That Carville was a Clinton supporter.

That's the hallmark of candidate advocacy.

To her credit, Dowd actually got that the problem in Obama's comments weren't in the "bitter" section, but in the "cling" part.  And she wrote about it rather cogently.

It is no secret that the media has been critical of Hillary from the start, a little justification perhaps that she was the front runner, longer record, because of Billy et all.

BUT after the NH, the media laid its biasness so naked that even the common man [not glued to blogs/TV] would say "Yes, the media is baised against Hillary".

Media had got NH wrong, and it was slap on their face.. ever since that evening when Chris Mathews said, "NE is still racist", I knew it well, Media may have lost the NH, but they will have their revenge.

It's getting more clear, they have almost got their revenge. The have proved [Hillary got wrong on her nomination when she said, she is the inevitable, and yes they got wrong in NH]!!

It sounds like she (and Colbert) is acknowledging that HRC is the true expert of condescending, presumably because of her ability to pretend she's not elite.  BO's attempts at bowling and feeding cattle are not unusual examples of politicking, but he didn't pretend that these were his thing.  It's good that he left his tie on.  The problem is when you look phony while doing things out of the norm, e.g. Kerry or Dukakis in hunting or military garb.  HRC's current problem is her (like Romney) silly attempt to connect to real hunters.  Why can't people understand that real hunters are not fools, they won't fall for this stuff.  (For the record, HRC was a terrible bowler on Ellen.)  

And, the hyped outrage regarding bitter-gate is ironic to the core.  Supposedly it's bad to claim that some folks are bitter towards politicians who repeatedly fail to fulfill their promises to bring good jobs.  And, it's bad to say that these folks cling to things such as religion or guns.  (Never mind that there are plenty (most) of D and R politicians who agree with these descriptions.)  But, apparently it is perfectly acceptable to say that so called elitist (i.e. even though you live a very comfortable, rich person, life style you are not doing enough to pretend that you're a person of the people, e.g. Bush with his photo op brush clearing at the Western White House--apparently blue collar folks spend their free time clear brush as a hobby, don't ya know.) politicians don't connect to some stereotypical blue collar worker, who is to stupid to know that rich politicians are tricking them.

This is ridiculous.  To recap: everyone agrees that the candidates are all rich (some much more than others), they all live very comfortably, but they need to show that they are in touch with blue collar folks or else these folks will see them as elitist and they won't vote for them.  And, to demonstrate that they are in touch they need to pretend that they: don't wear ties, they don't go to Whole Foods, they are hunters, they do eat candy when they really don't, they regularly go to church when they really don't.

Or, as Dowd puts it:

What turns off voters is the detached egghead quality that they tend to equate with a wimpiness, wordiness and a lack of action

All of these types of arguments assume that blue collar people are rubes who need to be tricked into thinking that these rich candidates personally relate to them.  And, this trickery is to be accomplished with wardrobe, photo ops, and exaggerated/made up stories.  But, Dowd et. al. can't see that they're truly insulting these blue collar folks because apparently it's acceptable to assume blue collar people are too stupid to know when politicians are feeding them BS.

PS: is it just me, or does Dowd lose down home credibility points when she refers to "autos-da-fe?"  How contrived could she be: who can really burn themselves at the stake?  It looks like this was a desperate attempt at elitist language, even when it doesn't really fit.

I am old enough to remember learning about brain washing in school (in fear of the USSR--cold war stuff). I also taught it to HS govt. and econ. students years ago so they could be better consumers and critical thinkers during campaign season.