John Dickerson offers what is by far the best analysis of Barack Obama's "bitter" comment that I've seen thus far, parsing out what he probably meant, and why that won't at all matter to the types of voters he's offended. There are two very important points. One, which he notes as a mere parenthetical, is that all of these justifications for the comments would get Obama and his defenders laughed out of a bar in rural Pennsylvania, and are only digging him a deeper hole. Obama would be better served by pointing out Clinton's problems than trying to defend his indefensible remarks. The second key point is that Obama should know better about writing off voters as base, emotional, and thoughtless, since the same allegations have been lobbed at his supporters. "Hope" is the "guns" of the left. It's a larger lesson that not just Obama, but Democrats in general have been slow to learn – people don't like to be told that their voting choices are deluded or irrational. Even if they are, saying so will never win you votes. That may well be the bigger lesson of "bitter."
--Kate Sheppard
