I’ve been too busy to blog this week, which was a slightly calamitous one for the Clinton campaign. First she was forced to fire Mark Penn for supporting (after having people stuff money in his pockets) a Colombian free trade agreement that she opposes, causing some to wonder if she didn’t deserve a refund for the millions she has given the master of microtrends to explain the American people to her. Then she had to tell her tone-deaf husband (who also supports the Colombia deal, for much the same reasons) to shut up about sniper fire in Bosnia. He chose to bring the matter up again in Illinois, using it as an opportunity to bash the media while reminding people that his wife is getting older and maybe forgetting things at the end of the day, which is all the more disconcerting since her campaign would have us believe she is good to go at three am…

So they must have felt like they caught a huge break when a tape of Obama emerged yesterday in which he was caught telling backers (in California’s Marin County of all places) that people in small town Pennsylvania were “bitter” for having been shunted to the side of the American dream sweepstakes. Hillary seized on it immediately and will be talking about his remarks every day from now until the primary election (April 22). “Well, that’s not my experience,” she told a small crowd at Drexel University yesterday, doing that head-nodding thing she does when she is agreeing with herself.”As I travel around Pennsylvania, I meet people who are resilient, who are optimistic, who are positive. . . . They’re working hard every day for a better future for themselves and their children. Pennsylvanians don’t need a president who looks down on them. They need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them.”

Hillary embarked on a “listening tour” when she first ran for senator in New York, and folks in the hinterlands (some of the same land-time-forgot rust belt areas Obama was talking about) wondered what she might possibly know about their experience. She might want to put her ears on again. First, it is worth listening to Obama’s remarks in context (posted on Huffington Post). “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,” he said in response to a question about the challenges he faces there. “And they fell through the Clinton administration and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are going to regenerate and they have not. 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.”

But this game ain’t about context, of course. The sound bites, seized on by Fox News and Lou Dobbs, were those evoking people “clinging” to guns and religion, and hating furrners — to say nothing of who Obama was talking to (Marin County, where rich people still bob for brie in their hot tubs). Next they’ll get a photo of him windsurfing. He needs to remember that everyone is wired, every word will be recorded and taken out of context (including “out” and “of”). I think he’s far more honest about the bitterness some working Americans feel but honest, of course, does not necessarily win the race. Look at our current president.

I hope to be doing some listening of my own as I travel to Philadelphia this weekend to knock on doors for Obama. I’ll let you know what I hear there. Sometimes it’s good to just shut up and listen.