The latest polls show Obama beating McCain and Clinton losing to McCain in Pennsylvania, Oregon, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado, and nationally. Meanwhile, Obama has closed to a virtual tie in Texas. Combine that with my analysis of presidential coattails for the Senate races and there is no longer any question that Obama is the better candidate from a strict electability standpoint.
Public Policy Polling (.pdf) has Obama winning Wisconsin 53%-40% based on large expected turnout. If the turnout doesn’t materialize, they predict Obama will win more narrowly (47%-44%). If these polls bear out, Obama is going to win Wisconsin with double digits and probably win Texas as well (and certainly win more delegates in Texas, regardless). That should be enough to knock Clinton out of the race. Yet, there seems to be almost no limit to the Clinton’s sense of entitlement:
A co-chairman of Hillary’s Michigan campaign and has a line that’s sure to drive a whole bunch of red state governors up the wall:
“Superdelegates are not second-class delegates,” says Joel Ferguson, who will be a superdelegate if Michigan is seated. “The real second-class delegates are the delegates that are picked in red-state caucuses that are never going to vote Democratic.”
How well does that sit with my analysis of presidential coattails for senate races? As Kos noted:
As several people pointed out in the comments, this must mean that Hillary will skip Texas.
And I want to make one thing clear — if this was an isolated quote, it wouldn’t be a big deal. But it’s clear that from Bill, to Hillary, to Mark Penn, and on down, the campaign has made clear to its surrogates that this line of attack isn’t just tolerated, it’s encouraged.
I have learned not to count my chickens before they hatch, but I think it is time for the Fat Lady to start her voice exercises…tra la la la la. I hope the party will come together to explain to the ex-president and first lady that they have to stop their campaign and endorse the winner.
How reputable are PPP and the CNN poll, though? I wish SurveyUSA would get off its ass and do some more primary polling.
see this graph:
Gallup National Daily Tracking
“PRINCETON, NJ — Barack Obama leads Hillary Clinton by seven percentage points, 49% to 42% in the Gallup Poll Daily tracking three-day average for Feb. 15-17.”
Yeah, but that’s Gallup, not Opinion Research and PPP. I think, nationally, things are clearly trending Obama’s way, but I’m curious to know if today’s polling in Wisconsin and Tejas is any good.
That’s big news in Gallup, though. I just don’t see what argument she has left to make.
The fundamental problem with all polls is that they only sample the set of people who answer polls voluntarily. Depending on the circumstances, that group may not overlap very precisely with the set of people who will actually cast votes.
To compensate, pollsters have to make quite a few assumptions that may or may not bear out in reality. Given that this year will end with either Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or John McCain as president, I think it’s safe to say we have ventured into wholly unexplored territory, and all assumptions should be taken with a grain of salt the size of Bill Clinton’s ego.
Hope these trends hold.
how about a requiem?
But I don’t want to jnix it so I’ll hold off on shopping new strings for my violin.
Obama started airing ads in VT. Ad features Senator Patrick Leahy and his wife.
Another important Vermont endorsement — Ben and Jerry have endorsed Obama.
right in my burg. the best.
They were supporting Edwards.
No idea what the results will be for Wisconsin, but I do feel good about his chances there. I think he’ll score a high single-digit/low double-digit victory in WI, along with a blowout in HI (nice of the Clinton campaign to finance Chelsea’s vacation there, though). Texas certainly seems to be trending Obama’s way, and he hasn’t even visited yet. Ohio’s going to be the tough one to crack…the demographics just don’t shape up well. Hopefully the unions can help out Obama there.
If Ohio and Texas are a wash, I’m not sure how Clinton can argue for going on. She’ll lose Vermont (and probably Rhode Island as well), leaving her somewhere in the vicinity of at least 150 pledged delegates behind Obama. The next 2 contests before Pennsylvania (Wyoming, Mississippi) will be blowouts for Obama, and with a combined 58 delegates, he could widen his margin to as much as 175 pledged delegates. Furthermore, Clinton is not picking up any more superdelegate endorsements at this point, so it’s going to become increasingly difficult for her to keep gaining there.
Simply put, she won’t have the momentum or the money to go until Pennsylvania. Not even her most diehard supporters will contribute to a campaign that has close to a mathematically impossible shot of winning the nomination (notwithstanding superdelegates), and giving Obama 6 full weeks to focus on PA will make it easy enough to flip the state despite the institutional support for Clinton. The Obama campaign’s already got tablers out registering voters and signing up people for volunteering in Philly.
That’s my long $.02. I just hope that after March 4th, the big players who are still on the sidelines (Pelosi, Reid, Dean, and Gore) push for the Clintons to drop out. That’s my sense, as long as Obama performs well.
imho, all the bulldozers built worldwide for the past decade, by Caterpillar and Volvo, won’t deter the Clintons from taking the fight to the convention floor.
They’re entitled to this third term.
Hope you’re wrong.
I’m in a state that could go blue this fall and replace a Republican senator with a Democratic one. I don’t see it happening if 1) there is a brutal nomination fight or 2) Hillary wins the nomination.
Team Clinton focused on March 4th coming out of SuperTuesday.
Now it appears they will fail, yet again, in Texas – one of the 2 contest THEY said “mattered”
If Obama does win WI – especially big and if Clinton fails to win Texas it should be over.
Gore, Edwards, Dean, etc need to step in and make that clear.
But even so, I like the way this is sounding. If Obama can keep it close in OH and actually win out in Texas (he doesn’t even have to do it by double digits, just a plurality of delegates will do) at some point he should be getting close to where, even if all the currently uncommitted superdelegates line up against him, the pledged delegate total should put him over the top.
I wonder if at some point, even if it looks like Obama can win without it, he will offer her something to entice her to drop out. Not even necessarily to endorse him — just to conclude she needs to spend more time with the family. π I’m not sure what that would be, although I can imagine worse UN ambassadors than a former President.
The numbers out of Texas today are really encouraging, especially with two weeks left for him to focus on the state. And the numbers out of Wisconsin look good, although I won’t count my chickens until they hatch. But if he does win Wisconsin, I think the fact that she sent Bill there a lot of last week and her highly visible presence this the last weekend might be counted as her strongly contesting that state. She’ll say she didn’t spend much time there but I think the media would go with the narrative that she tried to win there.
So, after SuperTuesday I said
Somewhere (I can’t find it) I said that if he won only one of those states she’d probably still go on to Pennsylvania – so it’s not a sure fire knock out.
I still think that’s true, although if he wins Texas I think it’s just a matter of time. So maybe we’ll have to listen to a few arias from the fat lady. Fortunately I love opera. . And I long ago became resigned to the fact that Wagnerian Opera always ends two hours after you are ready for it to end.
Yeah, don’t count the chickens, yet. HRC probably won’t go very soon, and won’t go quietly.
maybe Barack should make sure he didn’t write something in pre-school.
Yep, it’s hard to hide things from all-seeing HRC.
Except perhaps the NIE and a big fat deficit in the campaign coffers.
Excellent!
Heh. Couldn’t resist.
π
Look at it this way. Once he works his way through the attacks from the Clinton Machine, what else could the GOP possibly throw at him?
W could try to Kiss Obama..see what it did Traitor Joe.
Boo, what are you smoking? At this time four years ago, John Kerry was besting Bush in all the polls, too.
and he ended ahead in the polls, too.
Alas, the exit polls.
If that is true, then there is massive movement to Obama in Ohio.
This race may be over on March 5.
God, I hope so. The ever-extending campaign season is as annoying as the way Christmas displays start appearing in stores earlier and earlier every year. If we ever get real campaign reform passed, it better make this endless campaigning dry up.
At this point, I’d be tempted to vote for anyone who promises to shut the fuck up for a few weeks. π
I still think if Obama wins by the PPP’s 53-40 in WI tomorrow, it’s pretty much over. At that point Dem voters will have to choose between an ugly convention fight about FL and MI, and superdelegates. There will no longer be any reasonable chance of Clinton amassing a knock-out lead before then. The only way to avoid a convention fight that risks handing everything to McCain is to vote for Obama in the next round of primaries. Voters may not be sufficiently tuned into the campaign details to figure that out, but their Dem incumbents will see where their own best interests lie, and act accordingly.
>>nationally
That’s okay. The country is not significant. π
And could you avoid the sexist commentary like ‘Fat Lady!’