Did somebody say Sybil? I was worried there, for a minute; Hillary came out soft, her cheeks looking particularly dumpling like, for the early minutes of last night’s debate but then, with the predictable hand from ABC’s Charles Gibson (who, on top of everything else, holds a Nobel Prize for his work in economics), she got going on the bitter tea of General Obama.

First, the teachers tried to make them dance. Quoting some wacko idea of former NY Gov. Mario Cuomo about the candidate with the second-most votes becoming vice-president, Gibson asked the two candidates if they would pledge to name the other as running mate should they win the nomination (what is this, Washington-Adams?). Long, awkward silence. (“Go on, hold her hand, it’s not going to kill you”) Followed by kind, never-in-a-million-years dissembling from both candidates.

Then, not being able to resist anymore, Gibson mentioned Obama’s remarks regarding those embittered, bible-thumping, gun-toting voters in the lost hollers of Western PA. “Do you understand that some people in this state find that patronizing and think that you said actually what you meant?” asked the anchor, sounding pretty patronizing himself.

Obama made another attempt at an apology and then Clinton weighed in, reminding people of her midwestern Methodist bonafides and talking about the “wonderful,” “positive,” “resilient” people she has met traveling that great state. But she couldn’t stay on that high road for long. With more help from Gibson and former Clinton lieutenant (and co-moderator) George Stephanopoulos, she got to rag him about Rev. Wright again, even claiming that his remarks about 9.11 were all the more hurtful because the attacks occurred in “my city of New York.” (You know: Hillary from the block.) Now it was open season on Obama, and out came Louis Farrakhan, Hamas and, most surprising of all, former Weather Underground activist William Ayers.

Ayers, as part of the SDS splinter group, helped bomb a number of government buildings during the Vietnam War. He hosted a house party for Obama’s campaign for state senate, 12 years ago, but more importantly, he said he wished the Weathermen had blown up more stuff, and those remarks were published on 9.11. Get it? Stephanopoulos thought the affiliation cast Obama’s patriotism into question, and the senator used the moment to ridicule his interlocutors and the silly season in general.

“George, but this is an example of what I’m talking about,” he said. “This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who’s a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He’s not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis. And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn’t make much sense.”

Well, it’s not about sense. But before the media and Obama’s enemies (and don’t worry, Hillary will be out of the running soon) twist themselves into too many contortions trying to find the next Swift-Boat, Willie-Horton, flag-burning-amendment issue to take him down with, remember the millennials who don’t give a rat’s ass about who did what during the Vietnam war, who went to Woodstock, who fought the man. Even September 11, 2001 (put your hand over your flag pin when you hear that date!) seems like ancient history to them. For those voters, who could very well swamp this election come November, the old dogs won’t hunt. They want to know that there might be job waiting for them and that they won’t have to live with their parents forever. Their parents want to know that they’ll be able to retire someday and won’t be spending their golden years dumpster diving. And both want to hit Reload, change the channel, pull the pitcher. The same old teams don’t cut it anymore.

We approach the prospect of one more debate with a sense of nausea. It’s like going into one of those all-you-can-eat places around Times Square: you look behind the glass at the steam tables, the ham that was sliced hours ago, the mashed potatoes that are getting crusty around the edges, and whatever hunger you had disappears. You know exactly what it’s going to taste like before you even try to crack a dinner roll.

But debate they must, and those who think Hillary will try to go out on what may very likely be her last face-off with Obama on a high note are dreaming. While some would say her shrinking poll numbers might be enough to convince her that the game is over, they are forgetting the Clinton never-quit mantra, one chanted more incessantly as the corner becomes tighter. Though the press has been thumping the “fall out” over Obama’s “bitter voter” comments, hoping a bigger story will appear amidst the dust, voters don’t seem to care all that much. Even Governor Ed Rendell, her biggest friend in Pennsylvania, said he thought the controversy won’t cost him “more than a couple of points at the margin.” Thanks, Ed.

No, I predict that Hillary will try and remind those who may not have heard of what Obama said in San Francisco last week, even if moderator Charlie Gibson doesn’t give her an early assist with a question about those gun-and-bible clinging townies — and she may very well be booed for her trouble, as she was at a union conference yesterday. Then don’t be surprised if she says something noble and compassionate about her opponent. This could be a political feint but at the risk of playing pop psychologist, I think it might be something she learned from having a temperamental dad.

No judgment here: I had one myself, and as anyone who grew up with an alcoholic for a parent can tell you, you never know what you’re going to get: that’s part of the fun. Where your singing at the breakfast table might have earned you a kind word yesterday, it could get you slapped this morning (“What is wrong with you?”). Until children of alcoholics figure out the rules of the game, they are left in state of confusion. And sometimes they adapt the behavior of their oppressor.

Hillary Clinton is a loyal party animal and I am certain that when Obama becomes our nominee, she will endorse him with conviction and urge her followers to lay down their resentments and get behind the man. But she must also be facing some bitter truths herself: if Obama’s remarks aren’t enough to alienate voters and/or convince some superdelegates that he is unelectable, she’s out of ammo. She can keep going through Indiana and North Carolina, and perhaps she must, but in her heart she’ll know she’s finished. That means back to the Senate with her future presidential aspirations very much in jeopardy, and more years of living in close proximity to Bill. That could drive any wife to drink.

So look for Sybil tonight and in the closing days of the campaign, a hydra-headed beast who must learn to accept the bronze medal with a smile and a wave but who must also curse the day that this skinny soul brother in the Motown suit snuck up and stole her crown. It’s enough to make anyone bitter.

After my second day of canvassing some pretty beat neighborhoods in East Philly for Obama, I had a couple of people tell me that no one from Hillary’s campaign had been by to visit. And these were Hillary supporters, at least the ones who weren’t gone or too old to answer the door. For the most part they seemed to enjoy the fact that some nice young (well, compared to them) man had dropped by and even pronounced their name right. And at least a few of them let me engage them and answer what questions they had about the junior senator from Illinois. No, he was not a Muslim. No, he was not an anti-semite. Yes, his mother was white and his father was from Africa, and no, he did not come from a wealthy family.

One of the organizers at the East Philly Obama headquarters had a theory about why there were no HIllary supporters working those streets next to me. “The Democratic machine in Philadelphia still believes in giving people money to go around neighborhoods and help get out the vote,” he said. “That machine is working for Clinton but since she doesn’t have the money for them to grease the supporters, there’s no one ringing those bells.”

It’s what they used to call “walking around money” in places like Chicago and even here in Brooklyn. (I saw it in action during the last state assembly election when winos were passing out fliers for party favorite Hakeem Jeffries. He won, of course.) “What Obama wants to do is reform the party from the top down,” my man in Philly continued, “which is why he poses such a threat to these people.” Maybe. But it’s that kind of zealotry that alarms some people and makes them think of his campaign as messianic. They were the ones Jon Stewart was making fun of when he told Larry King, “Obama cured my leprosy!”

Though the older, largely Catholic and Jewish voters I met yesterday were not too interested in Obama, only a few were overtly hostile and Hillary supporters said they would support the Democratic candidate in November no matter what. (These were registered Democrats, after all, though I met one old woman who was supporting Nader. “Ah, you’re the one,” I said.) More importantly, perhaps, were the non-whites I encountered: recent immigrants from India and the Middle East; an African caregiver at a halfway house; a Chinese-American woman who sold me water and sunscreen at the local supermarket. They were the ones who signed my forms and took my literature and made it clear that the only reason they wanted to vote was to help elect Barack Obama to the White House. The people whose houses they now lived in were like the voters who turned me away: older and more set in their ways. Some of them had moved on while others were literally dying, shuffling off this mortal coil in a neighborhood that was changing colors.

I’m in Philadelphia this weekend, ringing doorbells for Obama, and have a few observations to offer, based on a pretty small sampling of some pretty beat neighborhoods in East Philly. No one has yet mentioned his comments about the bitter voters of small-town Pennsylvania, in part because they may not have heard them (the TVs I saw were tuned to baseball and NASCAR), though I’m not sure these folks would have disagreed.

We’re talking mostly white voters who are worried about the cost of gas, the cost of prescription medicine and how to get through the month. Some of their homes were in various states of disrepair (missing screen doors, cardboard in windows) and though I did not hear any particular bitterness, neither did I witness a lot of hope. Only a handful of the voters I visited were completely in the senator’s camp, though more than a few were curious to know why I liked him and what I thought he was going to do for the country. I met at least four women who were hardcore Hillary supporters, but mostly because she was a woman and they all said they would enthusiastically support Obama in November. Primaries are the time to vote your heart.

I only heard a couple of total misconceptions. One McCain supporter told me he thought Obama was a socialist, while another said that “he always denied having a white mother.” Uh, no, I demurred (the campaign discourages arguing with people, especially if there is nothing to gain, but it’s okay with setting the record straight); he wrote a whole book about being raised black in a white family, he’s been talking about it for years. A couple of Indian immigrants seemed to only know a few words of English, one of which was “Clinton,” which made me worry that our outreach to those communities is not all it could be.

The local ads are plentiful and most of the ones I’ve seen from both candidates are issue specific. (I heard one Obama ad on a local rock station that made him sound like a traveling band, with lots of cheering and nothing more specific than “hope” or “change” mentioned.) I’m sure it will get uglier in the next nine days but from this vantage point, I’m not sure the bitter remarks are going to move the dial much. In part because it was one sentence out of hundreds of thousands, and he has already apologized, saying “I didn’t say it as well as I could have”. In part because Clinton has already asked for slack for “misspeaking” about being under sniper fire in Bosnia. (As CNN’s grumpy old man, Jack Cafferty said to Jeffrey Toobin, who was trying to defend Hillary: “Have you ever been shot at? It’s not actually something you would forget.”) But in part it’s because people are bitter, and have a right to be.

“I don’t think he has anything to apologize for,” said Ali, one of the volunteer coordinators in East Philly who sent me out with a packet of names yesterday. The real mistake, in my mind, was the use of the verb “cling” when discussing people’s faith and love of guns; it smacks of delusion and that is what I think Obama was really apologizing for, the truly inartful language he used. But I think it is far more hypocritical for the multi-millionaire Clintons and the the admiral’s son McCain to talk about these end-of-the-road blue collar people as if they were the seven dwarves, whistling while they march off to the jobs that don’t exist anymore. Obama has always been clear about the need for the more fortunate of us to sacrifice — one of the reasons I’m here, today — but he also recognizes that some folks have nothing left to give, that it’s all been taken away. And that just might make you bitter.

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.