Secret Weapon: Todd Palin

Carol Platt Liebau | September 07, 2008 5:16 PM

It's somewhat amusing to think that the Obama campaign might really believe that Hillary Clinton is going to help Barack win Pennsylvania, for two reasons. First, since when was Hillary Clinton really the blue collar male voter's candidate of choice? Could it be that they voted less

for her than against her arugula-loving elitist primary opponent? Second, if the Obama campaign really thinks Hillary is committed to seeing their man win -- well, let's just hope that they don't take that level of naivete into negotiations with Putin.

What may be being overlooked a bit in all the Obama camps calculations is Todd Palin's appeal to blue-collar men. I can see the voters both campaigns are after resonating more to a snow-mobiling union "regular guy" than to a presidential candidate who sees them as "bitter" -- or his running mate, whose working class roots have been somewhat softened around the edges by years of Senate bloviating.