I don’t like writing about the presidential race. But I do have to comment on this:
Conventional wisdom dictates that Democratic voters are thrilled with their choices for president, bursting at the seams to rally behind Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) or whoever gets the party’s nod next year.
A recent survey by Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, however, showed Clinton and Obama trailing former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani (R) in the 31 Democratic-held House districts regarded as most imperiled in 2008, and even potentially serving as a drag on those lawmakers’ reelection chances.
Obama does much better than Clinton.
Giuliani takes 49 percent to Clinton’s 39 percent, while the former mayor’s lead over Obama is far smaller, 41 percent to 40 percent. “Despite Obama’s relative advantage over Clinton, both candidates are significantly underperforming against the generic Democratic edge in the presidential and even against party identification,” Lake and Gotoff wrote.
Congressional Dems are looking good, but their position softens somewhat if they aggressively linked to liberal, big government policies.
While the average lead of Democratic House members stands at 19 percentage points in the 31 vulnerable districts — all but two of which are part of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s incumbent-protection program known as Frontline — that number sinks considerably when the lawmakers are linked to either front-runner.
“Some people say [your Democratic incumbent] is a strong supporter of Hillary Clinton and will support her liberal agenda of big government and higher taxes if she becomes president,” the poll stated, before asking respondents whether they would still vote for their incumbent or choose a Republican candidate.
Whether the question named Clinton or Obama, the Democratic incumbent’s lead shrank to an average of six points: 47 percent to 41 percent with Clinton leading the ticket, 44 percent to 38 percent with Obama as the nominee.
I think the really important story here is the 19 point advantage the congressional Dems enjoy. But it is worth noting that Guiliani is capable of winning over moderates, and that Obama and particulaly Clinon have the potential to be a drag on the rest of the ticket.
From the article:
That money differential is key because the GOP has always had the money advantage. And that allows them to demonize our candidates even though they represent the more popular ideas. Thus, we have a 19 point generic advantage, but it starts to disappear when specific candidates are named and slimed.
Hillary’s high negatives have already been paid for. Everyone else will require a new investment.
If you look at the “question” (it’s more like a push poll):
Then it’s easy to understand why the Dems come out looking bad. Also, Lake is doing work for Biden. Go figure.
Steve Bennen commented on the same thing…..
That’s classic push poll technique right there.
And a Democratic consulting agency paid for this poll?
They must have been trying to study the effect that aggressive Republican push polling would have on the districts they were looking at but damn – push polling is not polling – it isn’t intended to gauge how people think it’s trying to SHAPE how people think. Are they trying to get those congress critters un-elected from their districts or something?
They’re paying consultants to sabotage their own campaigns. Apparently, the last few decades of Republican dominance hasn’t taught them a single damn thing.
Ha ha..Hilary liberal….yeah that’s a push-poll question if there ever was one along the lines of when did you stop beating your wife?
I hate polls for this very reason, you can get almost any outcome you want depending on how you phrase and ask the questions and whose doing the asking.
that’s only one question in the poll.
If the rest of them are equally poorly constructed, the representatives in the districts this poll is being conducted in might want to have a little chat with whoever on the Democratic side is funding this poll. These types of questions are useful for forming opinions, not gaging them, and the opinion being formed here is that the pollee’s representative has a “liberal agenda of bigger government and tax increases.” Also that Clinton has a “liberal agenda of bigger government and tax increases.” Neither of these things are probably true (I’d like to see Clinton’s “liberal agenda” myself, and if these are being conducted in “threatened” districts, it’s probably not true of the reps either) but some Democrat is paying money to have that information disbursed. Disgusting.
l can’t speak for the rest of the country, but it’s very obvious here in colorado, that neither clinton nor obama will have a positive coattail effect on the election. there is an undercurrent of dread in many of the comments coming from people much more involved locally than l.
to wit: mike melanson, long time dem operative, and mark udall’s campaign manager in the upcoming senate race, had this comment in august:
there is an interesting comment there also regarding the, so called, “western strategy“:
interpret his comments as you will, but l believe they are pretty indicative of the current political situation here. one has to search no further than sen salazar and his brother john in the house to see the results we can expect.
as an aside, this is true as well for the annointed d candidate for allard’s seat, mark udall. from his first town hall, public meeting in 1 1/2 years…no that is not a typo…he had this to say about his support for the war in iraq:
so don’t expect any support for that issue from marky…who, along with sen salazar has had anti-war protesters evicted from his office and prosecuted, convicted and jailed.
lTMF’sA