Obama on the mark

Monday, April 14th 2008, 4:00 AM

Barack Obama's clumsy musings about Pennsylvanians in economically distressed small towns - "They get bitter; they cling to guns or religion" - is being touted by pundits as proof the Democratic frontrunner can't win the White House.

The critics are wrong. Obama's bluntness probably didn't win him many new friends - but the early read from the Keystone State is that voters see the flap as more right than wrong.

Two days after Obama's comments became public, he was endorsed by the Allentown Morning Call, the main paper serving the troubled Lehigh Valley. It's exactly the kind of area Obama was talking about.

Farther west, despite Clinton's deep roots in Scranton - her family has been there since the 1880s - the Scranton TimesTribune endorsed Obama, too. Two days after the "bitter" flap broke.

Federal labor statistics show just how much Pennsylvanians have to be upset about. In February, 8,200 people in the state filed new unemployment claims, the secondhighest number in the nation after California.

During December, January and February, Pennsylvania recorded more than 400 different mass layoffs.

So when Fox News sent a reporter into an Allentown diner to talk with a resident about Obama's comments, it came as no surprise that the oldtimer - who said he plans to vote for Republican John McCain - described the mood in the area as "definitely bitter."

"When I arrived here in 1961, this was a booming town, and we had at least 40 department stores, Mack Truck, Bethlehem Steel - and they've all gone by the wayside, and a lot of bitter people," he said.

Which was Obama's point. Talk has been part of his stump speech for months.

"We are not just up against the ingrained and destructive habits of Washington, we are also struggling against our own doubts, our own fears and our own cynicism," Obama told a South Carolina crowd in January. "And so this is a battle in our own hearts and minds about what kind of country we want and how hard we're willing to work for it."

Obama's call for voters to look inward and change their minds and hearts isn't the kind of thing you normally hear from a politician. When it works, it carries an echo of John F. Kennedy's famous challenge to Americans to "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

When it doesn't work, Obama sounds like a scold.

But the tough talk was needed. Republicans have been winning presidential elections since 1980 by harping on culture and lifestyle issues - God, guns and gays - to persuade bluecollar Democrats to cross party lines and vote against their own economic interests. Obama is gambling that the best way to avoid defections from socalled Reagan Democrats is to address their fears headon.

And it seems there's something about the pitch that Pennsylvania voters like. Before the latest flap, polls showed Obama within 5 points of beating the favored Hillary Clinton.

Obama still isn't expected to win Pennsylvania, but finishing a close second will prove that voters, despite the media hoopla, are more interested in fixing their communities and their country - and, yes, their hearts - than they are in being sold another bill of goods about the prosperity that remains so stubbornly out of reach.