This was the ad you knew was coming. Hillary Clinton finds some annoyed Pennsylvania voters to tell off Barack Obama. Right now this is the media story and she is not letting up. Given free media coverage like this, why should she?

With Snob-gate dominating the news cycle, Clinton now runs a risk. Should she fail to win by a comfortable margin after taking her best shot in the best possible news environment, Obama will claim to have survived the final desperate attack of a dying campaign. So she really better make sure the voters buy her argument. She won’t get another opportunity like this.

And if this is what Clinton is saying on TV, imagine what superdelegate wrangler Harold Ickes is saying to Democratic insiders in private. Even if the impact of Snob-gate fades, won’t this, at the very least, increase fears among the Democratic establishment that Obama is untested and could blow himself up with another mega-blunder in the general election. After all, it’s one thing to think rural voters are hicks. It’s another to say it in public. And another still to be “stunned” by the firestorm.