My sense from yesterday's developments in the "small town" flap was that Hillary was doing her best to provoke a backlash. Now it looks like she's really jumping the shark. Via TPM Election Central, I see that she's field-testing her very own Romney-esque riff on huntin':
“You know, my dad took me out behind the cottage that my grandfather built on a little lake called Lake Winola outside of Scranton and taught me how to shoot when I was a little girl,” she said.
“You know, some people now continue to teach their children and their grandchildren. It’s part of culture. It’s part of a way of life. People enjoy hunting and shooting because it’s an important part of who they are. Not because they are bitter.” ...
"As I told you, my dad taught me how to shoot behind our cottage,” she said. “I have gone hunting. I am not a hunter. But I have gone hunting."
Please. This is what's known as a fastball over the middle of the plate for David Shuster and Chris Matthews. (Not to mention John McCain and the RNC.)
Actually, I think Theda Skocpol gets it about right in her letter to Josh Marshall:
I have been in meetings with the Clintons and their advisors where very clinical things were said in a very-detached tone about unwillingness of working class voters to trust government -- and Bill Clinton -- and about their unfortunate (from a Clinton perspective) proclivity to vote on life-style rather than economic issues. To see Hillary going absolutely over the top to smash Obama for making clearly more humanly sympathetic observations in this vein, is just amazing. Even more so to see her pretending to be a gun-toting non-elite. Give us a break!
Yes. Do.
I mean, this is still a Democratic primary we're talking about. I'm not sure how many superdelegates you'd win over by actually being a gun-toting non-elite. But I'm pretty sure the number you'd win over by posing as a gun-toting non-elite is a lot smaller.
--Noam Scheiber