ALTOONA, PA- The Obama campaign might have thought they could make it all go away with an eloquent speech, but the issue of Obama's piss-poor bowling skills is not going away any time soon. In the latest USA Today Gallup tracking poll, Obama's nation-wide lead over Sen. Hillary Clinton has all but disappeared, due in large part, experts say, to his dismal score from last weekend. Almost a week after the fact, Obama's bad night at the bowling alley is still a major topic of conversation.

Unable to change the subject or stem the hemorrhaging in the polls, the Obama campaign has been forced to address the issue head-on. In a disarmingly self-effacing speech to a group of Pennsylvania seniors on Wednesday, Obama declared "I kind of suck at bowling," an obvious attempt to defuse the situation with humor, but the line failed to elicit a laugh from the stoney crowd.

Obama tried to excuse his lackluster performance on the lanes by pointing out that bowling is traditionally a caucasian pastime. Clinton supporters jumped on the comments, playing the sound-byte over and over on CNN and asking rhetorically whether Obama was claiming that Clinton only scored higher because she is white.

"I really believed in him, but now I just don't know," said one disenchanted voter. "Can I really trust the future of this country to a person like that? What if he bowls a 37 with America's national security or with the healthcare system? How is he supposed to manage the delicate balance of our fragile economy when he can't pick up a seven-ten split?"

These comments underscore a growing concern that Obama has risen so quickly from unknown community organizer to Presidential frontrunner that he has not been properly vetted by the party or the press. Seeing in this dynamic young leader what they wanted to see and filling in the rest with wishful thinking, most Democrats have built up an idea of Barack Obama based on a mountain of assumptions- most notably that he could out-bowl a six-year-old girl. Now that the truth is out, many pundits are beginning to openly question whether Obama and his unlucky throwing hand are fit for office.

"I'm voting for Walter Ray Williams, Jr.," said another former Obama supporter following the speech. "With more than a quarter million points in the PBA standings, he's got the experience I can trust."

With a bitterly divided party looking at another five months of sniping between the two major candidates, a bowling litmus test might be just what the Democrats need. DNC chairman Howard Dean is reportedly considering a plan to draft Williams at the convention, to convince supporters of both Obama and Clinton to rally behind the champion bowler and heal the party leading into November's general election.

As with most scandals, the cover-up is twice as damaging as the scandal itself. In the lead-up to what newspapers are calling "gutterball-gate," reporters are asking serious questions about the ethics of the squeaky clean Obama campaign: how long has his campaign known that Obama is a lousy bowler? When did they plan on disclosing this? After the election?

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton has decided to strike while the proverbial iron is hot and disclose her entire bowling history, scores from dozens of games down to the most minute of details. Her tax records, on the other hand, will still require another six to ten months of preparation before they can be released as she promised to do a year and a half ago.