Poll Madness
Alot has been made about a recent AP Poll that shows Hillary Clinton with a 9 point edge over John Mccain in a possible general election matchup, the same poll showing Obama and Mccain about even. I don’t make too much out of any one specific poll. Only when they become part of a larger trend do I pay attention. The best method of current trends is to look at polls holistically, from a number of sources. Real Clear Politics has a very nice system. Unfortunately they have a Reverend Wright hardon that they seem to have a hard time letting go of.
What is significant is that since Pennsylvania, Hillary’s GE numbers have gone way up. The average that comes out today has her beating Mccain by almost 4 points- the highest any Democrat has had over him in weeks. Why the change?
I don’t think you can blame all of this on Rev. Wright and his grandstanding. Personally I think he has said alot of things that are true. Also, it’s really unfair to paint Obama badly for things that his pastor has said. Despite all my issues with Obama’s candidacy, I don’t see Wright as an issue at all, and I don’t think he’s really responsible for Hillary’s surge of popularity.
I predicted a few months ago that the longer Obama is in the national spotlight, the more he will suffer, no matter what happens. Part of what has fueled his success is the fact that he’s a new face on the scene; he represents a new kind of politics (however full of shit that statement may be) and a possibility for change. The problem is that that new car smell is starting to wear off. People are starting to understand that Obama has a history and makes mistakes just like any of us, and it’s starting to cost him.
No recent election has faced as much scrutiny as this one. Voters are much more informed this time around; evidence being the debacle that Obama’s trade gaffe caused in Ohio. The people are paying much closer attention in this race, and that’s not good for any candidate, especially one with a supposedly clean slate. His waaay out of touch comments about small town folks reached far and wide, and while most of those people have already made their votes, the perception about him has changed. He is no longer a flawless, uncorrupted agent of progressive change. Now many people see Barack as conventionally liberal, arrogant, and offensive.
Perhaps this is why Howard Dean has decided to ignore the popular vote and pick a candidate who’s more electable vs. Mccain. Alot of people will attribute this to racism, and they may be right. But I think it has more to do with the fact that Obama has lost every single major state in the primary except his home state of Illinois. The Democrats are willing to do anything to get into the White House again, and they see his crossover appeal dwindling. For the DNC, Hillary is the devil that they know, and Obama is the devil that they don’t.
The Democrats had a golden opportunity to seize on Obama’s momentum early in the primaries. Had the superdelegates lined up and picked a side, they would now likely have their candidate.
After all of the bumps in this winding primary road, the only way I can see the Democrats winning the white house is through a super-ticket. Even as incompetent as the DNC is, I think they know this. An Obama-Clinton or Clinton-Obama pairing would be far more feasible than you might think. Their policies are virtually identical. If they can be made to put their egos aside, they just might yet win this thing.
