'For now" very foreboding and ominous sounding.

They found that it had no affect, but be very very scared.

Space Aliens have not invaded the Earth;

"For Now" OOOH, Be Very Very Scared.

only thing you fear is fear itself.
stop hitting my head with "ooooh, be very scared".

Her lead will grow.

Good read in the New York Times:

"Mr. Obama is not a hapless victim. His comments made for just the sort of rookie error that the Illinois senator is prone to make, and they have reinforced a feeling that he can be too aloof, or, yes, elitist. His attempts to explain himself have fallen flat, as have his insulting Annie Oakley jokes and demands to see pictures of Mrs. Clinton in a duck blind. Sexist jabs are as offensive as racist jabs."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/opinion/16wed1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Time for Clinton to go for the knockout.

"One caveat: Hillary is likely to continue running her ad hitting Obama over the comments between now and next Tuesday."

Right, since it obviously has been so effective so far.

Take a look at the trendlines:
http://www.pollster.com/08-PA-Dem-Pres-Primary.php

They still show Obama gaining support, albeit more slowly. Clinton, by contrast, has been losing support.

It would certainly count for something if the Hillary campaign succeeds in swinging some three percent of the vote with the comments.

yet, not enough to make a difference where it counts, in winning the nomination.

I guess "for now" means Hillary is intent on bludgeoning the bitter, gun-toting, bible-thumping rednecks with this "gaffe" until, dammit, they understand that Obama is an elitist who is looking down his nose at them (and Hillary isn't.)

Forget my Reposado Gold, I want what gotalife is swillin'. That must be some good isht. Puts hair on yer arse and a fire in yer belly! Wooo!

And fer cripes sake people, enough with the OH NOES GREG CAN HAS BIAS! nonsense. It's really tiresome.

Greg, you're threading the needle as best you can. When all this is over, I'm getting YOU a bottle of Reposado for your troubles and we'll have a barbecue. Good work to you and the whole crew.

If it isn't sticking as an issue and Hillary keeps hammering on it, who is it going to hurt? Is it suddenly going to dawn on people that they should be offended? Or are people going ot become bitter about someone telling them that they should be offended?

One caveat: Hillary is likely to continue running her ad hitting Obama over the comments between now and next Tuesday.

ahem, correction: Hillary is likely to continue running her ads hitting Obama over the comments between now and the end of the primary season. After that she will loan her ads to McCain.

Okay so here's where the whole thing's at, right?

Obama said it. We, here at TPM, all know about it. Hillary's using it. New polls are out and justly reviewed. It looks like it hasn't hurt. For now. But we won't know for sure for a week or so though.

So does that mean we can we let it go until then? I mean, until next week?

Or maybe for one day. Tomorrow, let's go for it. If nothing "new" burst onto the scene (Bill and Hillary continuing to bring it up is not "new".), then I bet we can, if we really set our minds to it. We can call it John McCain Thursday and spend the day attacking the Republicans.

What do you think? Could tomorrow be small town free? Oh hell, the debate. Never mind.

I said several times that this won't be that big a deal in the nomination fight. If Clinton goes too negative on it, it may backfire because a large part of the democratic constituency shares this prejuidice about small town/rural residents.

The repugs will use it in the general election, though, because it fits in with their strategy to position/frame whomever the democrats chose.

What does that say about Obama?

That he is RIGHT RIGHT RIGHT

If this is the worst that can be expected from "Bittergate," it would seem that minds are pretty well made up now and very little changes that. Note the trend in the Gallup tracking poll. Except for one day (April 11 - before Bittergate), Obama has been at or above 50% since April 6 - a span of two weeks in terms of the three-day track. In that period Clinton has not been above 43% Thus, for almost two weeks support for Obama nationally has been outside the margin of error.
Of course, we all know that Pa. is not entirely reflective of the nation for purposes of the primary election. It will be more inclined toward Clinton, but probably not into double digits. Also, one interesting item in the internals of the Pa. polls is that they consitently show Obama getting about 75% of the black vote, which is way below his aveerage elsewhere. Is this the Nutter factor, or failure of polls to be able to get accurate data in the black community?

Eric and team,
I agree it has made it much easier to quickly understand the significance, if any in the latest polls.
thanks for the great work.