Andrew “Someone Give Me Barack Obama’s Shoe So I Can Lick It” Sullivan is triumphantly trumpeting the poll numbers that suggest Barack Obama has not been injured among Democratic primary voters nationally. This is preposterous. The issue is only incidentally whether Obama has been mortally injured among Democratic primary voters. That may be Hillary’s hope, but it was always longshot, in large measure because she isn’t exactly the most credible tribune of the suffering working classes.

The issue is whether the remark damages him among Democrats who are not going to vote in the primaries, and with non-Democrats — people who are not activists, who may not turn out in the primaries, and who may not pay that much attention to the goings-on but who will pick up the emanations of what happened. It is their votes, not Democratic primary voters, who are going to decide the election in November. Have they gotten the sense that Barack Obama has said they are bitter and that their guns and their faith are an emotional crutch? Some of them have.

And there is no way on earth that doesn’t hurt him, because it’s a lousy and unpleasant thing for anybody to say, and particularly for somebody who is auditioning for a vote.