by Barack Obama. . . . It just shows how out of touch Barack Obama is. . . . The good people of Pennsylvania deserve a lot better than what Barack Obama said."

(Remember the quaint old days where they dared not speak each other's names in advertisements? Neither do we.)

If Clinton is overplaying her hand, it's probably because it's the first time she's gotten decent cards in a while. It just might be that a line has been crossed, signaling a free-for-all that will make a drinking contest look tame.

"The Democratic campaign was awash in booze -- and boos -- Monday as Barack Obama fought to get past his clumsy remarks about small-town America -- and polling suggested he was," Michael Saul and Michael McAuliff write in the New York Daily News.

Indeed, the first polling glimpse suggests that the storyline hasn't taken hold. The Quinnipiac University poll out Tuesday morning has the race at 50-44 Clinton over Obama -- just where it was a week ago (and with essentially no change in Obama's favorability rating, despite the saturation coverage).

Per the poll, "26 percent of Clinton supporters would switch to Arizona Sen. John McCain, the Republican, in November if Obama were the Democratic nominee. Nineteen percent of Obama backers would switch to McCain if Clinton were the Democratic nominee."

Still, the race has moved since last week -- just maybe in Clinton's direction (though this whole exercise is still likely to be too little too late).

"The dust-up over Sen. Barack Obama's remarks about rural America is forcing both Democratic candidates to talk about guns, abortion and family values -- issues that don't win them many votes among the social conservatives they are trying hard to court in the Rust Belt, South and West," Nick Timiraos and Amy Chozick write in The Wall Street Journal.

"Sen. Obama has tried to reframe the conversation by defending his claim that Americans are bitter and frustrated, but Sen. Clinton has used his assertion that Americans 'cling to guns or religion' to trumpet her own credentials as a friend of hunters and sportsmen."

ABC's Jake Tapper found Pennsylvania voters who are definitely thinking anew about Obama. Some quotes: "I think it sounded like he was up here and everybody else -- the working class, the lower class people -- were down here." "If faith is so important to him, why is it negative for small-town Americans or small-town Pennsylvanians to cling to their religion?" "Now I'll go with Hillary Clinton."

Four days into the controversy, Obama on Monday for the first time said his comments "may have been a mistake," adding at an Associated Press luncheon: "But I will never walk away from the larger point that I was trying to make and made in the past," he said, ABC's Sunlen Miller reports.

Obama sought to explain himself further in a session with the editorial boards of the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News: "My syntax was poor but as a wise older woman who was talking to me the other day said, 'You misspoke but you didn't lie,' and I think that's how I feel about it."

Per the Inquirer's Larry Eichel, Thomas Fitzgerald, and Larry King: "The thoughts that ran together, he said, were that people who feel abandoned find stability in their traditions but also are vulnerable to politicians exploiting wedge issues."

Obama is still explaining himself: "Rather than address this controversy in a single speech, Obama has so far chosen to give evolving explanations of his remarks since Friday, and his campaign insists no such speech is in the offing," Newsday's Nia Malika-Henderson writes.

Here's guessing Obama hasn't ended the controversy yet. Certainly not now that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has joined Clinton and Obama in the fray. "I think those comments are elitist," McCain said at the AP gathering.

AP's Ron Fournier sums up Obama's problem as one of caricature. "Obama is an elitist who patronizes working-class voters. Like the rest, Obama's caricature is a gross exaggeration of an actual flaw," he writes. "It's a caricature problem -- if not a character problem -- and it hardened against Obama when word leaked of remarks he made at a private fundraiser in San Francisco."

Leaving aside the spectacle of what's now three wealthy US senators arguing over who's an elitist, the tonal shift is unlikely to end well for Democrats.

"Some of the campaign's most acerbic exchanges -- sparked by Obama's comment at a San Francisco fund-raiser earlier this month about 'bitter' working-class Pennsylvanians who 'cling to guns or religion' -- have set a strident tone for the final stretch before next Tuesday's high-stakes vote," Scott Helman writes in The Boston Globe.

"The comments on Monday reflected the strategy of Mr. McCain and his advisers -- similar to Mrs. Clinton's tactics -- to portray Mr. Obama as out of touch with ordinary Americans, particularly the white working-class voters whom Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain are wooing for November," Elisabeth Bumiller and Jeff Zeleny write in The New York Times.

The broader context: "The presidential candidates are in the middle of an escalating battle for Catholic voters -- most immediately between Senators Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary, but also between the two parties as they look ahead to the general election," The New York Times' Robin Toner writes.

"This struggle is an important part of the backdrop for Pope Benedict XVI's trip to the United States starting Tuesday, which has drawn gestures of respect from all of the presidential contenders."

The Boston Globe's Peter Canellos sees trouble signs for Democrats among working-class voters: "Since 1980, that relationship has eroded and now it's in tatters. Democrats have lost significant support among the working class. They have made big gains among upper-middle-class voters," he writes. "Nonetheless, many Democratic politicians can't seem to acknowledge that the rupture is based on economics."