The Trail Less Traveled

Obama has come under fire from Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton , presumed Republican nominee John McCain and others since the liberal Web site Huffington Post revealed last Friday that Obama told an audience at a San Francisco fundraiser that rural Pennsylvanians “get bitter” and “cling” to guns, religion, opposition to trade and distaste for other groups because of their economic situation.

“It was a little thing,” said Bill Scheffer, a 77-year-old career truck driver from Bedford. “It doesn’t matter.”

But Scheffer describes his voting preference as “Anybody but Obama.”

Here in South-central Pennsylvania, where many small town voters believe in their right to bear arms and are just as fervent about their religion, Obama’s comments might be expected to evoke uniform condemnation. But even some supporters of other candidates are willing to cut the Illinois senator a little slack.

Cliff Rowell, a Republican, agreed that the comments have received too much scrutiny.

“I think they made a mountain out of a molehill,” he said.

But Mark Treider of York, a commercial pilot who flew F-4s in the Air Force, said he was offended by being stereotyped as a “hayseed.”

“He came flat out and said that people in the middle of the country, and Pennsylvania, they tote guns, they go to church they’re xenophobes, they’re racists and things like that and that’s simply not true and I think it’s an underestimate of what the country’s really all about,” Treider said. “The working class people around here are what makes this country,” he said.

Treider re-registered as a Democrat this year so he could vote for Clinton as part of conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos” effort to keep the Democratic primary competitive.

But he also says Clinton would make a better president than Obama.

With an electorate already heavily polarized, any shift among Democrats from Obama to Clinton will be at the margins of the small set of Pennsylvania voters who remain undecided, according to Muhlenberg College professor Chris Borick, who conducts polling in the Lehigh Valley and across the state.

“It will play or have an effect on the margin. If you look at it, a lot of the voters who would be most offended by that comment are most likely going to support Hillary Clinton anyway. That’s not to say, again, that moving a few of those five or six [percent] undecideds in one direction wouldn’t be affected by a comment like that,” Borick said. “But the general election it would be interesting to see, especially among independents.”

But for the nominating contest will almost certainly be decided by the unpledged party leaders and elected officials who are “superdelegates” to the Democratic convention in August. And the latest flap could cost Obama public support if Democrats who rely on Republican votes to win re-election come to believe that Obama is more detested by their GOP constituents than is Clinton.

Arizona Republican Rep. Trent Franks said in a Capitol Hill interview on Monday that the Democratic campaign has served to improve Clinton’s standing, if only marginally, with some Republicans.

“ Barack Obama has done something unparalleled in modern political history: He has made Hillary Clinton almost seem like she has a scintilla of reason,” he said. “It is so surreal it beggars description on my part.”

Democrats are not likely too many cues from Republicans, but they are divided on the significance of Obama’s remarks.

Rep. Brad Miller , D-N.C., an uncommitted superdelegate, defended Obama in an interview with CQ Politics on Monday.

“I think Sen. Obama has already said pretty clearly that he understands the frustrations of rural America,” Miller said. “He made a valid point inartfully.”

Miller said he expects Obama to be the Democratic nominee.

Rep. Marcy Kaptur , D-Ohio, said she wondered whether Obama actually said the words attributed to him until fellow Rep. Tim Ryan , D-Ohio, told her an audio tape exists.

Kaptur’s reaction: “In a word,” she said, “Revealing.”

“His remarks seem counter to other statements that he has made,” Kaptur said. “If you were [Clinton] wouldn’t you go after him on this?”

Kaptur, an uncommitted superdelegate whose district went narrowly for Clinton, said Obama could suffer damage in rural-state primaries even after the upcoming series of industrial-state contests in April and May. But, she said, there could be a silver lining for Obama.

“It shows that he’s human, so maybe there is a good side to this,” she said.

In Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, which many experts view as a microcosm of the state, Muhlenberg professor Borick says an Obama-McCain general election matchup would be fascinating because it would test the overall Democratic trend in the state, with McCain possibly appealing to Democrats and independents who favored Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.

Borick suggests that Obama risks alienating voters if he does not choose his words more carefully: “He’s got a problem in terms of sounding aloof.”