Michele McPhee of WTKK Radio spoke with Senator Kerry the other day on a host of subjects, including the Buckner first pitch, a bit of fauxrage over Obama's truth telling, and credit card abuse by federal employees. Although the latter is the only real crime of the three, the protestations of the media and the public might lead one to believe otherwise.

Now, I'm not stupid enough to get into a discussion here with Red Sox fans about the over two decades blame directed at Bill Buckner for a single error in an otherwise stellar career. Everyone knows he was a great ball player, and the sustained ovation he received last week when he threw out the first pitch at the Red Sox home opener was evidence of that.

It's easy to forgive when you're winning.

What Senator Kerry had not yet heard at the time of the interview with Michele was the flap over Senator Obama's comments made at a closed fundraiser and later planned for release by Hillary Clinton at an opportune moment, in textbook Rovian fashion, complete with "I'm not bitter" stickers miraculously printed and distributed the following day.

The truth is that we are bitter over the loss of jobs and the state of the economy, and 'Pollyanna' Clinton can't change that by taking a few sound bytes out of context, asking us to put on rose colored glasses and pretending we're not. The truth is that people do cling to wedge issues when they have no confidence in the government to help them overcome the struggles of daily life, and the truth is that we take comfort in those things that we can depend on when all else fails.

Here's Senator Obama with Charlie Rose in 2004, discussing, perhaps a bit more artfully than in his off the cuff comments of the other day, the connection between the failure of the government to resolve economic issues and wedge-issues voting.

Now, we can choose to ignore the harsh and simple realities, or we can face them head on. We can treat this campaign as some sort of 'gotcha' game, where the real meaning of a statement is reduced to a word or a phrase. We can pretend, like Senators Clinton and McCain, that the people of Pennsylvania aren't smart enough to read beyond the headlines, but this small town Pennsylvanian knows better.

Speaking of headlines, here's one worth reading from today's Morning Call. That's a Pennsylvania newspaper, by the way, and I'm guessing it has a lot of small town readers facing hard economic times like the rest of the state and the country. A bitter pill, perhaps, for Senator Clinton, but sometimes the truth is like that.

Obama's vision is reason to nominate him

... Sen. Clinton has made much of her ''ability to lead'' on day one in the Oval Office. Past experience like hers is one thing, but leadership also depends on having a vision, plans to pursue that vision, and an ability to inspire others to follow. On those grounds, Sen. Barack Obama is well-suited to lead, and The Morning Call recommends his nomination in the Democratic primary.

h/t 'TML' for graphic