Flap

As night fell on Friday, one of those instant controversies was burning up the Internet, the fax machines and emails from various campaigns and political organizations, and feeding cable news fulminators, concerning remarks Barack Obama made at a San Francisco fundraiser days ago, but quoted in an online piece at Huffington Post earlier Friday.

Here's a link to the comment, the fulminations and Obama's video rejoinder. (Here's a print version as well, but the video is worth seeing.) Judge for yourself. (And early reaction from a CNN panel, which has apparently been superceded by other vultures.) My own view: Obama not only pivoted on this remark to make a stronger point, he looked and sounded strong in doing so. It could hurt him; it could also be a big statement in his favor. Or it could die by the end of the weekend.

The major harm so far: it takes attention away from Bill Clinton's latest absurdity. As the Note put it, BC brought up the Bosnia Snipergate affair again,"to cram four falsehoods into 23 words: His wife, he said, "one time late at night when she was exhausted, misstated and immediately apologized for it, what happened to her in Bosnia in 1995." Where to start? If his telling is accurate, it depends on what the definition of "one time," "late at night," and "immediately apologized" is. (And it was 1996, not 1995.)
"Hillary Clinton actually made the comments numerous times, including at an event in Iowa on Dec. 29, and an event on Feb. 29 and one time -- bright and early in the morning -- on March 17," ABC's Sarah Amos and Eloise Harper report. "Sen. Clinton wasn't as quick with her apology as President Clinton may remember either. In fact, it took a week for her to eventually correct herself, first talking to the Philadelphia Inquirer editorial board on March 24 and again apologizing the next day in Greensboro, N.C."

Meanwhile, the Mark Penn affair continued, with Clintonian Paul Begala comparing Penn to Rumsfeld. I also ran across a very interesting statistic about PA: some 45% of the new registrants for the Democratic primary are in the Philadelphia area. That could be very good news for Obama.

But...we'll see where this latest flap goes. Obama enthusiasts online and off are worried that it could sink him in PA, and sink him, period. I'm getting to be a fatalist about all this. If this country is still so twisted that these buttons can still be pushed, then it's all over anyway. There's no hope for anybody's future.
On the plus side, he pivoted well on Rev. Wright and won that one. On the minus, there are voters in PA who still believe he's a Muslim and won't vote for him because he didn't put his hand on his heart during the Star Spangled Banner. (This is why I can't even make campaign phone calls anymore.)