The Clintons are all over Barack Obama because of his quip about small town people often displaying dismaying bitterness about their economic (and social) plight. Obama had the kernel of an idea that he should have taken back to his brain trust to smooth out the wrinkles and develop into a strong theme, for clearly he has struck a nerve and his opponents, the Clintons, are trying to push him around to the wrong side of it. Obama no more disparages the small town people than he disparages big town people or any people, he just noticed the symptoms displayed by people who are not riding confidently into the future or even hesitantly. They are "left behind" in a way that Republicans and desperate Clintons could never understand.

Obama should take this one by the horns and show Americans that their hopes and fears, their bitterness and their hunkering down are the result of careless and heedless Republican social-darwinist social policy ... that, indeed, these people have been left to fend for themselves.

JB