A new poll indicates Democratic Senator Barack Obama is rebounding after denouncing his former pastor — and it shows a majority of voters polled approve of how Obama handled the political crisis involving his pastor.
But this does NOT mean Obama isn’t damaged by the controversy.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama appears to be rebounding from sliding poll numbers in the wake the controversy over his former pastor, according to a CBS News/New York Times poll released on Sunday.
Among Democratic primary voters, the Illinois senator now leads opponent Hillary Clinton by 12 points — 50 percent to 38 percent — the poll found. Obama led the New York senator by 8 points in a CBS/New York Times poll released just a few days ago.
The latest poll was taken after Obama’s comments last week repudiating Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who repeated statements that the September 11 attacks were retribution for U.S. foreign policy and that the U.S. government had a hand in spreading AIDS to harm blacks.
The poll found 60 precent of the voters approved of how Obama handled the Wright controversy, versus 23 percent who disapproved. In addition the poll shows both Obama and Clinton could defeate Republican presumptive Presidential nominee Senator John McCain: Obama by 11 percent and Clinton by 12.
Does this mean Obama has escaped political damage on the issue.
Hardly.
The New York Times adds:
But nearly half of the voters surveyed, and a substantial part of the Democrats, said Mr. Obama had acted mainly because he thought it would help him politically, rather than because he had serious disagreements with his former pastor. The broader effect of the controversy on Mr. Obama’s candidacy among Democratic primary voters was less clear in the poll, but enough of them expressed qualms about Mr. Obama’s relationship with Mr. Wright to suggest it could sway a relatively small but potentially important group of voters in the remaining primaries.
The relatively small number of Democrats surveyed limits the conclusions that can be drawn about the poll’s findings regarding sentiment in the party. Moreover, as a national poll, it does not necessarily reflect the thoughts of voters in Indiana and North Carolina.
Questions involving racially charged episodes have historically proved difficult to poll, particularly when it comes to asking white voters about black candidates.
Still, the survey suggested that Mr. Obama, of Illinois, had lost much or all of the once-commanding lead he had held over Mrs. Clinton, of New York, among Democratic voters on the question of which of them would be the strongest candidate against Mr. McCain, of Arizona.
So the poll suggests Obama is rebounding. The questions are: whether he will be rebounding enough, whether evidence of that will be seen on Tuesday in the Indiana and North Carolina primary, and whether the Wright controversy has altered the long-term dynamics of the Presidential nomination battle…and the general election.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.