Across the Pond: the US elections blog

Hillary Clinton believes that Barack Obama has finally handed her a real opportunity to win the Democratic nomination after his comments that “bitter” small-town Americans “cling to guns or religion”, perhaps the greatest blunder of his presidential campaign.

Mr Obama and a reinvigorated Mrs Clinton appear before 1,000 Pennsylvania steelworkers this morning with the former First Lady’s aides convinced for the first time in weeks that they have an issue to undermine her rival fatally.

Mrs Clinton was buoyed yesterday by Republican strategists who declared that Mr Obama’s remarks would become a general election “nightmare” for the Illinois senator if he became the Democratic nominee because they made him look like a liberal elitist.

A race like a crackpot Dynasty

The contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton matches any fiction

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BACKGROUND

• The ascent of Barack Obama, Mr Charisma

• Decay, jobs and guns fall under the spotlight

• Free trade: Clinton/Obama's mistakes

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Mrs Clinton activated the entire might of her campaign machine to exploit the remarks, which she called “demeaning”, “elitist” and “out of touch”. Aides handed out “I’m not bitter” stickers and surrogates took to the airwaves to fan the flames.

It emerged on Saturday that Mr Obama had, before an audience in the liberal bastion of San Francisco, tried to explain his trouble winning over white, working-class voters, the fabled “Reagan Democrats” who will be crucial in the general election.

He said: “You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And it’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Mrs Clinton seized on the comments, believing that Mr Obama had at last committed an error big enough to change the dynamic of their race.

“The people of faith I know don’t ‘cling’ to religion because they’re bitter,” she said. “People embrace faith not because they are materially poor but because they are spiritually rich.

“People don’t need a president who looks down on them. They need a president who stands up for them.”

In a clear attempt to further appeal to working class voters, Mrs Clinton downed a beer and a shot of whiskey yesterday at a campaign stop in Indiana. She will still have a steep uphill battle to wrench the nomination from Mr Obama’s grasp. He has an insurmountable lead among elected delegates and it is almost impossible for her to erase his popular vote lead after the primary process ends in June.

Yet neither Mr Obama nor Mrs Clinton will win enough elected delegates to clinch the nomination. Their battle thus lies in the hands of the 800 super-delegates: the congressmen, senators, governors and senior officials who are free to choose either candidate. Mrs Clinton’s only real hope of defeating Mr Obama is to convince a sizeable majority of uncommitted super-delegates that her rival is too great a risk against John McCain and the Republican attack machine to win the general election.

The “guns and religion” controversy goes to the heart of that argument, because it will inevitably be used by Republicans to portray Mr Obama as an effete liberal who does not understand real people. Such tactics have proved devastating against previous nominees such as John Kerry.

Mr Obama’s comments also speak to a narrative that Mrs Clinton has begun to successfully establish about his candidacy: that he has limited appeal beyond wealthy, well-educated Democrats, African-Americans and young voters. It also gives her an opening to court further blue-collar voters in Pennsylvania and in Indiana, which votes on May 6. Big victories in both Midwestern states could give pause to many super-delegates who are at present leaning toward Mr Obama.

The controversy over the incendiary remarks of Mr Obama’s former pastor had already allowed critics to question the extent to which he shared the values of ordinary Americans.

Mary Matalin, a Republican strategist, said: “The damage here is [because] it reflects the kind of Democrat who loses at the presidential level.”

In a sign of how concerned Mr Obama and his aides are over the controversy, they spent the weekend calling super-delegates to reassure them about his electibility. Mr Obama expressed regret on Saturday, but stood largely by the comments.

“I didn’t say it as well as I could have,” he said. “Obviously, if I worded things in a way that made people offended, I deeply regret that.

“The underlying truth of what I said remains, which is simply that people who have seen their way of life upended because of economic distress are frustrated and rightfully so.”

Killer quotes

"I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it”
— John Kerry on his funding votes for the Iraq war

"And I want to call a hemispheric summit just as soon after the 20th of January as possible to fight that war [on drugs]”
— Michael Dukakis, part of a passionless 1988 debate answer on how he would react if his wife was raped and murdered

"With Swiss”
— John Kerry asking for Swiss cheese with his Philadelphia cheese steak, the ultimate “effete liberal” request

"There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford Administration”
— Gerald Ford, the President, in a 1976 debate against Jimmy Carter, a statement ridiculed for making him look out of touch

"You know I still remember the lullabies that I heard as a child, [singing] ‘Look for the Union Label’ ”
— Al Gore trying to impress a crowd of labour union workers. The lullaby was not actually written until he was 27

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