You know, I believe I have a certain familiarity with Hillary Clinton’s personality insofar as she is 15 years older than I, to the day… we Scorpios are often maniacally loyal (think about why she stays with Bill) and maniacally driven (I’ve completed 18 marathons, despite a complete lack of physical talent, and I continue to write my blog, week in, week out, six and a half years on, despite a lack of particular literary talent or tremendous popularity among blog-readers, while Sen. Clinton continues to run for President, despite an obvious lack of political talent or popularity among voters).
There: I said it. She doesn’t GET that her husband has more talent in his one little wagging finger than she has in her whole body (and Mark Penn’s too). She became my fair state’s junior senator solely on the strength of her famous husband. She somehow thought that being an otherwise underachieving back-bench senator and Bill’s wife qualified her not only to run for President, but to win her party’s nomination by acclamation. This led her to run a cynical and vapid campaign that just assumed that the nation’s Democratic voters would be as forgiving and fawning over she and her famous husband’s as New York voters were (in her decisive victories over political heavyweights Rick Lazio and John Spencer). Like George W. Bush, a man also in his current job because of a famous relative, Hillary actually believed that this nomination was hers, without having to earn it with actual voters. Which is why, presumably, she may well be living in a bubble where she actually believes that the battle for the Democratic nomination isn’t over. Read the rest of this entry »
A Gallup analysis of exit-poll data finds Democratic Senator Barack Obama’s support among white voters if he runs against GOP Senator John McCain is about the same as Senator John Kerry’s was in the 2004 Presidential election:
Barack Obama’s current level of support among white voters in a head-to-head matchup against John McCain is no worse than John Kerry’s margin of support among whites against George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election.
Much of the talk following Tuesday’s Indiana and North Carolina primaries has focused on just how electable Obama — now the highly probable nominee — will be in the general election. The Clinton campaign has argued that Obama’s weaknesses among white voters and blue-collar voters will hurt him against McCain in the fall.
But it appears that the way Obama stacks up against McCain at this point is similar to the way in which Kerry performed against Bush in 2004 within several key racial, educational, religious, and gender subgroups. That is, the basic underlying structure of the general-election campaign this year does not appear to be markedly different from that of the 2004 election. This conclusion is based on an analysis of exit-poll data from 2004 compared to the Obama-McCain matchup in 4,000 Gallup Poll Daily tracking interviews conducted during the first five days of May.
Lawrence O’Donnell, writing in The Huffington Post, says he has talked with a “senior” Clinton campaign official who told him Senator Hillary Clinton will quit the Presidential race by June 15. Fact or not?
A senior campaign official and Clinton confidante has told me that there will be a Democratic nominee by June 15. He could not bring himself to say the words “Hillary will drop out by June 15,” but that is clearly what he meant. I kept saying, “So, Hillary will drop out by June 15,” and he kept saying, “We will have a nominee by June 15.” He stressed what a reasonable person Hillary is.
Everything about our conversation implied that he had already had this reality-based discussion with Hillary.
O’Donnell says, in essence, that the official told him Clinton will continue to campaign, get as many delegates and votes as she can, and then make her pitch to superdelegates. But she knows the math.
Yes, Clinton spokespersons publicly seem to be lost on gravity-free planet Clinton, but privately they know the end is near.
This is the kind of report that will likely be denied by top campaign officials (if it was meant to be official it would be by a named spokesman). But when people write something with such specificity, it is almost certainly sourced.
By June 15th. It’s truly impossible hard to believe Clinton would risk her long-range political future by battling tooth and nail all the way to the convention — particularly if a parade if Superdelegates starts marching towards Obama and party elites are itching to start the campaign against GOP presumptive nominee Senator John McCain.
CNN just showed Senator Hillary Clinton at a campaign appearance, gearing up for the upcoming West Virginia primary — and the subject comes up: with the number of pledged delegates, the popular vote and fund-raising against her, why won’t she quit her battle with Senator Barack Obama for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination?
The New York Daily News has an article detailing the reasons why. And a key reason, the paper says, is her camp’s feeling that Obama has little appeal to white collar voters:
While the case for Hillary Clinton to stay in the race is shakier than ever, one ugly reason for staying in could be found Tuesday amid the ruddy, sun-kissed Hoosiers who cheered her on to victory at the Indianapolis Speedway.
With Clinton posing alongside pioneering Indy speedster Sarah Fisher, there were almost no African-Americans to be seen. Many in the white, working-class crowd were simply not ready to back Barack Obama….
Such feelings leave Clinton and the Democratic Party in a tough spot. With the largest number of remaining delegates now being party insiders, they have to decide if Obama can overcome enough of that antipathy - essentially deciding if enough working-class whites will back away from the black candidate, whether because of the false Muslim rumors, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright flap or old-fashioned racism.
The paper reports that this need “gives her a reason to stay in the race.”
So how long is it likely to go? According to the Daily News, it’s likely Clinton will fight on all the way to the convention, unless there is a truly massive outcry for her to leave:
Two separate sources in the Clinton orbit insisted Tuesday night it’s now more likely Hillary will pursue her quest until the August convention in Denver - unless party leaders rise up en masse and publicly tell her it’s time to stop. The math, after all, remains solidly in Obama’s favor.
“I can think of no reason why it would not go to the convention now,” one top Hillary Democrat predicted. “Why should she get out?”
And then there’s a section that could be a red warning flag:
Some insiders still want to make sure no new bombshells will explode around the freshman Illinois senator.
Will there be new allegations surfacing? Perhaps in original, blind sourced reporting on the Drudge Report? If those surface, look for fingers to be pointed at the Clinton campaign, even if it’s not the source.
He could slip and stumble some more, her polls could continue to be strong, and once the party decides what to do with Florida and Michigan, his lead in the popular vote will be very narrow,” an insider said.
A top Democratic source with insight into Bill’s and Hillary’s states of mind says the Clintons are convinced that a Democratic presidency is all but certain no matter how messy the fight for the nomination.
In that scenario - which the Obama side and some Democratic elders worry is wishful thinking at best, delusional at worst - there’s no downside for Hillary doing whatever it takes for as long as it takes.
The problem is the meaning of “whatever it takes.” If it’s via a continued campaign aimed at driving up Obama’s negatives so they can convince Superdelegates Obama is unelectable, it’s likely to received a lot more poorly by party bigwigs than it would have been two weeks ago.
If Clinton plays out her campaign based on issues and makes a graceful exit, the Democrats have a chance at unity. If her campaign remains an aggressive negative campaign, complete with eleventh hour negative campaign ads, it could backfire with some superdelegates and will make the Democrats’ attempts to unify their fractured party even more difficult — not to mention negate any possibility of a “Dream Ticket” which more and more seems like an In Your Dreams Ticket.
FOOTNOTE: Just how bad was the political news last night. GO HERE and look at the photos that show how poorly Bill Clinton serves his wife when he stands by her side after a defeat.
Cartoon by John Darkow, Columbia Daily Tribune, Missouri
So what happened to Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in last night’s Democratic presidential primaries?
To find out, you can read a host of news articles and weblog posts (including several perspectives here on TMV). Two MUST READS that just hit the Internet are columns by Dick Polman and Christopher Hitchens.
Britney Spears, last December: “My sister’s not pregnant.”
John McCain, in January: “Any recession is psychological.”
Hillary Clinton, last night: “I win, he wins. I win, he wins. It’s so close!”
Polman then strips the assertion down detailing a host of factors. Here are some excerpts (read the original in full to get all the details):
1. By slaughtering Clinton in North Carolina and neary beating her in the wee hours in Indiana, Barack Obama racked up an overall net gain of 200,000 popular votes…..
2. Her squeaker win in Indiana, combined with her landslide loss in the more populous North Carolina, means that she will slip farther behind in the overall pledged-delegate competition…..
3. On the psychology/perception front, Obama’s performance last night foiled the Clinton argument that she owned the momentum and that the frontrunner was inexorably fading…..
4. Unpledged superdelegates want to see some clear evidence that voters view Clinton as the more electable and more appealing candidate, despite Obama’s frontunner status. Neither race last night supplied that kind of evidence…..
Polman says it’s “strains credulity” to think (a) Clinton will find fundraising easy, (b) the party will decide to give her Michigan’s delegates, (c) and that “superdelegates are going to deny the nomination to the candidate who, barring a documented revelation that he is an alien from a hostile planet, is now demonstrably poised to finish out the primary season with the most pledgees and popular votes.”
He concludes:
I suspect that the Clintons know all this, despite her display of public denial….And her husband clearly recognizes the lay of the land. He stood behind Hillary last night looking as if he’d been smacked with a two-by-four. The visual of Bill meant more than anything she had to say. The end of an era was in his eyes.
Hitchens provides less detail but makes some pointed observations…and again cannot get the image of Bill Clinton’s face as he stood behind his wife on a very bad political night out of his head:
Of all the slogans that Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama might have picked to distinguish themselves from one another, “Prolier Than Thou” was probably the least convincing.
Yet in the closing days of the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, it seemed as if the two graduates of the nation’s most privileged law schools, and the two former residents of the Ritziest parts of Illinois, were in a race to don the bluest collar and the most stained factory overalls.
Not since a desperate George Herbert Walker Bush (father of the current incumbent) started munching on pork-rinds, donning a Teamster cap and squeezing behind the wheel of a big rig in 1992 have I seen anything so condescending and ridiculous as the recent competition between Clinton and Obama to down the most beers, pose with the most guns, boast of the most hunting expeditions and so forth.
What did the voting boil down to?
However, it was not really the class vote at which people were looking. In North Carolina, Senator Obama reaped almost one hundred per cent of a constituency which the commentators quite frankly called by its primary color.
In Indiana, that constituency is not such a large share of the electorate.
Nobody especially likes to bang on about this, but this is as good an explanation as any for the discrepancy between the two candidates and the two states.
And, since West Virginia and Kentucky are next up – and reporters are almost unconsciously describing these two states as for some reason more “natural” for the former First Lady – in a short while we will be seeing the pendulum of politics swing back again.
There is less and less point in pretending that this campaign is not “about” race.
As far as I can calculate it, though, Mrs Clinton can carry all the next five states AND Puerto Rico and still not get an arithmetical majority.
Nonetheless, she continues to act as if she knows something that the rest of us do not. And I can tell you that it spooks the Obama campaign.
He ends looking at her speech in Indiana…and Bill Clinton:
And she looked tireless and energetic and full of vim and vigour in her – ill advised I felt – electric blue trouser-suit. It’s this amazing love of combat for its own sake that has won her so much grudging respect even from many Republicans.
However, just take a look at the speech and notice the lugubrious, white-haired, red-faced, scowling and bored figure standing so listlessly just behind her.
How can a campaign once renowned for slickness and spin have permitted such a horrid spectre at the feast?
And this dreary, resentful and shambolic person was once himself described as the country’s first black president. If his wife loses we shall know why.
Indeed. I’ve said it here many times: when the story of this campaign is written it will be said that Bill Clinton on balance sandbaggged his wife’s campaign.
The negativity that he reportedly championed (and did convince her to implement) helped divide the party and harden opposition to her. Raising the race card, even though he denies he did, put Hillary Clinton in a position where she started the primaries enjoying strong black voter support that Obama had problems getting, to her loss in North Carolina where she got less than 10 percent of the African-America vote. The Clinton’s frittered away a key constituency — a glaring fact of their campaign. She needed the black vote.
It’s definitely too early to write the Clinton’s political obituaries.
But if Hillary Clinton’s candidacy dies and they call CSI, CSI will likely find Bill Clinton’s fingerprints.
Cartoon by RJ Matson, The New York Observer
So now that the North Carolina and Indiana primaries are over — ending in split decision wins — who are the winners and losers in Tuesday’s primaries? Is it just Senator Barack Obama (who won North Carolina) or Senator Hillary Clinton (who narrowly won Indiana)?
Is it that clearcut? Here’s our take:
WINNERS:
Senator Barack Obama for winning a victory in North Carolina that went beyond the conventional media wisdom that was building — that he could lose there.
Senator Hillary Clinton for surviving by winning Indiana and keeping her candidacy alive, although some insist it is now on life support..and the batteries are almost dead.
Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh for his reprehensible “Operation Chaos” campaign to convince voters to use their precious right to vote to sandbag another party that appears to have worked in Indiana. Data suggests it had an impact.
Senator Barack Obama for not being able to end Clinton’s candidacy with two solid wins (this could change if the final Indiana vote changes).
Senator Hillary Clinton for not just losing to Obama in North Carolina while aides talked about her gathering momentum, but for starting out Campaign 2008 with a good chunk of black voter support and ending the night with shockingly low black voter support (remember that at the beginning of the campaign Obama had a problem getting African Americans to vote for him and against a Clinton).
The Limbaugh “dittoheads” who felt the precious vote for which so many have died should be tossed away to sabotage another political party, as if democracy in a time of national crisis were some cutesy game (and we add in this category any Democrats who also played the same game crossing over in Republican primaries).
THE BIGGEST LOSERS:
The Superdelegates who will either have to act soon…or later…to put an end to the contest and face the possibility that, no matter what they decide, half of the committed Democrats won’t vote for the candidate they opposed (which some feel means they should be committed).
Political pandering: By most accounts of the talking heads and experts, Clinton’s embracing of the gas holiday tax and dismissive comment that she didn’t have to listen to economists didn’t do her much good and probably hurt her.
To read some excellent analytical live blogging on the night’s voting GO HERE.
What happens next? The media and weblogs are filled with tidbits about a night that could have been a “game changer,” but not what Clinton had in mind.
My own view is she should run her campaign against John McCain. She will win West Virginia and Kentucky by huge margins.
She might even challenge Obama in Oregon.
What she should not do, imo, is run against Barack Obama. If there is a path to the nomination for her, and I doubt there is, it won’t come from attacking Obama now.
In today’s last-big primaries left (187 pledged delegates up for grabs of the 404 remaining) day, Sen. Barack Obama scored a decisive victory (around 15 points or more) in North Carolina and Sen. Hillary Clinton holds around a 4 point lead in Indiana with around 85% of precincts in, as of 23:00 “fast time” (EDT). Insofar as North Carolina is significantly bigger than Indiana, and insofar as Sen. Obama’s margin of victory there will be greater than Sen. Clinton’s margin in Indiana, assuming she even wins it at all, Obama will improve on his around 150 pledged delegate (and 135 or so overall delegate) lead, with only 217 pledged delegates left for grabs, in contests in Kentucky, West Virginia and Puerto Rico (likely for Clinton), and in Montana, South Dakota and Oregon (likely for Obama)… i.e., they’ll all net out or come pretty close to doing so, and Obama’s lead will hold… and superdelegates will start breaking in droves… for Obama.
The game is called “delegates;” telling us that if you count Florida and Michigan, (and only count White people at that) that Hillary “actually won” the “real” popular vote… or that some poll tells us Clinton will do better against McCain in selected counties in Florida and Ohio… really tells us nothing. If Clinton supporters want to make the case that the Rev. Wright has rendered Sen. Obama unelectable, apparently, the voters in both North Carolina and Indiana don’t seem to be accepting that, given the respective margins tonight, which, as noted above, will give Obama a net delegate pick-up, despite “Hillary’s momentum” and wall to wall Rev. Wright coverage on broadcast media (and of course, the shameless pandering on the gasoline tax).
If we accept polls that show that raw racism is something that Democrats should respect (i.e., evidently, a significantly higher number of Clinton voters say they would not vote for Obama than vice versa, and, as their policies are pretty much indistinguishable, I think we know why they would say this), then the Democratic Party may as well start selling the furniture at DNC headquarters, because it will no longer have a reason to be, nor would it ever again be assured of its only reliable base (hint: it’s neither unions, nor working class White people).
So… while this election may be too important for Democrats to lose, if it involves “winning” by elevating the candidate in distant second place in delegates, “winning” may well be a Pyrrhic victory: the end of the Democratic Party in any meaningful sense. Not that Sen. Clinton (and certainly Pres. Clinton) seem to care a jot about this. If the argument that Obama– a man who was a state legislator just three and a half years ago, is unelectable, then the answer to that problem might well be “Al Gore” (Gore-Obama?), but it is surely notthe candidate with every conceivable advantage of name recognition, organization and fund-raising prowess and a popular husband ex-President to boot who still couldn’t beat the man who was a state legislator three years ago (because she ran one of the stupidest campaigns in the history of the world).
Does Sen. Clinton have every right to soldier on? Yessirree, and frankly, if I were her, I might well myself, because this may well be her last opportunity to run, and certainly, she may never be this close again. Of course, it’s quite possible that her campaign is broke (again). And superdelegates are now going to start committing in droves, insofar as, while there are nominally 5 or 6 more contests, they are, combined, barely more than tonight’s total, which included an Indiana that had many demographic similarities to Clinton-strongholds Ohio and Pennsylvania, and yet, it might well only be Rush Limbaugh’s operation chaos that pushes her over the top there.
Is primary season and the race for the Democratically nomination technically or mathematically over? Not by a long-shot. Is it over? Yes, boys and girls, I’m afraid that it’s over.
Hey, who knows? If Sen. Obama can wrap this up in the next few days, he might even have time to come to our Columbia ‘83 class reunion in three weeks time. No… crazy talk on my part. But unless Sen. Obama is videotaped on a boat called Monkey Business, or shows up on the client list of the Emperors Club, or some other outrageous scandal that involves sex, any doubt that he will be the Democratic nominee has by and large just been removed.
UPDATE: Here is Obama’s North Carolina victory speech tonight. (We embed…you watch and decide!). If the video doesn’t show all of it, please go to THIS LINK to view it:
Why is the man above smiling? Because, apparently, he has a RIGHT to.
If all goes according to projections and Senator Hillary Clinton somewhat narrowly wins the Indiana Democratic primary (CBS has projected she will narrowly win it), he has a right to smile. Because if early indications are correct, conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh may have provided a textbook case of the influence of radio talk show hosts on partisans in the 21st century.
His “Operation Chaos” — designed to get his listeners to vote whenever they can in Democratic primaries for Clinton to prolong the Democrats’ highly divisive Clinton/Barack Obama Presidential nomination — could have given the Cinton the winning edge, if the victory margin in the end is like what seems to be shaping up now. The New Republic’s The Plank:
Some reporters have speculated about the impact of the “Limbaugh effect” — partisan Republicans crossing over to vote fr Hillary Clinton solely to help weaken the Democrats against John McCain. The sieze of the effect is hard to measure. But there is one numerical measurement, first pointed out to me by the Pew Survey’s Richard Auxier following the Pennsylvania primary, that gives some sense of it.
One exit poll question asks Indiana voters who they would support in a Clinton-McCain contest. 17% of them say McCain. Of those voters, 41% say they would vote for McCain over Clinton. In other words, these voters, 7% of the Indiana electorate, voted for Clinton in the primary but have no intention of supporting her in the fall.
Now, this isn’t a precise measure of the “Limbaugh effect” — no doubt there are some Republicans who backed Obama in the primary out of anti-Clinton sentiment, but plan to vote for McCain in November. But it is a good place to start when making a ballpark estimate. And it’s a sizeable number — 7% may wind up being as big as her margin of victory.
The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein looks at exit polls and reaches the same conclusion: Limbaugh played a role in motivating some voters whose motive was basically to sabatoge the Democratic primary…something some Democrats have tried in cross-over primaries the past but not on such an organized, sustained and serious scale. Stein’s post must be read full but here are some excerpts:
Did Rush Limbaugh actually impact the Democratic primary?
The loud-mouthed radio talk show host has been encouraging Republicans to vote for Sen. Hillary Clinton to continue the “chaos” in the Democratic race. And a sampling of some key exit poll information suggests he may, to a certain extent, be having an effect.
Thirty-six percent of primary voters said that Clinton does not share their values. And yet, among that total, one out of every five (20 percent) nevertheless voted for her in the Indiana election. Moreover, of the 10 percent of Hoosiers who said “neither candidate” shared their values, 75 percent cast their ballots for Clinton.
These are not small numbers. By comparison, of the 33 percent of voters who said Sen. Barack Obama does not share their values, only seven percent cast their ballots in his favor. Basically, more people who don’t relate to Clinton are, for one reason or another, still voting for her. These are not likely to be loyal supporters.
He goes into some detail then writes:
The numbers suggest one of three things: A) Clinton’s support in Indiana, while clearly there, is not entirely solid; B) a large swath of Indiana primary goers simply didn’t like the nominees and thought of Clinton as the lesser of two evils; or C) Limbaugh’s hatchet plan could be having political ripples.
Perhaps it’s a mix of all three.
Republican partisans will applaud what truly seems to be a Limbaugh success. And his “legend” as someone who can press a button and get followers to do his bidding (or jettison previous beliefs and get with the party line) will grow. Some Hillary Clinton supporters will say Well, what does it matter why they vote the way the do — they have the right to vote as they vote. (Which they do.)
But there is an ineffable stench of political sleaziness when Republicans — and Democrats — decide to cross party lines to sandbag the other party. Who would have ever thought 20 or 30 — or 10 — years ago that partisans of either party would vote in another party’s primary specifically to prolong the other party’s turmoil or weaken that party’s candidate? There have been charges that siphoning off another party’s votes has been used via third parties but this hasn’t been an actual calculated strategy until now. Welcome to mega partisan 2008.
Perhaps when Superdelegates look at these numbers, it might influence their perceptions on the components of the Indiana vote….particularly as Limbaugh starts hyping his impact and if the mainstream media latches on to the story.
P.S. Limbaugh’s power isn’t just because he’s a partisan. He is also a talented, first-class broadcaster who knows how to use the broadcast medium and get and hold an audience. He makes it look easy, and it isn’t — which is why so many other conservative and progressive talk show hosts have failed.
This may be the first vote in which his influence can be measured in qualitative terms.
CBS News has projected that Senator Hillary Clinton will win the Indiana Democratic Presidential primary — a result that means the evening of the North Carolina and Indiana primaries ended in a split decision for what increasingly appears to be a split political party:
Clinton pulled off an Indiana win in what was a virtual must-win Midwestern state. With 50 percent of the votes being reported in the state, she was leading Obama 55 percent to 45 percent.
Obama’s win mirrored earlier triumphs in Southern states with large black populations: Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and South Carolina among them. With 14 percent of the votes in North Carolina being reported, Obama was leading Clinton 63 percent to 35 percent.
CBS News exit poll results show that most voters in both states made up their minds a while ago. Only 17 percent in Indiana and 14 percent in North Carolina decided in the last three days. Twenty-four percent in Indiana and 18 percent in North Carolina decided in the last week.
Late deciders backed Clinton in Indiana by a margin of 62 percent to 38 percent for Obama. In North Carolina, Obama won late deciders by a much smaller margin of 49 percent to 48 percent.
And the important issues?
As it has been throughout the Democratic primaries, the economy was the most important issue in both states with 65 percent of voters in Indiana describing it as such and 60 percent in North Carolina. In Indiana, 50 percent of voters said Clinton would be more likely to improve the economy and 46 percent said that Obama would. In North Carolina, 52 percent said that Obama would be more likely to improve the economy and 42 percent said that Clinton would.
Nearly half of voters in both states said the situation with Obama’s former pastor Reverend Wright was important in their vote, while half said that it was not. In Indiana, 48 percent said that it was important and 49 percent said that it was not, while in North Carolina, 48 percent said the Wright situation was important in their vote and 50 percent said that it was not.
What happens next?
The Obama camp will point to his big North Carolina win and the rocky patch he has endured the past few weeks and suggest it shows he can handle anything. That spin is already going out.
Expect to the Clinton side to discount North Carolina without flatly coming out and saying Obama won in a state with a large black vote. Expect to hear the words “demographics” and fill in the vague word yourself.
Also, expect the Clinton campaign to signal ASAP that it intends to play hardball since Clinton did not get a double win tonight.
Clinton delegate honcho [Harold Ickes] tells The Page that his camp believes 2,209 — not 2,025 — is the magic number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination because they’re counting Michigan and Florida.
“I know the Obama people like to use the smaller amount. We don’t even like the implication of it, much less the amount. It implies he doesn’t recognize Florida and Michigan. We don’t see how he can do that politically…So our target is 2,209 and we think Hillary is in a good position to get there.”
This is called changing the goal posts. AND:
Also repeats his calling card to supers: “We don’t know enough about Senator Obama yet. We don’t need an October Surprise. And (the chance of) an October Surprise with Hillary is remote.”
So it could boil down to whether Superdelegates will allow the up-until-now conventional wisdom on the delegate count to be changed and to tilt to a candidate because the other side suggests there could be an October surprise.
FOOTNOTE: The total picture will be far more clear once the votes are completely tallied.
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.
NEWS FLASH: The votes are now in from the Democratic caucuses in Guam. Normally political junkies — and candidates — wouldn’t wait for these results with bated breath…but given the closeness of the battle between Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for the 2008 Presidential nomination this year, they have be doing just that. And then there is the ongoing p.r. battle over expectations.
Even the Kentucky Derby wasn’t this close. In the strangest of circumstances that could only bring about the closest of races, Hillary Rodham Clinton finished with 49.9% of the vote of the Guam Democratic Caucus, just 7 votes shy of Barack Obama’s total of 50.1%. While Obama led for the vast majority of the night’s tallying, Clinton needed a strong finish in the municipality of Dededo, Guam’s most populous village. And she did - gaining 61% of the 822 votes counted by the Democratic Party of Guam.
Note: these are unofficial, uncertified results as tabulated by the Democratic Party of Guam. The DPG also noted a high number of spoiled ballots in Dededo.
Guam’s caucuses took on added significance this year as the Democrats are locked in a delegate-by-delegate battle. Mr. Obama’s campaign opened an office in Hagatna, the capital, and the two candidates granted interviews to local media. Mrs. Clinton called for giving Guamanians the right to vote for president, while Mr. Obama, who spent part of his youth in Hawaii, stressed his ties to the Pacific Islands.
So what does it mean?
A win is a win — but Obama barely won this one. MSNBC:
Obama appears to have won the Guam caucus by the slimmest of margins — 50.1%-49.9% — over Clinton, report the Guam Pacific Daily News and KUAM-TV.
….Obama appears to have won 14 of 21 districts. There no telling just yet what the delegate breakdown will be. It could be a 2-2 split, but may not necessarily be, since Guam is actually electing half delegates — eight for four.
Not the journalistic hedge…which means this could conceivably change.
The latest Gallup Daily Tracking Poll provides the most vivid red flag warning yet for Democratic Senator Barack Obama in his battle with Senator Hillary Clinton for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination: presumptive GOP nominee Senator John McCain now enjoys a six point lead over Obama and only a one point lead over Clinton.
This will be a welcome piece of data for the Clinton campaign that has had as its strategy Obama not being electable (and many analysts say to make Obama that way):
John McCain has moved to a six percentage point, 48% to 42%, lead over Barack Obama in Gallup Poll Daily tracking of the general election, while he edges out Hillary Clinton by only one point, 46% to 45%.
The ongoing turmoil in the Democratic race — with neither candidate able to sustain a winning streak in the primaries and animosity seemingly mounting between them — seems to be benefiting McCain and hurting both Democrats. Last week McCain had fallen three points behind Clinton in the preferences of registered voters for the general election, and only tied Obama.
Although both Clinton and Obama have lost ground to McCain over the past week, the current results may be particularly troubling for Obama in trying to combat Clinton’s assertion to superdelegates that she would be the more electable of the two candidates in November.
This is McCain’s largest lead in a tracking poll:
The current six-point margin for McCain over Obama is the largest lead McCain has had over either candidate since Gallup began tracking general election preferences in early March. The gap between Obama and Clinton’s percentage of the vote when both are pitted against McCain is also the largest since the general election tracking began.
The bottom line: the contest is not benefiting the Democratic party, as some have claimed — and Obama has lost a host of support since his former pastor decided to extend his 15 minutes of fame into several long public appearances.
The question: can Obama stabilize his campaign in time for the important upcoming North Carolina and Indiana primaries?
For months it has been a “given” that Senator Barack Obama was way ahead in North Carolina — in some cases by double-digits in the polls — and that rival Senator Hillary Clinton didn’t have much of a chance to win the state’s Democratic Presidential primary, and create eleventh hour “Big Mo” in their battle for the Democratic presidential nomination. New polls suggest it may now be time to retire that “given.”
What’s going on among the Democrats now clearly is on two levels: the votes and the primaries on one level and the appeal to decision-solidifying Superdelegates on another. The political context is changing rapidly for Obama and not to his advantage.
Obama has a big problem: the latest Rasmussen Poll gives Clinton a two point lead — but indicates a TEN POINT DROP in Obama’s polling since Obama’s former Pastor, Jeremiah Wright’s press conference.
In the race for the Democratic Presidential Nomination, the Wright impact is especially evident. Clinton now has a statistically insignificant two-point edge over Obama, 46% to 44%. However, that represents a ten-point swing since Wright’s press conference. Before Pastor Wright appeared at the National Press Club, Obama led Clinton by eight points.
In Indiana, Clinton leads Obama by five points. In North Carolina Obama leads. Rasmussen Markets data shows Obama continues to be the favorite for the Democratic nomination, but expectations have slipped significantly in recent days. Currently, the frontrunner is given a 74.4% chance of winning.
A bevy of new national polls, plus surveys in Indiana and North Carolina — which hold key primaries on Tuesday — suggest that Hillary Clinton is closing the gap since her campaign-saving victory in Pennsylvania last week, and that the controversies dogging Barack Obama are having an impact.
In a national Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll, Clinton leads Obama 44 percent to 41 percent. The Illinois senator is viewed unfavorably by 42 percent of all voters, up 9 percentage points since February. Clinton’s unfavorable rating is still slightly higher than Obama’s, but it has dropped slightly. And by 10 percentage points, Democrats now view Clinton as likelier than Obama to beat presumptive Republican nominee John McCain. Democrats gave Obama a 4-point edge last month.
The Clinton campaign’s strategy to raise doubts about Obama’s electability is clearly succeeding, but not only due to the two Clintons’ at-times-Rovian-style negative campaigning. Three other contributing factors are Obama’s political bungles, his former Pastor’s insistence on a controversial high profile that sucks the air out of Obama’s daily media coverage, and Clinton’s increasing enthusiasm as a campaigner (which many analysts are noting). The Globe continues:
In a national NBC/Wall Street Journal survey, Obama’s lead has narrowed to 46 percent to 43 percent, and his unfavorable ratings have also risen. In March, 51 percent of voters viewed him positively and 28 percent saw him negatively, but in the new poll 46 percent view him favorably, but 37 percent negatively.
In a national New York Times/CBS poll, Obama leads 46 percent to 38 percent among Democrats, but 51 percent say they believe he will be the eventual nominee, down from 69 percent a month ago. And 48 percent of Democratic primary voters said they believe he would be the strongest candidate against McCain, down from 56 percent a month ago.
And in a Quinnipiac University poll, Clinton runs stronger than Obama in match-ups against McCain in the general election swing states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida. Clinton would get 49 percent to McCain’s 41 percent in Florida, leads 48 percent to 38 percent in Ohio, and 51 percent to 37 percent in Pennsylvania.
It’s clear that Obama knows he has a problem.
This morning he went on the Today Show (VIDEO HERE) with his wife Michelle — a husband-wife damage control appearance that was reminiscent of when then-Governor Bill Clinton went on 60 Minutes with Hillary Clinton in 1992 to be grilled by Steve Kroft amid allegations of (pre-Oval office) infidelity.
Last night Michelle Obama went on CNN. And on Sunday Obama will enter the Lion’s Den and be on “Meet The Press” with gotcha! journalist Tim Russert.
But Obama’s immediate concern is likely North Carolina. The vibes coming from polls aren’t good ones. And, if he loses there, the ugly and divisive Democratic party race will likely get uglier and more divisive as Clinton moves in for the political kill and Obama pulls out all stops to stabilize his campaign.
A survey of 571 registered likely voters in North Carolina’s May 6 Democratic primary shows Sen. Hillary Clinton having moved from a double digit deficit in an InsiderAdvantage poll taken in mid-April to a two point lead over Sen. Barack Obama in this telephone survey, conducted April 29. The survey was weighted for age, race, gender, and political affiliation. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8%
Prior to his appearance on Fox News Network’s “Hannity & Colmes,” on which the poll was released, InsiderAdvantage’s Matt Towery noted: “The shift has come almost entirely from white voters age 45 and over. There was a small drift of African-Americans back towards Clinton, but not so significant as to establish any trend.
“I believe when all is said and done, Obama will likely carry North Carolina; or if he loses the race, it will be by just a few points.
“Our polling generally does not indicate the eventual compression of black voters that Obama usually enjoys just before Election Day. If that happens, my guess is that he will pull this out. However, this poll is clearly an indication of reaction to the latest statements by his former pastor; and it forces Sen. Obama to split resources between Indiana and North Carolina.”
Even with the pollster’s hedge, the bottom line is that this is awful news for the Obama campaign. Narrowing polls are one thing in NC; Clinton pulling ahead is another. Perception helps sculpt reality. And news stories down the line show an Obama campaign that is on the defensive and a Clinton campaign that is taking advantage of it…and the polls show some results. A WRAL news poll doesn’t show Clinton ahead — but, once again, the TRENDING in the polls is clear:
A WRAL news poll released Wednesday shows Barack Obama’s double-digit lead over Hillary Clinton among Tar heel Democrats is eroding.
Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. surveyed 400 likely Democratic voters Monday and Tuesday. The results show Obama with a 7 point lead over Clinton, with 9 percent undecided. The poll has a margin of error of 5 percentage points.
“Right or wrong, it’s the Wright phenomenon for Obama,” said David McLennan, a political science professor at Peace College.
McLennan said Obama’s former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is dragging down the Illinois senator. Wright has made comments such as suggesting that the AIDS virus was invented by the government to destroy “people of color.”
“It is a media-driven story. Wright is very controversial. He makes controversial statements. He gets people fired up, but it’s not one of the top issues in the polls,” McLennan said.
Note again that polls are all over the place — and for confirmation of this, GO HERE to Pollster.com and see the graph of various polls. Obama partisans will say “Well, those polls are flawed because others show him well ahead!” Clinton partisans will pooh-pooh polls showing Obama in the lead, say they don’t count and point to the one showing Clinton ahead. But it is the trending of recent polls that needs to be watched — even though the graph that charts various polls shows Obama ahead.
THE BOTTOM LINE FACT: Both campaigns will have to pull-out-all-stops for the political ground war. An Obama win in NC would give him a cushion against his broken momentum and Clinton’s likely win in Indiana. A Clinton win in North Carolina would be considered an upset and ensure a tooth-and-nail battle right up to the convention and bolster Clinton’s argument that Obama has some electability problems, even though she has some of her own.
In reality, both Democratic candidates increasingly seem to be damaged political goods, but McCain is burdened with his anchor-like tie to President George W. Bush — a tie that could become increasingly toxic once the Democrats stop politically disemboweling each other and turn their focus instead on the Republican candidate. McCain’s Bush ties are a bigger sticking point with voters than Obama’s relationship with his pastor.
HERE’S A CROSS SECTION OF WEBLOG OPINION ON THE POLLS:
April 29th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
The latest Gallup Daily tracking poll shows Senator Hillary Clinton now pulling slightly ahead of rival Senator Barack Obama — suggesting that she and others who seek to stop Obama from getting the Democratic nomination now have some of the Wright stuff to use to persuade Superdelegates to tilt to her:
Democrats at the national level remain very closely divided in their preferences for their party’s presidential nomination, with the latest Gallup Poll Daily tracking update showing 47% favoring Hillary Clinton and 46% supporting Barack Obama.
This marks the fifth consecutive Gallup Poll Daily tracking report in which the two Democratic candidates have been within a point of one another, as well as one of the few times in recent months in which the race has stabilized at the break-even point for more than a day or two. From a broad perspective, this situation marks a loss for Obama, who has generally been in the lead over Clinton for the last month. At the same time, Clinton — coming off of her victory in the Pennsylvania primary, and almost certainly benefiting from the news media focus on controversies surrounding Obama — has been unable to move into a significant lead.
Trending is important. And if this trend continues Clinton will have some data to argue to Superdelegates that she is candidate who could most easily beat presumptive Republican nominee Senator John McCain (the guy who is watching the Democratic race with a huge smile on his face).
On the other hand, Rasmussen Reports finds the Clinton-Obama race remains stable — although expectations that Obama will be the next President are going south:
The Democratic Presidential Nomination remains stable. It’s Obama 49%, Clinton 41% (see recent Democratic Nomination results). Rasmussen Markets data, however, shows Obama’s chances for winning the nomination have slipped four percentage points since yesterday. Currently, the frontrunner is given a 76.0 % chance of victory.
Data from the Rasmussen Markets also shows that expectations for Obama to be the next President have also declined. As of Tuesday morning, expectations for Obama to win the White House were at 44%. That’s down from 49% a week ago and 54% a week-and-a-half ago. The decline is likely the result of both the Pennsylvania Primary results and the re-emergence of Jeremiah Wright in the media spotlight. Polling data released yesterday shows that both Republicans and unaffiliated voters are less likely to believe that Obama is a stronger general election candidate than Clinton.
Clinton has unleashed a potential nightmare scenario for the Democrats with her claim to be leading in the popular vote. If Clinton is able to carry such a claim to the convention, it could significantly complicate efforts to unify Democrats for the fall campaign. The only way for Obama to effectively eliminate this potential problem is to do well enough in the remaining primaries so that he wins the popular vote no matter how it is counted.
That’ll be hard for Obama to do with Wright on his back, pounding him on the head and tripping him.
Cartoon by John Darkow, Columbia Daily Tribune, Missouri
April 29th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
Past political campaigns have had their share of people associated with candidates who are placed on the defensive — but seldom has one in any year had one as proactively insistent on keeping himself alive and injected into an excruciatingly close race as the political albatross now dangling around Democratic Senator Barack Obama named Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Aside from the eager nodding of heads and the unspoken “Keep it up!” you can almost feel coming from the campaign of rival Democratic Presidential wannabe Senator Hillary Clinton, conservative Republicans are ecstatic. Jonah Goldberg, writing in The Los Angeles Times:
God bless the Rev. Jeremiah Wright!
After Barack Obama gave his big race speech in mid-March, many critics noted that the Illinois senator had thrown his own grandmother under the bus to defend his controversial pastor. Well, Wright proved over the last few days that he would not be outdone. He not only threw Obama under the bus, he chucked much of the liberal and mainstream media under there with him. If this keeps up, to paraphrase Roy Scheider in “Jaws,” he’s gonna need a bigger bus.
For six weeks, Obama’s biggest supporters have diligently argued that to so much as mention Wright is in effect racist. When Hillary Rodham Clinton said that Wright wouldn’t have been her pastor, Andrew Sullivan gasped on his Atlantic blog that this was “a new low” in the election. When Lanny J. Davis, Clinton’s consummate spinner, defended her on CNN by describing what Wright actually said, CNN’s Anderson Cooper lambasted Davis for daring to even repeat Wright’s comments. Newsweek’s Joe Klein chimed in, “You’re spreading the poison right now.”
What Wright has done the past few days by (over)exposure is to leave himself in the eyes of many indefensible in terms of the center — and converted himself into an unrelenting albatross also chained to a 1,000 lb. anchor dangling around Obama’s neck:
Obama and his defenders have repeatedly insisted that the bits from Wright’s sermons that got wide circulation last month had been taken “out of context.” His infamous sound bites were grounded in concrete theological or factual foundations, they claim. He was quoting other people. He’s done good things. Nothing to see here, folks.
And so God bless Wright because he’s left all of these folks holding a giant, steaming bag of … well, let’s just call it a bag of “context.”
His positions and the context of his remarks, some could argue, are still explainable, but the problem is that those making that argument right now veer into a nuanced area of nuance — the kind of argument that usually does not work in elections where candidates oversimplify, generalize and try to link up their opponents with broad-brush imagery of stances, events or individuals that will be seen unfavorably by key chunks of an attention-span-challenged electorate.
All this comes at a time when Obama’s campaign is reportedly battening down the hatches for what is expected to be a brutal campaign lasting well into the summer, the New York Times reports:
Mr. Obama’s aides said that they remained confident he would win the nomination. “We feel very good about the position that we are in,” said David Axelrod, his chief strategist. “But we have gotten to the position we are in by taking every week and every contest seriously.”
Still, they said they were no longer as hopeful as they once were that the contest could be resolved before June 3, the day of the last primaries. As a result, they were girding for six weeks of attacks by Mrs. Clinton and potential election defeats that could raise further questions among superdelegates — the elected Democrats and party leaders who will ultimately determine the nominee — about Mr. Obama’s strength as a general election candidate.
And Wright’s double-whammy of appearances came at a time of introspection and private disappointment:
In discussions with donors and supporters last week, Mr. Obama’s advisers played down the loss in Pennsylvania, noting that both sides had expected Mrs. Clinton to win there.
Still, the message belied private frustration and disappointment that Mr. Obama shared with a few associates and advisers, particularly over the hardening narrative that he could not appeal to working-class voters, and a personal frustration for comments he made about some small-town voters being “bitter” at their economic conditions. (Mrs. Clinton seized on those remarks, which have shadowed his campaign.)
“Everyone’s got a real calmness about where we are,” said David Plouffe, who is Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, “but a real sense of urgency that we have eight contests coming up
