In his book, Schecter makes the case for why, although he supported McCain in his run in 2000, McCain no longer deserves support and in fact, his candidacy should be fought actively, without hesitation and on all fronts. Schecter outlines his reasons for these sentiments and fills in those reasons with more details than you may be able to absorb. Schecter draws a portrait of both McCain’s political trajectory and the parallel trajectory of how his political choices since 2001 are a thumbing of his nose at the very people who got him to the presidential precipice in the first place.
A couple of disclosures before I offer you my phone interview with Cliff: I’ve never been a McCain supporter. And I haven’t known of Schecter that long either - here’s the first post I ever wrote about Schecter. However, it was fascinating talking to someone with a seemingly vast knowledge base about someone whom I’ve never really studied.
JMZ: You argue on behalf of former McCain supporters who should be able to realize that McCain isn’t what he once was. Who, then, is the alternative and why?
CS: Well. There’s always, “What we have versus what we’d like to have.” I’m an Obama supporter and he has a lot of appeal to Independents. But he hasn’t done it the way McCain did it – by attacking his own party in big speeches. Obama has done it by standing up, not by splitting. Obama talks about rising above partisanship and reaching out to all people on all sides and getting past the muck where politics has gotten so nasty. Obama says, I’m going to talk to you like an adult. And that’s what McCain had called “straight talk” – but he hasn’t given us much of that [this election cycle.] Read the rest of this entry »
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.
Yesterday we ran a post about a CBS/New York Times poll that said Democratic Senator Barack Obama has rebounded after denouncing his former pastor — but a new Gallup poll reaches a different conclusion: it concludes Obama has been wounded among independent voters and Democrats.
It also finds that Clinton’s husband former President Bill Clinton is also a highly divisive factor among many voters.
Meanwhile, Obama’s rival for the Democratic nomination Senator Hillary Clinton has now pulled into the lead among both Democrats and independents:
Barack Obama’s national standing has been significantly damaged by the controversy over his former pastor, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, raising questions for some voters about the Illinois senator’s values, credibility and electability.
The erosion of support among Democrats and independents raises the stakes in Tuesday’s Indiana and North Carolina primaries, which represent a chance for Obama to reassert his claim to a Democratic nomination that seems nearly in his grasp. A defeat in Indiana and a close finish in North Carolina, where he’s favored, could fuel unease about his ability to win in November. Such results also could help propel Hillary Rodham Clinton’s uphill campaign all the way to the Democratic convention in August.
In the USA TODAY survey, taken Thursday through Saturday, Clinton leads Obama among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents by 7 percentage points, the first time in three months she has been ahead. Two weeks ago, before the controversy over comments by Jeremiah Wright reignited, Obama led by 10 points.
The latest Zogby Daily Tracking poll indicates Democratic Senator Barack Obama retains a 9 point lead over Senator Hillary Clinton days away from the Democratic Presidential primary — and the two are tied in Indiana.
Meanwhile, the latest Rasmussen poll shows Clinton has pulled even with Obama nationally among Democrats, although Rasmussen’s upcoming primary poll numbers — showing Obama leading in North Carolina and trailing in Indiana — have not changed.
Zogby reports:
Democrat Barack Obama of Illinois holds a nine point lead in North Carolina, and has now edged ahead of Hillary Clinton of New York by a statistically insignificant two points in Indiana, a pair of new Zogby daily tracking telephone polls show.
In both states, the candidates are essentially tied among moderate voters, while Obama holds leads among mainline liberals and progressives. Clinton holds substantial advantages among conservative voters likely to cast ballots in the Democratic primary election.
After a good day of polling, Obama retains a lead in North Carolina - 48% to 39%, with 13% either unsure or favoring someone else. In Indiana, Obama won the day by a small margin and now holds 43% support, compared to 41% for Clinton, with the balance either favoring someone else or undecided.
In several key past races undecideds have tended to break for Hillary Clinton. Watch the undecideds in the final batch of polling.
In Indiana, Zogby has Obama ahead of Clinton 43 to 41 percent — a statistical tie given the margin of error:
Clinton holds a sizable edge among Catholics and a small advantage among Protestant voters. She also leads among older voters, while Obama leads among all Democratic primary voters under age 55. In a key age demographic - those voters age 35 to 54 - Obama enjoys a 10-point lead. This was a group that went for Clinton in the recent Pennsylvania primary, after leaning toward Obama in the week before the election.
Clinton leads by 11 points among white voters in Indiana, which make up about 83% of the electorate. Obama leads by an enormous 10-to-1 ratio among African American voters in Indiana. He also continues to lead in northern Indiana, a large section of which is influenced by his hometown Chicago media market, and in Indianapolis. In the southern half of the state, which features a population much like that of Ohio next door, Clinton continues to enjoy a double-digit lead. Obama is holding on to a nine point lead among Indiana men, while closing the gap to five points behind Clinton among women.
Meanwhile, Ramussen shows a gain by Clinton nationally — and signs that the close race is indeed good for the Democratic party:
The race for the Democratic Presidential Nomination is now tied. Clinton and Obama are each supported by 45% of Likely Democratic Primary Voters. Last Monday, Obama led by eight. The ongoing competition between Obama and Clinton may be causing angst for party leaders, but the competition has been good for the Party label. In fact, the Democrats now have the largest partisan advantage over the Republicans since Rasmussen Reports began tracking this data on a monthly basis nearly six years ago.
In Tuesday’s Primaries, Clinton has a narrow lead in Indiana while Obama has the lead in North Carolina. Clinton leads Obama by five points. Looking ahead a few weeks, Obama has a twelve-point lead in Oregon. 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 73.7 % chance of winning.
All of this suggests that unless Obama or Clinton wins both primaries on Tuesday, on Wednesday morning the race could be exactly where it is today.
And now it moves to media center stage: the trend of Republicans crossing over to vote in Democratic primaries. But the New York Times reports that many GOPers aren’t doing this because they’re “dittoheads” obeying the wishes of mega-partisan talk show host Rush Limbaugh, but disgruntled Republicans who feel their party has left — or is leaving — them:
INDIANAPOLIS - Until now, Shirley Morgan had always been the kind of voter the Republican Party thought it could count on. She comes from a family of staunch Republicans, has a son in the military and has supported Republican presidential candidates ever since she cast her first ballot, for Richard M. Nixon in 1972.
But this year Mrs. Morgan exemplifies a different breed: the Republican crossing over to vote in the Democratic primary. Not only will she mark her ballot for Senator Barack Obama in the May 6 primary here, but she has also been canvassing for him in the heavily Republican suburbs of Hamilton County, just north of Indianapolis — the first time she has ever actively campaigned for a candidate.
“I used to like John McCain, but he’s aligning himself too closely with what Bush did, and that’s just not what I want for this country,” Mrs. Morgan, who is 56, said when asked to explain her rejection of the presumptive Republican nominee.
This should be a warning flag to John McCain. As I’ve predicted many times on this site, there is a large segment of voters that aren’t going to look at political party at all this year — but want to take a big broom and sweep away the people who are in charge who have brought the United States a war seemingly without end (even if X voter originally supported the war), a decimated economy, a sagging dollar, an epidemic of home foreclosures and plummeting local property values, and an economy peppered by massive corporate cutbacks or failures and employment ills.
Seen from this perspective, the decisions of Democratic rivals Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to ignore Democratic progressives’ demand to boycott Fox News, makes political sense: Republican voters are in play in these primaries and they all can’t be dismissed as participating in Limbaugh’s call to basically sabotage the Democratic primaries.
This suggests that indicates that the potency of the Democratic party’s most progressive wing, is now being offset in some primaries by more conservative and centrist voters who are cross-over Republicans who feel their party has failed them. And they’re shopping around.
The Times confirms this:
Since the start of the primary and caucus season in January, Republican voters have been crossing over in increasing numbers to vote in Democratic contests — supplying up to 10 percent of the vote in states that allow such crossover voting — and they are expected to play a pivotal role in the fiercely contested primary here. What is less clear, however, is the motivation for their behavior: are they genuinely attracted by the two Democratic candidates? Or are they mischief-making spoilers, looking to prolong a divisive Democratic fight or support a candidate Mr. McCain can beat in November?
Local Republican Party leaders in Indiana concede the attraction of the Democratic candidates to some of their party members. And interviews with roughly a dozen Republican voters in central Indiana suggest that they are driven mainly by concerns about the economy, with discontent over Bush administration policies driving their involvement in the Democratic race.
What’s now happening between Obama and Clinton is competition for some of these Republicans — Republicans probably dismissed as “well-they-must-be-Rinos” by lockstep Republican partisans who will adjust their positions or jettison previous principles according to the latest pronouncements from the White House or EIB Radio Network. The Times again: Read the rest of this entry »
A new poll provides PROOF that in the end President George Bush has proven to be a uniter, not a divider — a President who has left his memorable mark on history:
A new poll suggests that George W. Bush is the most unpopular president in modern American history.
This also suggests that a new national sport in coming months will be keeping track of Republican presumptive nominee John McCain putting distance between himself and Mr. Bush:
A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Thursday indicates that 71 percent of the American public disapprove of how Bush his handling his job as president.
“No president has ever had a higher disapproval rating in any CNN or Gallup poll; in fact, this is the first time that any president’s disapproval rating has cracked the 70 percent mark,” said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.
Sometimes people don’t give politicians enough credit for their achievements. It is only fair to applaud Mr. Bush, since it took a lot of hard work to achieve this status. MORE:
“Bush’s approval rating, which stands at 28 percent in our new poll, remains better than the all-time lows set by Harry Truman and Richard Nixon (22 percent and 24 percent, respectively) but even those two presidents never got a disapproval rating in the 70s,” Holland added. “The previous all-time record in CNN or Gallup polling was set by Truman, 66 percent disapproval in January 1952.”
CNN Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider adds, “He is more unpopular than Richard Nixon was just before he resigned from the presidency in August 1974.” President Nixon’s disapproval rating in August 1974 stood at 67 percent.
April 28th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
How close is the race between Senator Barack Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton among Democrats in the increasingly divided Democratic party? It remains a virtual tie…a stalemate…where one slip by one candidate could change the high-stakes dynamics of a race being closely watched by convention superdelegates.
Gallup Poll Daily tracking conducted April 25-27 shows Democrats closely divided in their nomination preferences, with 47% favoring Barack Obama and 46% backing Hillary Clinton.
The race has been stable at a virtual dead heat in each of the last four Gallup Poll Daily tracking reports. This follows Clinton’s victory in the April 22 Pennsylvania Democratic primary — an event which has helped Clinton challenge what had been a growing sense of inevitability around Obama winning the nomination. (To view the complete trend since Jan. 3, 2008, click here.)
Also, the two have been roughly tied in each individual day of polling included in today’s three-day rolling average. Barring any political firestorms along the lines of the recent Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Kosovo controversies, the race could very well remain closely contested through at least the May 6 Indiana and North Carolina primaries.
There is also no change in national registered voter preferences for the fall, with Clinton beating John McCain by three percentage points, 47% to 44%, and Obama running even with McCain, each at 45%.
But there are other polls that provide other glimpses into the evolving preferences of the Democratic and general electorate:
Thirty-four percent (34%) of Democrats nationwide now believe that Hillary Clinton should drop out of the race for the White House. That’s up from 32% earlier in April and 22% in late March.
As for Barack Obama, just 22% of Democrats say he should drop out. That’s down from 26% earlier in April and unchanged from 22% in March. Just 1% want both candidates to drop out and 45% aren’t ready for either to leave.
Nationally, Obama holds a modest but steady lead over Clinton in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll.
By a 62% to 25% mark, Obama supporters say that Clinton should leave the race. But, just 4% of those who support Senator Clinton agree. Clinton supporters are evenly divided as to whether Obama should drop out.
Overall, 58% of all voters now believe Obama will be the nominee. That’s down slightly from 62% earlier in the month. Among Democrats 59% expect Obama to win (down from 63%). Rasmussen Markets currently suggests that Obama has an 79.6% chance of winning the nomination.
2. A new Associated Press-Ipsos poll shows Clinton would have an easier time deafeating presumptive Republican nominee Senator John McCain:
Hillary Rodham Clinton now leads John McCain by 9 points in a head-to-head presidential matchup, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll that bolsters her argument that she is more electable than Democratic rival Barack Obama.
Obama and Republican McCain are running about even.
The survey released Monday gives the New York senator and former first lady a fresh talking point as she works to raise much-needed campaign cash and persuade pivotal undecided superdelegates to side with her in the drawn-out Democratic primary fight.
Helped by independents, young people and seniors, Clinton gained ground this month in a hypothetical match with Sen. McCain, the GOP nominee-in-waiting. She now leads McCain, 50 percent to 41 percent, while Obama remains virtually tied with McCain, 46 percent to 44 percent.
Both Democrats were roughly even with McCain in the previous poll about three weeks ago.
Since then, Clinton won the Pennsylvania primary, raising questions anew about whether Obama can attract broad swaths of voters needed to triumph in such big states come the fall when the Democratic nominee will go up against McCain. At the same time, Obama was thrown on the defensive by his comment that residents of small-town America were bitter. The Illinois senator also continued to deal with the controversial remarks of his longtime Chicago pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
And two pollsters (D&R) agree: these numbers bode well for Clinton:
“I don’t think there’s any question that over the last three weeks her stature has improved,” said Harrison Hickman, a Democratic pollster unaligned in the primary. He attributed Clinton’s gains to people moving from the “infatuation stage” of choosing the candidate they like the most to a “decision-making stage” where they determine who would make the best president.
Added Steve Lombardo, a GOP pollster: “This just reinforces the sentiment that a lot of Republican strategists are having right now — that Clinton might actually be the more formidable fall candidate for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that Obama can’t seem to get his footing back.”
Note again that polls are see-saws that seemingly fluctuate with the conventional wisdom and with whatever candidate comes out better in a given news cycle. But the bottom line is: they show a serious erosion for Obama and a rebound for Clinton.
April 27th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
Senator Barack Obama is more electable than Senator Hillary Clinton due to his strength among independent voters. And a contest between Obama and presumptive Republican nominee Senator John McCain would be a plus for America’s independent voters since both appeal to independents — and it wouldn’t be as divisive as a Clinton-McCain race.
A presidential campaign between Barack Obama and John McCain would be a win-win for America’s rising tide of independent voters. They present clear policy differences, but they are decidedly non-polarizing political figures, offering a healthy competition for cross-over votes and a welcome break from the hyper-partisanship of the Bush-Clinton-Bush era. Nominating Hillary Clinton would deepen our domestic political divisions –that’s a data-driven conclusion that’s difficult for her supporters to spin their way out of.
And Avlon presents the data. He start his column, his first since leaving Giuliani’s campaign (he used to write for the New York Sun) this way:
It’s electability, stupid.
That’s what Hillary Clinton and her surrogates have been spinning to super-delegates and anyone else who will listen since she lost her grip on once-inevitable nomination.
There’s just one problem – when it comes to independent voters, those crucial swing votes in swing states, Hillary doesn’t hold the electability edge: Barack Obama does.
Independent voters favor Obama by a 2 to 1 margin over Hillary – 49% to 24% – according to a NBC/WSJ poll taken after the Jeremiah Wright scandal in late March. His approval rating among Republicans is almost twice Hillary’s as well – 19% to 10%.
Crossover appeal is the key indicator of electability – especially for Democrats. Despite Democratic dominance of Congress during most of the 20th Century, no Democratic president managed to win more than 51% of the popular vote, with the exceptions of FDR and LBJ. What’s the lesson? Democrats especially depend on Independent voters and even some centrist Republicans to win the White House.
Obama’s Independent edge has already had an impact in key 2008 swing states like Virginia, where independents made up 22% of the February 12th open primary. Obama won their support by a 2 to 1 margin, on his way to a 64-35 blowout victory.
He then looks at Clinton’s win and says that the data does not show her strong in attracting independent voters. Meanwhile, he looks at the GOP’s chief asset in attracting independent voters…McCain:
April 23rd, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
The latest Gallup Daily tracking poll is out and while it still shows Senator Barack Obama with a healthy lead over Senator Clinton in the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination, the numbers have also sparked a discussion about whether a pattern is emerging: Republican presumptive nominee Senator John McCain as a candidate who can’t get much above a certain number.
The boilerplate numbers, for those keeping track of the poll’s every twist and turn, are these:
Barack Obama leads Hillary Clinton in national Democratic preferences for the nomination, 50% to 42%, in Gallup Poll Daily tracking from April 20-22.This marks the third straight day Obama has had a significant lead over Clinton, although he held a slightly higher 10 percentage point advantage in Tuesday’s report.
The latest three-day rolling average includes interviewing on Tuesday night, partially conducted as the returns of the Pennsylvania Democratic primary were coming in. However, the impact of Clinton’s 10-point win in that election on national Democratic preferences is not yet evident in the data.
With Obama currently leading Clinton nationally by eight points, it appears Pennsylvania is not a Democratic bellwether state. However, if the Clinton campaign is successful in using her solid Pennsylvania victory to argue she is the more electable candidate of the two in the fall, then she could start to close the gap with Obama in Gallup Poll Daily tracking over the next few days.
But some Internet pundits have noted another number: how McCain is shown as one point ahead of Obama, 46 to 45 percent and ahead of Clinton 47 to 46 percent. What is notable: he hasn’t moved all that much in many polls.
The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohen writes:
If McCain is getting a free ride, it doesn’t seem to be doing much good. He’s running no stronger against either candidate than he was before the Wright story, Bittergate, or the Bosnia controversy.
It’s possible McCain’s numbers are stagnant simply because Clinton and Obama soaking up all of the media attention. But there may be another explanation, one I know I’ve read elsewhere (maybe in a Gallup analysis, though I can’t find it now): That 45 percent figure represents a ceiling of his support.
After all, barring some outside shock to the political system, there is no reason to think McCain’s numbers will go up. People already have overwhelmingly positive feelings about him–stronger than about either of the Democratic candidates. They see him as a likeable, principled war hero whom they trust on national security. Very few realize that he has supported privatizing Social Security, that he opposes universal health insurance, that he supports free trade without qualification, and so on. Once the voters learn these things, at least some of them are likely to abandon him.
If anything, McCain has the look of an Internet stock circa 1999: Great numbers, lousy fundamentals.
McCain simply isn’t as strong a candidate as people seem to think he is. Factors working against him include Bush fatigue, a declining economy, his age, his need to pander heavily to the Christian right, his hawkishness in a year when the public isn’t feeling very hawkish, his history of flip flopping for transparently political reasons, and a portfolio of extremely unpopular positions (like privatizing Social Security) that Democrats can make a lot of hay with in the fall. What’s more — and go ahead, call me an optimist — I suspect that at some point there’s going to be a press backlash against McCain. His media image is a bubble, sustained by a sort of childlike faith, and once that faith starts to wobble — something that may already have started — the bubble is likely to pop. Before long, I suspect that a lot of reporters are going to start recognizing his faux openness as more faux than open.
Of course, this all assumes that Hillary Clinton decides not to be completely suicidal and take down the party in a huge ball of flames. But I don’t think she will. Even the Clintons have to bow to reality eventually.
The last statement is conventional wisdom…and we’ve already seen how accurate conventional wisdom has been this year….
McCain, as a candidate, isn’t especially scary at all. He’s clumsy, unprincipled, arrogant, often belligerent, and usually confused. He was the best Republican candidate in the GOP field, but it was an awfully weak field.
But taking all of this into consideration, that’s all the more incentive to end the Democratic race and get the general election started. Like, now. Dems have a very powerful case to make against McCain, but they can’t make it while the party is divided in half, and they’re waiting until late August for a nominee.
McCain has high favorability ratings, nearly universal name ID, and the enduring love of every major news outlet in the country. The sooner Dems start making their case against McCain — which really isn’t that tough to make — Dems can position themselves for an incredibly successful, possibly even historic, year — at the top of the ballot on down.
The chances of this happening in a truncated, eight-week general election campaign, with a divided Democratic Party and a Republican nominee that will have a five-month head start, are considerably less. Cohn argues that it can come together for Dems anyway, so the party can just be patient and let all of this play out.
I’m not nearly as optimistic.
I agree with Benen.
If the Presidential election is viewed in a kind of vacuum with a Democrat in a normal year running against McCain, it could be argued that McCain isn’t getting much higher in the polls and could face problems once the Democrats get a nominee.
Obama’s difficulties and the prolongation of the Clinton-Obama confrontation have lifted Republicans from their slough of despondence to optimism about the presidential election. The transformation from deep pessimism to overriding optimism is such that McCain is privately warning supporters that once the nomination is decided and supporters of the losing Democratic candidate return to the fold, he will fall behind badly (though, McCain hopes, temporarily).
But what is most likely to happen? Unless there is some major development, Clinton will press her campaign — using as its tactic campaigning to raise Obama’s negatives so she can argue he is unelectable — at least into early June, or perhaps all the way to the convention. Many polls now report that Clinton and Obama supporters won’t vote for the other man/woman.
McCain is probably the strongest GOP candidate for 2008 because of his appeal to increasingly important independent swing voters. But some of the support is indeed “soft” and can be peeled away by a comprehensive Democratic campaign against him, particularly noting his many flip-flops on stands he originally took in his losing 2000 campaign. And — most assuredly — editors and reporters will cover anything that turns up about his background, or any of his political blunders.
Remember the unintentional press narrative that often emerges: the front runner rises, the front runner is solidly ahead, the front runner stumbles, the front runner is no longer the front runner and finally (in most but not all cases) the former front runner makes a dramatic comeback…and is the frontrunner.
The problem: media, public discourse, talk radio and blog oxygen is being sucked up by the increasingly ugly and personal Obama-Clinton campaign and the animosity of the camps of both of these candidates. Media attention often is determined by conventional wisdom and the idea of reader/viewer “interest.” No political story is as fascinating as the story of a political party that seemed to have it in the bag, ripping the bag wide open, releasing it’s contents and stomping on the bag.
All of the factors that could be cited that suggest McCain is a flawed candidate could be valid but must be looked at within this context: both Obama and Clinton are looking increasingly flawed as they fire political Uzis into each other. By COMPARISON, McCain is looking lofty and presidential and is not being painstakingly challenged.
McCain is solidifying his imagery the way he wants it to look..and doing it effectively. The two Democrats are working hard (and effectively) to tear down each others’ imagery…and they’re doing it effectively.
In any other year, McCain’s alleged polling ceiling would be highly significant. But viewed against the backdrop of what the two Clintons and Obama are doing to each other — and their party — McCain’s flaws may not matter much. Particularly if a sizable chunk of disappointed Clinton supporters or Obama supporters decide to teach the other candidate a lesson and stay home on Election Day.
On a related issue, be sure to read The Daily Kos’ Kos’ detailed analysis of Clinton and Obama electability.
FOOTNOTE: Who was the most accurate pollster in predicting the Pennsylvania vote? It was this pollster who contends Obama didn’t lose due to Clinton’s negativity, but his own political mistakes.
April 20th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
Is the Pennsylvania primary vote only about that primary? Or is more — even more than who gets the Democratic nomination — at stake? Andrew Sullivan writes in his latest newspaper column:
Even after all the hype, this week’s vote in Pennsylvania will be a watershed primary election.
This isn’t because it could determine whether Hillary Clinton’s campaign continues on its brutal, nihilistic path towards the destruction of the most promising figure in the Democratic Party since Kennedy.
It isn’t because it’s been an age since the last primary vote and every nasty toxin in American culture has been drawn to the surface by the Clinton poultice.
It isn’t even because Pennsylvania is an indisputably important and large state that any Democrat needs to win in November.
It is because the Clintons have turned Pennsylvania into a microcosm of what they think the general election will be in November.
And the Clintons are running as the Rove Republicans. If they fail to destroy Barack Obama as effectively as Karl Rove — George W. Bush’s master of the dark arts — destroyed Al Gore and John Kerry in 2000 and 2004, with tactics just as brutal but even more personal, then they will have driven American politics to a critical point. They will have shown that the paradigm that has reigned in US politics for at least two decades has been shattered.
That’s what is being tested this week. It may be the most important vote in America until the final one, in November.
Obama has been pummeled by a Democrat in ways never witnessed in a primary campaign.
April 20th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
You can now see a trend in some of the latest weekend Pennsylvania Democratic presidential primary polls and the analysis: Senator Hillary Clinton has regained the momentum in her battle against Senator Barack Obama, leads 3 to 5 percent — but analysts believe the undecided voters will likely break her way, which means her victory is likely to be far larger.
And then there are other variables: who will turn out in greater numbers? Older (Clinton voters) or younger voters (Obama)? Which campaign organization has more boots on the ground, carpools for voters, and voices on the phone banks? NBC Political Director Chuck Todd:
A new MSNBC/McClatchy/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette poll of Pennsylvania indicates things are staying fairly competitive in the Pennsylvania Dem primary.
The poll of 625 likely Dem primary voters was conducted Thursday and Friday and showed Clinton leading Obama 48-43%. Considering the 4% margin of error, it means Clinton’s lead is inside the margin.
So it’s highly likely Clinton will win.
Still, the poll is consistent with what the campaigns and other reputable polls have been showing and that is Clinton getting close to 50% and Obama struggling to climb over 45%.
So what happens on Tuesday? Well, let’s take a look at the undecided vote. Going inside the poll’s demographics, one finds the highest undec. totals in the more rural parts of the state; that’s not good news for Obama. In the so-called “T” region of the state (i.e., almost everything between Philly and Pittsburgh), Clinton leads 51-37 with 11% undecided; this is one of the few demographic groups sporting double-digit undecided.
Two other interesting cross-tabs with high undecideds also indicate the potential that undecided vote will break for Clinton. Among bowlers (24% of the electorate) and gun owners (38% of the electorate), Clinton leads big. She’s up 54-33 among bowlers and 53-28 among gun owners; There were 13% undec. among bowlers and 17% undec among gun owners.
Wouldn’t it be an irony if the voting is close, Obama loses, and it’s eventually blamed on his lousy bowling?
So while the poll shows Clinton with a narrow lead (and arguably a narrowing lead), the clues inside the numbers indicate this is her race to lose and that her lead could expand. Should this race end up as close as this poll indicates (i.e. 5 points or less), then this means many of these undec. potential Clinton voters decided to stay home; If the come to the polls, she could see her lead climb to over 5 points.
He concludes:
And that’s the game Tuesday, not if Clinton will win, but how big will her victory be. She’d like to net more than 200K in the popular vote which she would only get with both a large turnout (approx. 2 million total) and a 10 point victory.
Meanwhle, Zobgy sees the race nail-biting tight with a 3 percent Clinton lead:
New York’s Hillary Clinton remains barely ahead of rival Barack Obama of Illinois leading up to Tuesday’s presidential primary in Pennsylvania, a new Newsmax/Zogby daily tracking poll shows.
Her advantage is a statistically insignificant three points, 46% to 43%, over Obama, as support in the race ebbs and flows within a tight margin—she led by five points yesterday. The two-day tracking survey, which was conducted April 18-19, 2008, included 11% who were either undecided or supported someone else.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is attracting record numbers of young voters — but will a demographic known for low turnout vote in enough numbers to defeat Hillary Clinton in the graying state of Pennsylvania?
Attracted by opposition to the Iraq war, antipathy to President George W. Bush or Clinton — and Obama’s aura of “hope” — Pennsylvanians in the 18-29 age bracket are rallying, registering and switching parties like never before.
At the University of Pittsburgh, a “power rally” by Pitt Students for Obama got 2,000 students to register as Democrats in order to vote for the senator. The state does not allow independents to vote in primary contests.
In this Guest Voice post, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review columnist Bill Steigerwald interviews pollster John Zogby, who discusses trends in Pennsylvania days before the crucial Pennsylvania Democratic presidential primary:
John Zogby Polls Pennsylvania’s Primary
by Bill Steigerwald
The name Zogby — like Gallup — has become synonymous with polling and public opinion research on almost every continent. John Zogby, president and CEO of Zogby International, and his polling experts have been trying to predict the outcomes of elections like Tuesday’s Pennsylvania Primary since 1984. After news that his company’s April 15-16 phone poll of likely Democrat voters showed Hillary Clinton with a 45-44 lead over Barack Obama, I called Zogby on Thursday afternoon at his offices in Utica, N.Y.
Q: What has been happening to cut down Clinton’s double-digit lead?
A: Generally speaking, it’s negative campaigning. That’s the broad stroke. There’s plenty of evidence throughout the year that negative campaigning just isn’t working anymore — that in fact it backfires. That’s broadly. Specifically, it doesn’t work for Sen. Clinton. So it may be one thing to do damage to the opponent, or to have the opponent inflict wounds upon himself, but that doesn’t make her more likable. So essentially, she’s not picking up, in other words.
Q: So her support is eroding as much as Obama’s has been growing?
A: Yes. Well, she was ahead by 20 points two or three weeks ago. She was in the mid-50s, and here she is in the mid-40s and he’s gone from the high 30s into the mid-40s. So it’s been a little bit of both. He’s clearly picked up in the Philadelphia area — African-American support and suburban support. Meanwhile, she has declined in that area dramatically, though of course she still holds substantial leads in central Pennsylvania and Western Pennsylvania.
Q: Why is she so strong in Western and Southwestern Pennsylvania?
A: It’s a very good question, but let’s use the Ohio model. If one were to do one of those old Joel Garreau cultural things, Western Pennsylvania and Northeastern and Eastern Ohio are one cultural region. It’s very industrial, very Catholic, very post-industrial working class — meaning service work and so on, a lot of economic victims. Some of it, to be sure, is race. We know that. It’s hard to quantify it, but it’s there. Some of it is, frankly, that Hillary Clinton is a place holder, I think, for John McCain. She is the anti-Obama vote without necessarily being the favorite.
Q: What fooled you about Ohio’s primary? Your last poll had that as a tie as well, yet Clinton ended up winning by 10 percentage points.
A: There were some pollsters who did it better than I did. But I was a little too late catching the break. It was the last break of white voters, voting in substantial numbers, and voting against Obama if not for Hillary, for reasons of trade — remember there were some questions about Obama’s commitment to the opposition to trade — and some of it clearly was race, and that’s what the exit polls said.
Q: Does the Ohio primary hold any lessons for you or for other pollsters that can help you figure out the Pennsylvania primary?
A: Yeah, I think that there are. Everything was so compressed in terms of primary schedules, it’s hard to remember the context, but we were still very early in the “mano-a-womano” primary. There was still a third candidate there. There was still indecision about the two candidates — a lack of knowledge about Barack Obama. But Ohio was our first real industrial, working-class, middle-class, Northeast-Midwest test of the two candidates, without there being some variable or another: New York was a Clinton state, Illinois was an Obama state and Michigan was nothing this time around. So clearly what we got to see was what issues would matter and that in a race between a white woman and a black man — at least in Ohio, in some pockets — the black man lost.
Q: He lost because he was black?
A: I think in some instances because he’s black. I don’t think that’s the entire factor. But I think also because of some pleasant feelings toward Bill Clinton, a known quantity, and then secondly that there were questions about Obama’s position on trade.
Q: Can you describe the demographics of voters that Clinton’s most popular among?
A: Sure. She does very, very well in small-town rural. She does very well among white voters in the big cities — in the cities themselves. She does well among liberals and particularly among Catholics. She does hugely, or course, among Latinos. She has really just run the board among Latinos. It’s a socially conservative, fiscally liberal vote. It’s a big-government vote on one hand, but an anti-abortion, pro-gun vote as well. In this instance, it’s more to her benefit, though I don’t know that it’s a vote that necessarily stays with her were she to win the nomination.
Q: And Obama’s strongest voter groups?
A: Solid African-American. Huge among young voters, then all voters under 60, but particularly voters under 30; very liberal in terms of ideology; urban and suburban liberals in the eastern part of the state, for sure, and for the most part in the Pittsburgh region as well.
Q: Which voting group has Obama been attracting that has enabled him to close this gap with Hillary? Read the rest of this entry »
April 18th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
The latest Newsmax/Zogby poll taken after Wednesday night’s debate that contained one of the weakest performances by Democratic Senator Barack Obama shows rival Hillary Clinton now opening up a small lead only days away from the Democratic Presidential primary.
In recent weeks, as this chart shows, have shown Clinton keeping her lead in Pennsylvania but by narrow margins. For months she had enjoyed a double-digit lead there and Pennsylvania was expected to be a huge victory for her, but Obama had started to narrow the gap. Between Clinton’s use of his “bitter” comments and his debate performance there has been much speculation that his momentum stopped.
In this latest poll:
New York Democrat Hillary Clinton had a good day in the Newsmax/Zogby daily tracking poll ahead of Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary, following a strong debate performance in Philadelphia Wednesday night, and now holds a 47% to 43% advantage over Barack Obama of Illinois.
The two-day tracking survey, which was conducted April 16-17, 2008, showed that 10% were either undecided or supported someone else.
The telephone survey, conducted using live operators working out of Zogby’s on-site call center in Upstate New York, included 602 likely Democratic primary voters in Pennsylvania. It carries a margin of error of +/- 4.1 percentage points.
The race appears stable, as Clinton retained a sizable lead in western Pennsylvania, including Pittsburgh, while Obama continues to lead by a large percentage in eastern Pennsylvania, including Philadelphia. In the central part of the state, including the state capital of Harrisburg, Clinton leads by eight points.
Pollster Zogby notes a long-term polling trend that should be troubling to the Obama camp:
April 16th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
A new ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that her no-holds-barred campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination against Senator Barack Obama has given Senator Clinton an unfavorable rating higher “than at any time since The Post and ABC began asking the question, in 1992.”
This confirms what many had suspected was an emerging trend: the more Clinton went negative to drive up Obama’s negatives and in effect make him unelectable so Superdelegates would consider opting to her, the more her own negatives went up. The danger for Clinton: she began the campaign overcoming a history of negatives, which Obama didn’t have.
More bad news: 6 out of 10 independent voters now view her negatively.
Still another bit of bad news: the poll indicates that despite her arguments to the contrary, Democrats now consider her more unelectable than Obama.
But there is a silver lining for her: Democrats want the contest to be allowed to run its course, rejecting the arguments of those calling for Clinton to pull out so that front-runner Obama can start to battle presumptive Republican nominee Senator John McCain.
However, the news of Clinton’s negatives represents a major problem for her and the Democrats: it means Republicans will have an easier time uniting against her, and if she gets the nomination via a controversial procedure, these numbers indicate she will face a massive internal fence-mending effort to woo some angry segments of her party back ….efforts she’ll have to do against a backgroup of negative perceptions:
The fierce battle…appears to have taken a toll on the image of Clinton, who was once seen as the favorite. And Obama has widened his lead since early February on several key qualities that voters are looking for in a candidate and has narrowed sizable advantages for Clinton on others.
He now has a 2-to-1 edge on who is considered more electable in a general contest — a major reversal from the last poll — and has dramatically reduced a large Clinton lead on which of the two is the “stronger leader.”
Keep in mind that Clinton’s campaign had been designed to creative exactly the opposite effect. AND:
While Clinton retains a big edge over Obama on experience, public impressions of her have taken a sharply negative turn. Today, more Americans have an unfavorable view of her than at any time since The Post and ABC began asking the question, in 1992. Impressions of her husband, former president Bill Clinton, also have grown negative by a small margin.
In the new poll, 54 percent said they have an unfavorable view of Sen. Clinton, up from 40 percent a few days after she won the New Hampshire primary in early January. Her favorability rating has dropped among both Democrats and independents over the past three months, although her overall such rating among Democrats remains high. Nearly six in 10 independents now view her unfavorably.
Obama’s favorability rating also has declined over the same period but remains, on balance, more positive than negative.
Meanwhile, the poll has about the same results when Democrats are asked who they want as their nominee as the recent Gallup Daily Tracking poll did: Read the rest of this entry »
April 15th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
A new Quinnipiac University poll indicates Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton has halted what had seemed to be growing momentum for rival Democratic Senator Barack Obama in the Democratic Presidential primary — and Clinton’s hammering his comments on people in small towns being bitter seems to have a lot to do with it:
The first fresh and reliable look at the mood of Pennsylvania voters since the controversy over Barack Obama’s comments about the bitterness of working-class voters flared up over the weekend has arrived: Hillary Clinton holds a steady 6 percentage-point advantage over Obama in a critical state holding its primary one week from today.
Clinton is the choice of 50 percent of the Pennsylvania Democrats surveyed and Obama 44 percent, according to the results of a new Quinnipiac University Poll. The pollsters, who surveyed Pennsylvanians on Saturday and Sunday, conclude that Clinton has “stalled… Obama’s drive’’ in Pennsylvania – with the two candidates’ standing unchanged from the last Quinnipiac Poll released on April 8 – Obama then had been closing a gap with Clinton in earlier surveys taken there.
“Sen. Hillary Clinton is fighting off Sen. Barack Obama’s drive to make it a close race in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary, holding the six-point edge she had a week ago. She seems to have halted the erosion of whites and white women in particular from her campaign,” said Clay F. Richards, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
And she has made some other inroads as well:
“She even gained back some ground in the Philadelphia suburbs – the area where elections are won and lost in the Keystone State,” Richards said in a release this morning. “She now trails Obama by just two points in this critical area, while she was 11 points behind a week ago.”
So Democrats believe Clinton will likely win the nomination? Wrong:
Yet most of the Democrats surveyed in Pennsylvania tell pollsters they still believe that Obama will win the party’s presidential nomination – including 32 percent of the Clinton supporters surveyed.
And it is clear that if she wins, she still has some problems ahead — as does the Democratic party if she loses:
“Two big questions are whether the Clinton forces can keep from getting discouraged by all the talk she can’t win the nomination even if she wins Pennsylvania and whether enthusiasm for Obama will translate into a record turnout of blacks and young first-time voters that would deny Clinton the victory she needs to stay alive,” Richards added. “A bigger problem for Democrats looms in Pennsylvania. One out of four Clinton voters, including a third of men, say they will vote for Republican Sen. John McCain in November if Obama is the Democratic candidate.’’
But either way, the Democrats are increasingly in a lose-lose situation.
