Hillary Clinton is warning that

Barack Obama's comments about small-town Americans

make him vulnerable to the fate suffered by

Vice President Gore and Senator Kerry:

Being labeled an out-of-touch elitist

and losing to the Republicans

Clinton Likens Obama to Kerry, Gore

Calls Remarks on Guns, Religion Elitist and Patronizing

Senator Clinton is warning that Senator Obama's comments about small-town Americans make him vulnerable to the fate suffered by Vice President Gore and Senator Kerry: being labeled an out-of-touch elitist and losing to the Republicans.

The former first lady criticized Mr. Obama for a second straight day, saying his diagnosis that working-class voters were "bitter" was not only elitist but patronizing.

She suggested the remarks were "in line" with the oft-repeated charge that the Democratic Party did not understand mainstream American culture and values.

"We had two very good men and men of faith run for president in 2000 and 2004," Mrs. Clinton said at a forum on faith televised live on CNN last night.

"But large segments of the electorate concluded that they did not really understand or relate to or frankly respect their ways of life."

Clinton supporter Elton John hits out at U.S. misogyny

British pop star Elton John, playing a fund-raiser for Hillary Clinton in New York on Wednesday, said he was amazed at the misogyny of some in America and he hoped that wouldn't stop her being president.

At the fund-raiser which Clinton's campaign manager said raised $2.5 million, John said there was no one more qualified to lead the United States into the next era.

"Having said that, I never cease to be amazed at the misogynistic attitude of some people in this country. And I say to hell with them," he said, drawing cheers from the crowd at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan.

"The reason I'm here tonight is to play music, but more importantly as someone who comes from abroad, and is in America quite a lot of the time (and) is extremely interested in the political process because it effects the whole world."

"I've always been a Hillary supporter," he said.

Erica Jong: Misogyny, Momism and Militarism

Elton John recently expressed surprise at the misogyny of the American media as it relates to Hillary Clinton. I have been stunned by it -- especially the random physical put-downs that are everywhere.

Matt Taibbi refers to "flabby arms" in his latest Hillary obit. Who cares? I want to ask. But apparently Mr. Taibbi does. (And how would he know? Hillary is always encased in a blazer).

Physical mockery ended in seventh grade, I thought -- but apparently not where women pols are concerned. I find it bizarre that a grown man would invoke a physical put-down in an opinion piece. It smacks of a complex of some sort.

Disturbing enough that magazines like Star show telephoto close-ups of women's stretch marks (Cindy Crawford is the latest victim) -- but what is the meaning of this mockery of age-related or even genetic (chubby ankles) flaws?

We know that ankles have no impact on the ability to do a job well. Katie Couric has great ankles and is not getting the ratings CBS wants). And HRC is not auditioning for American Idol or a modeling contract or even gazillions as a news reader.

Look at a room of middle-aged male politicians -- paunches and liver spots abound. Pathetic comb-overs that turn to greasy streamers in a high wind. Skin cancers turning to melanomas, flat feet, bursitic elbows and shoulders -- who cares?

Ronald Reagan got elected with a wandering mind. And that does impact performance. So this is more than a double standard. It's a kind of obsession with female youth and perfection -- which, of course, would disqualify a candidate too.

Do we want to live in a country where women's brains are judged by their arm flesh and the trimness of their ankles? I don't. I am writing from Rome where the men are just as sexist as they are in America yet there is no physical mockery of female candidates.

The Italian elections are on Sunday and Monday and most of the women candidates are between forty and sixty plus. Yet no one makes fun of their looks. They are not movie stars.

They wear glasses and don't all have facelifts. Nobody expects them to look like Sophia Loren. And nobody mentions their physical attributes one way or another.

So what is wrong with American men? Particularly male journalists. I think it was discovered long ago and labeled "Momism" by Philip Wylie in a virulently sexist book 1942 book called Generation of Vipers.

The book went through many, many printings in the forties and fifties. It apparently struck many nerves. Momism is a kind of Oedipal obsession with the bad mother -- to counter a boy's attraction to his good mother.

Wylie's book is as livid as the Malleus Malificarum -- that textbook for witch hunters. No one could hate so much without having loved. And love is the problem, of course. You cannot fuck your mother so you must revile her.

A few months after Benazir Bhutto was assassinated, I found in the bathroom of my Connecticut house a New York magazine I had not read when it appeared. It contained an article of advice from Benazir Bhutto to Hillary Clinton.

Bhutto, of course, came from a society where western educated women leaders were not uncommon -- their tribal credentials being more important than their gender.

Benazir Bhutto suggested to HRC that she evoke the strength and caring of a mother in proceeding with her campaign. Perhaps this is possible in Pakistan and India with their myriad female deities who embody the mother as creator and as destroyer.

But in uptight American Christianity, the only role for the mother is as puritanical disciplinarian who eschews sexuality in favor of punishment. Punishment evokes rebellion.

And tender little boys grow up to be Momists. When a powerful woman comes along -- whether Hillary or Eleanor Roosevelt or Gloria Steinem, the reaction is kneejerk. The rage against her spills over into idiotic name-calling, which only reflects badly on the name-caller.

And we are all the losers. We get mediocre male politicians with comb-overs and drinking problems rather than acknowledging that women have brains that might be put to use to save us. Goddess help the U S of A.

The Clintons: Still 2 for the price of 1

She can implicitly criticize him and publicly embrace him, sometimes in the same day. But Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton cannot escape the shadow of her husband, the former president whose huge personality and fame sometimes threaten to overwhelm her efforts to control the daily message and tone of her presidential campaign.

This week's events in Pennsylvania bolstered the view that Bill Clinton is his wife's greatest asset and perhaps her biggest encumbrance.

The only Democrat to win the presidency in three decades, he brings his renowned political instincts and insights to her private strategy sessions and to public stages, where he is a crowd-pleasing surrogate that her rivals cannot match. He also brings baggage.

It begins, of course, with his White House sex scandal and subsequent impeachment. But it extends to areas that many Democrats would not have anticipated.

The usually silver-tongued Arkansan has erupted at times, blurting out racially tinged remarks that have angered many blacks, a key constituency of his wife's Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama.

And his presidential record is proving to have two edges. Hillary Clinton embraces his economic legacy, but increasingly distances herself from his trade policies, a hot issue in the April 22 Pennsylvania primary.

The family cross currents resurfaced on Wednesday. In the space of a few minutes, the New York senator implicitly criticized her husband's stand on trade with Colombia, then lauded his economic record and campaign skills.

The day culminated with mutual praise, a hug and a kiss in front of 5,000 people, as the Clintons introduced Elton John for a concert at New York's Radio City Music Hall that raised $2.5 million for her campaign.

Driving the latest intra-family tension is the anger that many Pennsylvania voters and union leaders feel toward trade policies that they blame for shipping U.S. manufacturing jobs overseas.

Acknowledging that her husband supports the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, which she opposes, Sen. Clinton said in a stop near Pittsburgh: "I have a long record of being on a different attitude toward trade than my husband does."

She provided few examples beyond the Colombia pact, but added: "I don't think any married couple I know agrees on everything. And we disagree on this."

Her opposition to the Colombia proposal seemed to imply a callousness on the part of those who back it, including her husband.

She said she opposes it "because of the history of suppression and targeted killings of labor organizers in Colombia."

Moments later, the senator could hardly praise her husband enough. Asked about their daughter Chelsea's quip that her mom would be a better president than her dad, she replied: "I think I have two great surrogates, and I only hope to be able to amass the economic record for our country that my husband did."

Hillary Clinton's campaign has been inextricably entwined with her husband's legacy from the start. She cites her eight years as first lady as vital training for the top job.

And the strong opinions many Americans hold for her, positive and negative, often stem from those days, when she delved deeply into health care and endured the embarrassment of her husband's affair with a White House intern.

Surprisingly, given that Bill Clinton was famously called the nation's "first black president," the biggest problems he has caused his wife's campaign involve black voters.

Black Democrats' support of Obama did not become so lopsided until he won heavily white Iowa, followed by a key win in South Carolina, where Bill Clinton angered some blacks with comments before and after the primary.

He first said his wife was likely to lose South Carolina because so many blacks would back Obama.

After Obama won by a bigger margin than expected, the former president noted that Jesse Jackson also had won South Carolina's primary, in 1984 and 1988. Many saw the remark as a bid to marginalize Obama as someone who could not appeal much beyond black constituencies.

Whatever its impact, it preceded a period in which Obama's black support reached 90 percent in some states while his margin among whites fell.

Bill Clinton has angrily rejected claims that he was being racially divisive, although his remarks sometimes furthered the dispute. In March, he said the notion that he unfairly criticized Obama was "a total myth and a mugging."

"They made up a race story out of that," he said of the news media, calling it "a bizarre spin."

Hillary Clinton's eventual win or loss this year will, inevitably, be placed partly at her husband's feet. At the Elton John concert, he kept his message simple and adoring.

"She can win this nomination," he said, urging the crowd to resist calls for his wife to drop out.

Then, paying her perhaps the biggest compliment he can, he said he agreed with Chelsea that her mother would be a better president than her dad.