It’s fully predictable that the current primary debate will galvanize public attention to this Wednesday’s night debate between Obama and Clinton. After all, Clinton has seized on the specifics of Obama’s initial speech as her last great hope to hang on and win a substantially wide victory in Pennsylvania eight days from now and turn the tide of superdelegate endorsements that has steadily leaked away. I’d also expect that she has some other late-inning surprise yet to be unveiled, though she may forgo using that if she feels this is the better ticket to overcome the long odds against her.

I also don’t think Obama intends to suspend his own innovation and determination to frame the debate as he originally intended, which means all the ingredients are present for a supercharged evening. I’ve found an overwhelming number of reference points on the internets over the weekend, each of them deserving of consideration and comment. But to do that would require hours of blogging and too much information to well absorb. Instead, I’ll simply direct you to the best I’ve found and leave most of it to you to digest and formulate your own opinions, keeping my own additions sparse.

For starters, here’s Obama, now peaking in full fight mode:

Barack Obama launched into a fiery offensive this evening in a speech before the United Steelworkers Union in Steelton, Pa., in responding to criticisms about his “bitter” remarks — going after Sen. Hillary Clinton in a way rarely seen over the course of this campaign.

“Shame on her,” Obama said, echoing one of Clinton’s own atacks on him. “Shame on her, she knows better.”

Obama said he was disappointed with her for her response and then launched into a new criticism of Clinton over her recent admission of being a hunter, and compared her sarcastically to Annie Oakley.

“She’s running around talking about how this is an insult to sportsmen, how she values the Second Amendment, she’s talking like she’s Annie Oakley! Hillary Clinton’s out there like she’s on the duck blind every Sunday, she’s packin’ a six shooter! C’mon! She knows better. That’s some politics being played by Hillary Clinton. I want to see that picture of her out there in the duck blinds.”

Obama said he is amazed and surprised by this “dust-up” but admitted that his words were chosen badly. He said he deeply regretted … that his words were misinterpreted.

He also defended himself, bringing up his own devotion to faith and his stance on the Second Amendment -– and he responded to the idea that he is an elitist.

“Now, I am the first to admit that some of the words I chose, I chose badly,” he said, “So I’m not a perfect man and the words I chose, I chose badly. They were subject to misinterpretation, they were subject to be twisted and I regret that. I regret that deeply. But when people suggest that somehow I was demeaning religion when I know that I’m a man of deep faith, somebody who in my own life has held on to faith, held on to my confidence in God during times of trial and tribulation, then it sounds like there’s some politics being played. When people suggest that I was somehow being elitist and demeaning hunters when I have repeatedly talked about the tradition that people pass on from generation to generation, hunters and sportsmen, and how I have consistently spoken about my respect for the Second Amendment, when people try to suggest that I was demeaning those traditions, then it sounds like there’s some politics that’s being played.”

He reiterated what he said was the intended message of his original comments at the fundraiser in San Francisco.

“And what really burns me up is when people suggest that me saying that folks are mad, they are angry, they are bitter after 25, 30 years of seeing jobs shipped out, pensions not fulfilled, healthcare lost, the notion that people are surprised and are suggesting that I’m out of touch because I spoke honestly about people’s frustrations, that tells me there’s some politics going on,” he said.

There’s more at the link above.

While Bob Shrum critiques his phrasing on yesterday’s Meet The Press, he defends Obama’s central point:

MR. SHRUM: Well, he’s not running for sociologist in chief, he’s running for president. So I think he wishes he hadn’t said it quite this way. I think he wishes he’d said it the same way he did the second day around.

Now, the truth is, James and I, starting 25 years ago in focus groups in Pennsylvania and polling etc., heard a lot of anger, a lot of frustration. Jobs did go up in Pennsylvania when Clinton was president, but not in places like I was born in–Connellsville, Uniontown, those small towns that have been abandoned. So there’s an element of truth in what he said. But the underlying question here is whether McCain and Clinton can tag him with the term elitist, which is what they want. I mean, here’s a guy who just finished paying his student loans, who was raised by a single mother and his grandparents, who doesn’t know what it’s like to have $100 million. So I think Senator Clinton has to be a little careful in pushing this because, frankly, she hasn’t lived in the real world for 25 years; she’s lived in a bubble. At a certain point I think it’ll come back on her, but right now it’s a blessing because it got the whole attention of the press off Bill Clinton’s rewinding and replaying the tale of Tuzla, the tape that came back out of the network vaults about Mrs. Clinton’s visit to Bosnia.

Even better is the mastery displayed by Robert Creamer, who turns the gunsight back to where most Democrats want it to be: on McCain.

McCain doesn’t lack “chutzpah.” Yesterday his campaign actually accused Barack Obama of being an “elitist” for saying that it’s not surprising that people in small Midwestern towns are bitter after seeing their standard of living systematically destroyed over the last three decades.

Damn right they’re bitter; they have good reasons to be. And most of those reasons are the economic and trade policies that have - and continue to be - championed by George Bush and John McCain.

The McCain campaign is managed by a cadre of Washington-insider special interest lobbyists. He and his current wife are estimated to be worth about $100 million. He reportedly owns eight houses. His let-them-eat-cake economic policies are based on George Bush’s failed radical conservative “you’re on your own buddy” philosophy. One after another he supported trade agreements that protect the rights of corporations, but ignore the rights of labor, and have devastated one Pennsylvania community after another. He gets most of his campaign cash from the wealthiest corporate interests around. And he has the gall to call Barack Obama an “elitist”?

This is the same Barack Obama who spent years of his life organizing out-of-work steelworkers on the south side of Chicago - people just like those who live in Allentown or Erie or Pittsburgh or the Monongehela Valley in western Pennsylvania. He stood shoulder to shoulder with them, sat at their kitchen tables, spent hours in their church basements.

He didn’t do those things as a famous candidate, but as a community organizer being paid $8,000 a year by a coalition of churches. You don’t build a resume or a client list organizing unemployed steel workers. You do it because you respect the people and you care about justice.

In fact, the trademark of Barack Obama’s campaign for president is the honest, respectful way he talks to everyone — and stands up for everyday Americans.

I highly recommend you go to that link as the rest provides a classic way to frame the fight without promoting further Democratic division.

And how have influential Pennsylvanians responded?

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Two major newspapers chose the moment yesterday to endorse Obama. The Lehigh Valley, where the cities of Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton reside - along with about 40 small towns of under 10,000 - is considered the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution in this country. Yet it’s seen its industrial base eroded with corporations moving to Asia, so it’s precisely the type of region Obama was referring to.

Its most influential paper, The Morning Call, is one of the top 100 newspapers in the country by circulation. And Sunday, here’s the call it put out:

Pennsylvania’s Democratic voters on April 22 will choose between two candidates in the presidential primary. Both are qualified to become the nation’s chief executive. They have more similarities than differences. But, The Morning Call recommends that Sen. Barack Obama be nominated, and we offer three reasons.

The first is the quality of his campaign. It has surprised the experts by moving him close to the finish line against bigger, more established political machines and it has communicated his basic ideas well.

The second is his message of hope and change. It conveys a vision of the nation’s future that is in tune with the tenor and consensus of most Americans.

And third, and most important for the Democratic Party at this moment in history, there is Sen. Obama’s ability to inspire.

The other Democratic candidate on the ballot here, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, has focused their criticism on Sen. Obama’s relatively short resume. But there is nothing naive or amateurish about the campaign he has assembled. We wish he (and Sen. Clinton) had paid more attention to the Lehigh Valley, of course. It is Pennsylvania’s third-biggest metropolitan area and it deserves better than one visit by him and zero by Sen. Clinton this deep into the campaign.

But, he has done a good job of building a Pennsylvania organization. It has had to climb a steep hill, given that Sen. Clinton has the biggest share of high-profile Democratic officials’ endorsements. Using the Internet, e-mail and old-fashioned storefront headquarters, he continues to build a corps of supporters here. And, at least so far, his has done a better job than the Clinton campaign of keeping the campaign positive.

In fact, while both candidates are members of the same U.S. Senate, Sen. Obama is the one who has distinguished himself as the better agent for changing Washington. Remember, on the issues, the differences between the Obama and Clinton platforms are thin or non-existent. He has set himself apart by enunciating a vision of a different America, one that people recognize as resting on the nation’s founding principles. His vision calls upon ‘’the better angels of our nature'’ just as Abraham Lincoln did in 1861.

The rest of it is here.

One of the claims Team Clinton made over the weekend is that Obama’s appeal doesn’t extend to America’s Jewish communities, and the Morning Call’s endorsement definitely undercuts that claim as it’s hard to find a more avid supporter of Israel than its Jewish publisher, Sam Zell. Zell may be more conservative than progressives would like, but as he also owns the LA Times and maintains cordial relations with more liberal Jewish moguls, his paper’s support underscores the fact that a number of great influences have no fears about Obama’s foreign policy prescriptions.

The other paper to endorse Obama yesterday was the Times Tribune, which comes from Scranton, the area Clinton claims as her childhood summer home, where her grandparents lived. The whole of it:

All of the myriad issues facing the next president of the United States coalesce into a single question: Who can best lead?

For Pennsylvania Democrats, the best answer in the April 22 primary is Barack Obama.

In a nomination campaign that has defied convention, Mr. Obama has energized an entire generation of voters that, for the most part, otherwise had checked out of political participation. That, at least, portends a new approach to governance that can help to dissipate the political miasma that has engulfed Washington at least since the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is an extremely talented politician who already has secured a unique place in U.S. political history. She repeatedly has proved her political death notices to be premature. She also has demonstrated that she is a master of public policy. And — this is not and should not be taken lightly in an area that prides itself on family and a tradition of supporting its own — the Rodham family has deep Scranton roots.

But Mrs. Clinton also is a political lightning rod. There is little doubt that a second Clinton presidency would further the deep divisiveness that characterizes American politics — a divisiveness that dug itself deep during the Clinton presidency, and even deeper during the Bush-Cheney years.

The first task for the next president is to get past that. And it might not be possible if the presidential cycle goes Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton.

In a sense, Mr. Obama’s clear lead in the national race itself is proof of a changing party and a changing electorate. A generation ago, it would have been inconceivable for two history-making candidates — either the first African-American or first woman to be a major-party presidential nominee — to be locked in a nomination battle this late in the game. Party leaders simply would not have allowed it, and Mr. Obama would have had to “wait his turn.”

Mr. Obama decided not to wait his turn, however, and neither have Democratic voters. Democratic registration and voter turnout have soared in most of the states where he has been in play, including in Pennsylvania.

Mrs. Clinton has dismissed much of what Mr. Obama has had to say as “just words.” But they are words that millions find inspirational. Therefore, they are words that can be translated into action.

On policy matters, there are more similarities than differences between the candidates. The real difference lies in their likely ability to build the consensus needed to realize their vision. The advantage, in that regard, clearly lies with Mr. Obama.

That paper’s been family owned for 113 years. The national columnists it publishes, cumulatively, would be moderately right, despite including Ellen Goodman. Yet in researching it, I found some interesting recent editorials, one from a national columnist - Richard Cohen - and another from an in-house editorialist. Here’s Cohen from 5 days ago, offering some interesting insights and advice to Obama. It’s too lengthy and interesting to quote out of context so just go read it.

The second is from Chris Kelly:

“We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.”

— The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Clean-cut, smartly dressed and soft-spoken, Michael Rovinsky hardly looks like a barbarian at the gates, but he’d probably be comfortable with the characterization.

Young, educated and passionate about politics, the 24-year-old vaccine specialist from Archbald is determined to have his government reflect his ideals, goals and needs, and he’s not willing to wait a day past Nov. 4. He has no time for lingering in the past, no patience for empty populism and no use for self-congratulating nostalgia.

Despite all that, he’s a Democrat.

“I want to shake things up,” Mr. Rovinksy told me, echoing many who turned out for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama’s Tuesday rally at the Dunmore Community Center.

“We can’t solve today’s problems with ideas that worked in the ’90s. We need real change.”

Ah, change, maybe the most overused, underdefined word of this marathon primary season. Intoned countless times in countless contexts, it has been elevated to a deafening mantra by the Obama camp. A gooey word with little independent meaning, “change” lately has hardened into “new.”

New priorities. New ideas. New direction. New party. Now.

It’s that last bit that has many of the Democratic party elite rushing to reinforce the ramparts. Where Obama backers see a heroic reformer in the tradition of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the elites see a pesky heretic who has more in common with Dr. King’s namesake, the chief instigator of the Protestant Reformation.

The party of populism is becoming a bit too populist for the liking of the fat cats whose money and connections have always had the final say. When they read about the $131 million Mr. Obama raised over the past three months — mostly at $50 a pop over the Internet from donors like Mr. Rovinsky — they don’t see encouraging evidence that the Democratic party is growing, but warning signs that it’s growing too democratic.

The disconnection notice big donors sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after she dared suggest that superdelegates should follow the will of the voters was the act of a spooked hierarchy lashing out. They were planning on a coronation, not a contest, and they’re not about to cancel the cotillion over some smooth ruffian looking to crash the party.

The rest of that one is here.

Notably, the other centerpoint the GOP intends to use against Obama, his Reverend Wright, was sermonizing without apology while attacking Fox News pundits, and Fox News, predictably, responded with this opening paragraph in its report:

Rev. Jeremiah Wright told a congregation in Norfolk, Va., on Sunday that reporters sneaked into a private funeral service a day before, in which he blasted America’s founding fathers for slavery and white supremacy and received standing ovations for attacking FOX News for covering his anti-American sermons.

Apparently, attacking slavery, white supremacy, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly are traitorous actions in the Constitutional lawbooks that Fox News has authored to fit its pre-Emancipation views. The more the country hears Wright speak, the more they’re likely to understand that his aim at centuries-old targets is really on the mark and, while it’s an uncomfortable part of our history, he’s not leading some extremist movement that threatens anyone today with anything more than verbal rebuke. Or, in simpler terms: he’s no big deal.

And speaking of media critique on this issue, Pam Spaulding added this excellent note:

I mistakenly turned on CNN while away, and there the news bleaters were, talking about this proto-scandal of Obama using the term bitter to describe blue collar voters disillusioned by the turn of the economic tide against them, as finding solace in clinging “to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them….”

As this was breathlessly reported on at least twice while I had the TV on, I turned to Kate and said — “is there nothing else to report?” and flipped it off. I was serious — aside from the predictable reaction that he is being elitist or out of touch, no one with any credibility can say that what Obama said wasn’t true. It appears to me, as I was not willing to watch any more news over the weekend while away, that the issue was less about the word “bitter” than Obama’s politically blunt truth-telling.

For instance, did any reporters do any digging to see whether incidents of hate crimes, discrimination and such increases in these blue-collar towns when joblessness rises? Is there a correlation between economic discomfort and a lashing out at the “other?” I’m pretty sure this is likely, and I’m sure that Obama was making an observation many do about these situations. His real “crime” — one not articulated in the reporting I saw — was the fact that he was calling out the low-information voter demographic, those who are swayed by emotional appeals to the base biases and instincts by Republicans (and of late the Clinton campaign).

Yep, no journalists did the background to determine whether Obama was right or wrong about such ‘lashing out at “the other”.’ Most set their cameras on auto-pilot instead of trying to determine the facts. Yet, coincidentally, Nick Kristof today, in discussing how global warming leads to unreasonable violence in impoverished countries (specifically, the execution of ‘witches’ deemed responsible), included this passage:

There is evidence that European witch-burnings in past centuries may also have resulted from climate variations and the resulting crop failures, economic distress and search for scapegoats. Emily Oster, a University of Chicago economist, tracked witchcraft trials and weather in Western Europe between 1520 and 1770 and found a close correlation: colder weather led to more crackdowns on witches.

In particular, Europe’s “little ice age” led to a sharp cooling in the late 1500s, and that corresponds to a renewal in witchcraft trials after a long lull. And there’s also micro-evidence: in one area, a brutally cold May in 1626 led outraged peasants to call for punishment of witches thought responsible. Some scholars have also argued that the Salem witch trials occurred after a particularly cold winter and economically difficult period.

The point is that climate change will have consequences that will be difficult to foresee but will go far beyond weather or economics. There is abundant evidence that economic stress and crop failures — as climate scientists anticipate in poor countries — can lead to violence and upheavals.

In the United States, for example, some historians have found correlations between recessions or declines in farm values and increased lynchings of blacks.

My, my, my, imagine that. It’s doubtful that such occurrences were part of Pennsylvania history, but it certainly lends some credence to one of Obama’s most criticized points: righteous anger gets redirected at those least responsible for economic hardship. And Obama thinks it’s important to channel that anger back into political action that alleviates the hardships.

Why should we take offense at that?

By the Wednesday night debate, I fully expect Americans and rural Pennsylvanians will reach well-informed conclusions that the out of touch are those status quo defenders who don’t get why Obama’s headed to the Oval Office.

Can we hear an ‘Amen!’ ?

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