by Mark Silva
Evan Bayh, senator from Indiana, stars in Sen. Hillary Clinton’s premier campaign TV ad in Indiana. So he speaks from a certain point of view when he says that Sen. Barack Obama’s comments about bitterness are “subject to interpretation.”
And when he says that Obama’s words about the bitterness of working class voters, should he win the Democratic presidential nomination, will hand Republicans “a stick to beat us with.”
“I like Barack Obama,” Bayh told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Late Edition today. “I think he’s a good person. But these comments are subject to misinterpretation.
“Aand you remember, remember John Kerry when he said — I don’t think John Kerry is a chronic flip-flopper – but you remember when he said he voted against the $87 billion before he voted for the $87 billion (for the war in Iraq)? And they took that one sound-bite and just beat it and beat it and beat it.
“And this is the kind of — look at what the Republicans did here in the last 48 hours,” Bayh said. “They’re calling on everyone who’s received contributions from Sen. Obama’s political committee to give the money back. They’re calling upon people to disavow his remarks all across red-state America.
“This is the kind of thing… I think our super-delegates and our voters have to ask themselves, you know, who is in the best position to win the fall election, to deliver the kind of change that we need in this country?” Bayh said. “And I’m afraid that this gives the Republicans a stick to beat us with. ”Obama has suggested that the upcoming primary in Indiana on May 6 could be a “tiebreaker” for him and Clinton – with the senator from New York holding an apparent advantage in the Pennsylvania primary April 22 over the senator from Illinois, and Obama favored in North Carolina’s primary the same day as Indiana’s.
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“I hope we are the tiebreaker,” Bayh said today on Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer. “And it’s just nice that we matter. We haven’t had a primary that mattered in 40 years. So it’s a good thing that we’re going to have our say.
“It’s going to be hard fought. It’s going to be very close,” Bayh said of the Clinton-Obama contest in Indiana. “He comes from next door. He has a little bit of a home court advantage, because about 25 percent to 30 percent of Democrats in our state watch Chicago TV on a daily basis. I assume he’ll continue to outspend her by 3 or 4 to 1, which gives him a little bit of an advantage.
“But Wolf, I think at the end of this, particularly for those blue-collar workers, the people who have the greatest stake in this election, because they’re not doing as well as they would like, I think her strength, her seasoning, her focus on those kitchen-table, bread-and-butter issues, not just, you know, speaking about it or, you know, hoping about it, but actually delivering for them, I think that will stand her in good stead,” he said. “And while he started off ahead in the polls in our state, I think she’s going to win a narrow election at the end in the state of Indiana.