No doubt Barack Obama's "bitter" remark will be brought up in some form during tonight's Democratic debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. The question is whether he'll be grilled by his rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, moderators Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, or by the audience of Pennsylvanians who still may be ruffled by the comment.

"Obama was holed up Tuesday night in his Philadelphia hotel, prepping for the debate," reports Carrie Budoff Brown of Politico. "Aides said the Illinois senator will continue to defend the gist of his remarks by arguing that it is his rivals who are out of touch."

"He has to decide if he wants to play it safe because it is probable that he will be the nominee or he wants it to end," said Larry Ceisler, a Philadelphia public affairs consultant. "She has to swing for the fence. She may not have any other opportunities."

Jeff Zeleny of The New York Times adds that "the closing week of the Democratic primary race in Pennsylvania is awash in fresh accusations of elitism and condescension," and voters' opinions there have hardened.

For six weeks, Mr. Obama had diligently worked to introduce himself to the voters of Pennsylvania. He visited small towns and factories, bowling alleys and beer halls, with every picture designed to allay any concerns that voters harbored about his presidential candidacy.

Now, though, advisers to Mr. Obama wonder whether those images - and, more importantly, the political gains that even his detractors believed he was making in the state - have been overtaken by criticism over what his rivals suggested was a profound misunderstanding of small-town values.

The debate - the candidates' first in two months - kicks off at 8 p.m.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that the candidates have purchased some $4.5 million of Tv ad time - with $3 million of that bought by Mr. Obama and at least $1.4 million bought by Mrs. Clinton.

Mike Dorning of The Chicago Tribune looks at the small town of Beaver Falls, Pa., as full of the kind of Clinton-leaning voters Mr. Obama will seek to gain during tonight's debate.

Obama supporters were hard to find at the high school baseball diamond, where parents watching the game protected themselves against the chill with Pittsburgh Steelers blankets or hooded Beaver Falls Tigers sweatshirts. So too at L'il Joe's tavern, where middle-aged men in light-blue Pittsburgh Penguins jerseys jumped and cheered after each goal during the hockey team's playoff win Monday night.

Despite the political controversy over Obama's San Francisco remarks, only a few of the more than two dozen people interviewed said they had heard of them.

Besides big ad buys, another tactic Mr. Obama is using to win the trust of Pennsylvanians is talking about growing up with a single mom who depended on government assistance to make ends meet, reports The Wall Street Journal.

On the stump, Sen. Obama has begun reminding audiences that his single mother was on food stamps, that he attended a private high school on a scholarship and that he paid off law-school student loans with his wife, Michelle, just six years ago. "I know what it's like to see a mother get sick and worry that maybe she can't pay the bills," he said at a building-trade conference in Washington on Tuesday.

John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, outlined a plan to make permanent the Bush tax cuts in order to strengthen the economy, writes Michael Cooper of The Times. In a speech given at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Senator McCain "labored to overcome the impression that he does not understand the economy well, and the idea being pushed by his Democratic rivals that he does not comprehend the economic pain felt by many Americans."

Mr. McCain even called for cutting one tax before the Republican National Convention, let alone the election: he urged Congress to suspend the 18.4-cent-a-gallon federal gas tax from this Memorial Day until Labor Day. He said doing so would provide "an immediate economic stimulus," but such plans have gained little traction recently in Congress, and some environmentalists fear such a cut would encourage more people to use their cars at a time when Mr. McCain has made combating global warming a central theme of his campaign.

Senator Clinton "seems comfortable in the scrappy role," writes Thomas Fitzgerald of The Philadelphia Inquirer. "Strategists believe that voters relate better to the woman trying so visibly to win their support than they did to the prohibitive front-runner earlier in the campaign."

Older voters lean toward Mrs. Clinton because they're too smart to be fooled by Mr. Obama, Bill Clinton told an audience in Quakertown, Pa., on Tuesday, reports The Boston Globe.

Also in the Globe is a guest column by David Shribman, executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (which by the way endorsed Senator Obama in today's editions). He jokes that Pennsylvania could be renamed the Granite State now, since the candidates have spent so much more time there for its all important primary than they did in New Hampshire.

Overall, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that "Sen. Barack Obama holds a 10-point lead over Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton when Democrats are asked whom they would prefer to see emerge as the party's presidential nominee, but there is little public pressure to bring the long and increasingly heated contest to an end."

Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, will sit down for 45-minute talks with the three presidential candidates on Thursday at the British Embassy, reports The Washington Post. "In some ways, any of the three candidates would represent a break with Bush in several key areas that would probably please Brown, according to U.S. and British analysts."

Could Senator Obama have misspoken about his lack of ties to lobbyists? A USA Today investigation claims that "his fund-raising team includes 38 members of law firms that were paid $138 million last year to lobby the federal government, records show."

Those lawyers, including 10 former federal lobbyists, have pledged to raise at least $3.5 million for the Illinois senator's presidential race. Employees of their firms have given Obama's campaign $2.26 million, a USA TODAY analysis of campaign finance data shows.

And despite some recent Internet buzz about Mrs. Clinton making a run for the Albany state house, her spokesman Howard Wolfson said "there are no circumstances under which Senator Clinton will run for governor."