March 20, 2008
WASHINGTON -- For Barack Obama, it hasn't been this bad since it started to get better.
Battered by primary losses, criticism of his lack of experience and a controversy over incendiary and racist remarks by his pastor, the Illinois senator's national popularity is in danger of melting away.
A Reuters/Zogby national poll released yesterday showed Mr. Obama holding a paltry three-point lead over challenger Hillary Clinton, which is within the poll's margin of error. Mr. Obama enjoyed the support of 47 per cent of voters, while Ms. Clinton claimed 44 per cent.
Only a month ago, the spread was 14 points.
This marks the first serious downturn in support for Mr. Obama since he began his rise in the polls last December, after languishing far behind Ms. Clinton in popularity throughout 2007.
Ms. Clinton is not the only beneficiary of Mr. Obama's fall from grace.
In essence, the popularity of Mr. Obama and Arizona Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, has inverted over the past month.
Whereas in a potential matchup between the two, Mr. Obama led Mr. McCain 47 per cent to 40 per cent, now Mr. McCain leads Mr. Obama 46-40.
"The last couple of weeks have taken a toll on Obama and in a general election match-up, on both Democrats," pollster John Zogby observed.
Mr. McCain holds a lead over Ms. Clinton in popularity, this month by 48 per cent to 40 per cent. Last month it was 50 to 38.
Mr. Obama's ascent to front-runner began in December, when he shared the stage in a series of rallies with talk show host Oprah Winfrey, galvanizing both black and other voters with his powerful delivery and message of hope and change.
As support, both popular and financial, flowed toward him and away from her, Mr. Obama racked up a string of impressive victories that has left Ms. Clinton trailing badly in both the delegate count and the popular vote.
But in recent weeks, Mr. Obama has discovered that no one gets a free ride to a presidential nomination. Press scrutiny has increased, and some of the criticisms of his fitness to govern have started to hit home.
By far the greatest damage, however, has come from revelations that Mr. Obama's mentor and pastor, Jeremiah Wright had, in some of his sermons, espoused incendiary sentiments, accusing the government of everything from deserving the attacks of Sept. 11 to unleashing the AIDS virus on the black community.
Mr. Obama gave a masterful response, Tuesday, in a speech on race relations in America that many commentators ranked as one of the finest political addresses in modern American history.
Yet it is unknown whether this controversy will fade or fester, for many commentators and critics remain unconvinced by Mr. Obama's apologia for Mr. Wright.
What if it were learned, Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson asked yesterday, that a Republican presidential candidate had, for many years, attended an extremist fundamentalist church?
"What if the church's pastor attacked the U.S. government as illegitimate and accepted the stoning of homosexuals and recalcitrant children as appropriate legal penalties?" he asked.
"Surely we would conclude, at the very least, that the candidate attending this church lacked judgment and that his donations were subsidizing hatred. And we would be right."
Whether that argument becomes entrenched in the public mind could determine Mr. Obama's political future.
Despite his travails, Mr. Obama remains emphatically the front-runner in this campaign.
"Barack Obama has already won the Democratic nomination. It's over," declared Dick Morris, a pundit who strategized in the Clinton White House. Mr. Obama's lead in delegates cannot be overcome, he observed, and the superdelegates would not strip the leading candidate of his nomination "unless Obama is in jail."
Mr. Obama has also received good news from Florida and Michigan. Both states have been stripped of their delegates to the Democratic National Convention, for holding their primaries ahead of the deadline laid down by the Democratic National Committee.
Democratic strategists are trying to figure out how to hold re-votes. If they succeed, this would be splendid news for Ms. Clinton, who would be expected to do well in both states, increasing the plausibility of her argument to superdelegates that she is the more electable candidate.
At this point, however, there appears little hope for a do-over in Florida. Michigan Democrats have concocted plans for a new primary, to be held June 3, that they believe would be both legal and manageable.
But Mr. Obama's advisers, while not vetoing the proposal, have raised questions about possible legal challenges, prompting Ms. Clinton to fly to Detroit, yesterday, where she demanded Mr. Obama give his support to the new vote.
"Senator Obama speaks passionately on the campaign trail about empowering the American people today," Ms. Clinton told supporters at a rally.
"I am challenging him to match those words with actions to make sure that the people of Michigan and Florida have a vote in this election."
Even here, Mr. Obama must be careful. His candidacy is, after all, about bringing people into the Democratic Party.
If it becomes clear that his campaign actively colluded to prevent Michigan and Florida Democrats from casting a vote that counts, then Democrats everywhere might decide not to forgive him, eclipsing even these March stumbles.
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Comments: 45
More war, more tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, no energy policy, no illegal immigration policy, more massive deficits, more corporate bailouts, more sending American jobs overseas. If you go down the list point by point, the positions are almost identical. McCain is just like Bush, only older and with a worse temper.
People aren't as stupid as you think they are. They're not going to be distracted by all the peripheral BS.
Educated democrats don't want her. She can't win without them. He can't win without the blue collar democrats. WE HAVE A PROBLEM! THAT'S WHAT THIS IS. If you support the democrats you will see that, if you don't, you just stop by smear Hillary or Obama with a dumb comment.
Blue collar dems care about programs, freebies. The latte liberals know that the presidency is not enough. You need to build majority and Bill could not deliver. If she wins, we will lose all those governors in the red states, senate seats. That's why red state dem officials want Obama.
Democrats haven't won more than 50 percent of the vote in a presidential election since 1976. Heck, we haven't won more than 50.1 percent since 1964. And complicit in that failure was the only Democrat to occupy the White House since 1980: Bill Clinton.
Despite all his successes -- and eight years of peace and prosperity is nothing to sneeze at -- he never broke the 50-percent mark in his two elections. Regardless of the president's personal popularity, Democrats held fewer congressional seats at the end of his presidency than before it. The Democratic Party atrophied during his two terms, partly because of his fealty to his "third way" of politics, which neglected key parts of the progressive movement and reserved its outreach efforts for corporate and moneyed interests.
While Republicans spent the past four decades building a vast network of small-dollar donors to fund their operations, Democrats tossed aside their base and fed off million-dollar-plus donations. The disconnect was stark, and ultimately destructive. Clinton's third way failed miserably. It killed off the Jesse Jackson wing of the Democratic Party and, despite its undivided control of the party apparatus, delivered nothing. Nothing, that is, except the loss of Congress, the perpetuation of the muddled Democratic "message," a demoralized and moribund party base, and electoral defeats in 2000, 2002 and 2004.
Market forces are certainly influenced by the Fed and ecomic policies, which by the way tells the government what to do. Bush and Clinton had the same Fed chairman until recently.
As Chuck Todd puts it:
One reason this has been brushed under the rug? Media-types don't realize the problems many rank-and-file Democratic activists have with the Clinton family.
Simply take a look at Bill Clinton's record from '92 to '00 and you'll understand why they're having a harder time corralling party activists and elected officials to their side.
Remember, when his name was on the ballot ('92 and '96) the Democratic party lost Senate seats both times. Never mind the beating the party took in '94; a walloping often blamed on both Bill and Hillary.
Even in '98, which was, perhaps, the most successful Congressional election of the Clinton era, the party netted zero Senate seats and gained less than a handful of House seats.
It's not exactly something to brag about.
Nothing to brag about indeed. That is why this race is not hers. First lady for 8 years, with all that experience losing to a first term senator. That's embarrassing.
I can't wait for the debates. I hope they can keep McCain awake until then.
If she cared about your votes, she would have been there in November, in December. No, it was ok then. You have to be stupid, to say Hillary wants to seat the del because she cares about the people. Her records from the White House are being examined. She does not care about anybody but herself. She was running for president then while Bill was getting busy with Monica Lewinsky. The records show she was right next door on many occasions. SWEEEEEET!
The records also show that she was not sitting on most policy meetings. She was hosting tea parties with overseas dignitaries, but they don't sign treaties at a 4 o'clock tea party.
More to come on the records. This is excellent. More Lewinsky Talk, could have not been better. This will remind the super delegates of the 90s indeed! Good Timing!
Enjoy this cut and paste that follows, since it is the norm of this thread.
"Hillary Clinton was home in the White House on a half dozen days when her husband had sexual encounters there with the intern.
The sexual escapades of elected officials have dominated the nation's conversation in recent days.
Eliot Spitzer stepped down as governor of New York after getting caught up in a prostitution scandal and his successor, David Paterson, was forced to come clean about his repeated marital infidelities"
I'm sure it will be a classic moment.
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/03/20/788354.aspx
I know how to surf the web for information. I've read that article already. What you ignore is that people redacting these articles are just people; journalists who write well certainly. They each have their opinions and bias. So unless you are ready to write your own thoughts to discuss with people, GIVE ME A BREAK!
What say you? Can you write? Can you talk? Where do you stand? Where is your article stating where you stand? Stop the copy paste state your own opinions. That's what Gather is about. We all use articles to support our positions. That's called a reference. You can't just dump other people's article, every once in a while, yes. But daily copy paste....what's the point. We all can do that.
HI KAY!
CNN is reporting the same thing. Furthermore, a CNN Opinion Research Poll came up with this little darling AFTER Obama's speech the other day.
Question:
Who would you be proud to have as President?
.............................................................YES......................NO
Obama..................................................62%....................38%
Clinton..................................................57%.....................42%
McCain..................................................51%.....................49%
I sympathize with you Patti, but it IS over for Hillary. They have already stepped up Senator Obama's Secret Service protection. Ooops. Just who from the DNC has told them to do that?
It really is over.
Tad Devine, a Democratic consultant who is not supporting a candidate, said Mrs. Clinton faced a challenge that although hardly insurmountable was growing tougher almost by the day. Mr. Devine said it was critical for her to come out ahead in popular votes, cut into Mr. Obama's lead and raise questions about Mr. Obama's electability to win over superdelegates.
"They are going to have to be flawless in executing the strategy, which achieves the goal of taking away the advantage Obama has in pledged delegates and the popular vote," he added. "Any major setback could undercut that goal. Obama is in the advantageous position."
The race is certainly not over. With 10 contests remaining, Mrs. Clinton trails Mr. Obama by about 150 delegates out of the 2,025 needed to secure the nomination.
If there is a road to victory for Mrs. Clinton, it is a fairly narrow one. Her chief strategist, Mark Penn, said the campaign believed that when the primary voting was done, Mrs. Clinton would have a lead in the overall popular vote, that Mr. Obama's lead in delegates would be relatively narrow and that polls would show her in a stronger position than Mr. Obama.
Victories in contests where she is strong or competitive like Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Puerto Rico and, perhaps, Oregon and Indiana could give her a burst of energy.
Penn will say anything. He can spin anything. He is not fooling anybody. A burst of energy after the finish line is no good. 150 pledged delegate lead is HUGE if you do not have winner take all. She got 9 delegates from Ohio ladies and gentlement. She needs 16 Ohio. Without MI and FL, the popular vote is unlikely; not impossible, highly unlikely.
Besides, that not the point. The real analysis here is that if she started to win before Rev. Wright's scandals, the super would go her way. With Rev. Wright scandals, if they go her way, it looks racial. Nobody in the press is talking about this, but this is the natural truth. The latte liberals I know will not like it, African Americans will not like it. They are half of the democratic party (blue collar dems the other half)
Super delegates breaking to Clinton after Rev. Wright's scandal would be interpreted as a racial COUP D'ETAT against Obama. You will hear this from the pundits soon. They are always a little late.
This is why MI and FL needed a nice solution for Hillary and Obama. Unfortunately it is impossible. Blame the state party officials. They should lose their super delegates status and political career. This is not right. But I don't want Obama to pay for it!
Alan D, Michigan re-vote evaporates? Great news for McCain, the dems apparently are working overtime to hand this election to the republicans. Great job alienating two significant states like Florida and Michigan--Wow!
I know Obama feels the Wright matter is racial, most Americans however, cannot see how "God Damn America" is racial, that is what will ultimately destroy him, but then again, according to Obama, I guess I am just a "typical white person".
No it wasnt our governor,or the DNC, or Senator Clinton,nor lack of money that is to blame for Mi.not getting a voice in this election.Those things were taken care of.Obama decided not to play as he knew he could not win,and that is all he cares about,not the vote or voice of the people.Same old,same old.
These amateurs approved a plan that did not include a mechanism to stop the republicans who already voted in their primary to vote again. Obama's team pointed it out, and DNC pulled out their approval. Now, if that does not make sense to you, you just lack basic democratic common sense.
You cannot vote in republican primary and turn around and vote in democratic primary. That was the problem among others and you legislator was asked to fix it. Instead, they went on a 2 weeks vacation. Yeah, it is not their fault. How come they are going on a 2-week recess. If they wanted you to vote they would be working day and night to fix this.
Anyways, surper duper delegate Bill Richardson, certainly does not think Obama is trying to block MI. This is huge! Richardson has been the biggest Hillary defender in all debates. He is through with this farce!
Obama 08!
Plus they did have a plan,you were going to have to sign a statement you did not vote republican the 1st time.The legislators would have brought it to the floor yesterday but did not bother as they knew it was not supported by Obama.
"you were going to have to sign a statement you did not vote republican the 1st time"
How do you enforce that? Just a signature. Are kidding me?
As far Obama being divisive, that's for another day. I don't know any politician more divisive than the Clintons in any generation. Even their people are running away from them.
As far as being John McCain 08, we shall see. If the American people like 8 years of Bush, they will love 4 of McCain. If they like the recession, the jobs shipping overseas, like the 40,000 jobs McCain took away from Boeing to give to Airbus last week, they will vote for John McCain.
Enough said, I won't venture in predicting November. For now, she is losing big, and I am loving it!
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/20/photograph-of-bill-clinton-and-rev-wright-surfaces/
You have a point. Either way, not a good picture.
Records also show she was not as involved in policy matters as she pretends. She is being debunked.
And Bill Richardson, this is huge! Not in PA, but Huge for the supers!
Washington,March 21 ,8:08 am
Here's a summary of the smartest new political analysis on the Web:
by Gerald F. Seib and Sara Murray
Maybe the mood isn't shifting back in Obama's direction. Obama has been significantly damaged by the controversy over his pastor's inflammatory remarks and the issue has become a serious threat to his presidential ambitions, polls suggest." New surveys "point to an erosion of Mr. Obama's support among independents, a bloc that has previously backed him in overwhelming numbers, and particular alienation among white, working-class voters who will be critical to the general election in November. They appear disturbed by the Illinois senator's refusal to disown the Rev Jeremiah Wright," his controversial former pastor.
Reid cites a new Gallup tracking poll that shows Clinton "regaining her lead over Mr Obama for the first time in a month, now leading 49 per cent to 42, a 13-point shift to the former First Lady in less than a fortnight. Mrs Clinton also holds a 16-point lead over Mr Obama in Pennsylvania, their next contest on April 22. In addition, Mr Obama has lost his once-commanding lead among independent voters to John McCain, the Republican nominee, in a new CBS poll. The survey shows Mr McCain with leads over both Democrats, a sign of how their protracted battle threatens to damage the eventual nominee."
The Obama campaign appears to have quietly nixed legislation in Michigan that would have held a new primary on June 3. In Florida too, the state Democratic Party appears to have given up on a revote.
Obama supporters are satisfied at the collapse of what they see as an end-run around party rules. Such satisfaction is misguided. The failure to hold revotes is a blow to the Democratic Party that will disenfranchise voters and could cost Democrats the presidency.
Enjoy the Clinton Records and the endorsment.