I wonder what the email looked like...

So, NBC news has acted fast on Shuster calling Chelsea Clinton a prostitute and her mother a pimp (from TalkLeft):

NBC NEWS STATEMENT REGARDING CHELSEA CLINTON COMMENT:

On Thursday's "Tucker" on MSNBC, David Shuster, who was serving as guest-host of the program, made a comment about Chelsea Clinton and the Clinton campaign that was irresponsible and inappropriate. Shuster, who apologized this morning on MSNBC and will again this evening, has been suspended from appearing on all NBC News broadcasts, other than to make his apology. He has also extended an apology to the Clinton family. NBC News takes these matters seriously, and offers our sincere regrets to the Clintons for the remarks.

Steve Capus
NBC News President

Can you imagine what their email and phone responses to Shuster's filthy comment must have been like to have taken such drastic action so quickly?

This is the mistake that both the netroots bloviators and the MSM constantly make and no amount of polls, election results or just plain slapping them will get them to understand: The majority of Americans LIKE Hillary Clinton. A lot. And we've voted for her. And even most of those who voted for Obama like Hillary Clinton a lot.

They just don't get it that we dont' share their inside the beltway, part of the Big Media Boyz Club contempt for HRC. They don't understand that their perspective is the one that is out of touch and unappealing. They read some poll from months back that sid HRC had high negatives, which reinforced their own bias, and have never bothered to check with public opinion since then. They project their own opinions outwards and then are shocked to find out that millions of Americans think they are full of shit.

Anglachel

The Washington State Experiment - Delegates and Popular Votes

I'm a Californian by birth, a Washingtonian by upbringing, and am now back to California Dreamin'. My family still resides up in Washington. My dad is a long time state empoyee, now retired, my mom an indefatigable volunteer for community mental health, though she is very ill from life-long chronic health problems, my elder brother is a Democratic Party official and general political activist, and my younger brother works in public health, researching disease patterns among poor and migratory populations. I work for a non-profit IT firm that is chartered to work only with public benefit agencies. We're kind of all deeply committed to the public good.

My dad and I were talking on the phone the other day and he sadly said he and Mom weren't going to be able to caucus on Saturday liek they usually do because her health is too frail to withstand a two hour meeting and he can't leave her alone that long to go to the caucus himself. They are going to try to go to the primary polls though.

Yes, you heard me right. Washington state has both a caucus and a primary election. So here will be a very interesting experiment. What will be the difference between the caucus and the primary? How will turnout differ between them? How will candidate support vary when it's a simple ballot vs. a long tedious meeting? My parents can't participate in the caucus for health reasons, so they have been disenfranchised. (For the record, they were both strong Edwards supporters and I have not asked who they support now, if anyone.)

The last poll taken in Washington, by Survey USA (so I'm inclined to trust it), has this to say about their polling:

1 Week To WA State Caucuses, 2 Weeks to Primaries, McCain, Obama Have Party Advantages: Washington state Democrats back Barack Obama by 13 points and Washington state Republicans back John McCain by 14 points, according to SurveyUSA polling conducted immediately prior to Super Tuesday voting in other states around the country. Among WA Democrats, Obama leads Hillary Clinton 53% to 40%. Among WA Republicans, McCain leads Mitt Romney 40% to 26%. Of rgistered voters, approximately 1/4th say they will caucus on 02/09/08. By comparison, about 7/8ths say they will vote in the state primaries on 02/19/08. Among Republicans who say they will caucus, Romney runs stronger than McCain. Among Democrats who say they will caucus, Obama has a 22-point lead over Clinton.

Obama has a substantial advantage among caucus goers compared to actual voters, an increase of 9%. My husband was listening to an NPR report on the car radio on his way home on Obama precinct captains. They are overwhelmingly college students, 20-somethings without jobs or family responsibilities and total Obama cultists. This is why his caucus wins are so skewed - fewer people who are disproportionately made up of his constituents due to structural factors. Voters who can't spend an hour or two sitting in a room being harangued by Obamabots simply don't get their voices heard.

The other point to take from the Survey USA statement is that only a sliver of the primary electorate is represented in a caucus, so Obama has to win over fewer people in a state to win just as many delegates. If the delegates were decided by primary, he probably would still win the state (though the poll was taken before Super Tuesday), but his margin would be far smaller and his delegate count proportionately less.

The success in the much less competitive caucuses helps build up the aura of winning big, which is why his supporters scream about number of states and number of delegates, not the number or demographic makeup of the voters. They don't like it when it is pointed out that Hillary is actually bringing out MORE voters than The Golden One, is getting MORE of the popular vote, and is doing so in the most ethnically and economically diverse states.

I think Obama will go into the national convention with narrowly fewer delegate votes and much lower popular votes, and will try to claim a victory based on super delegate votes.

Just how did George W. Bush win the presidency? Oh, yeah, on delegate votes, claiming victory over Al Gore, who won the popular vote. To compare, Hillary currently has about the same vote margin over Obama in the Democratic primaries as Gore had over Bush in the general election of 2000. How many people on the left want to say that those half-million votes were less important than the handful of winner-take-all delegates claimed by Shrub? How many want to say that the delegates gained through poorly attended, questionably run, and highly skewed caucuses are more important than those gained from the millions of voters who chose Hillary?

Anglachel

What to make of the votes?

Obama lost in a big way tonight because he lost the constituencies that matter - women voters nationwide and white voters in red states.

Obama wins AA votes and he wins white votes in states with low minority presence and low density populations. In California, we finally have a large enough Asian voting block to see that he is losing them big time. He is losing Hispanic votes. And he loses most white votes.

There is a clear class split in the votes as well. Hillary does best with middle income voters and those who are not college educated. As I explained in my post "Who pays for a party's mistakes?" the people who vote for Obama are those who are going to be least affected by a Republican win or by the failure of Democratic policies. People like Markos, Kevin Drum and Josh Marshall. People like the young, white male bloggers who always seem to have an excuse to explain away some stupid anti-Democratic gaffe by The Golden One, or who try to assure us that the nebulous and half-assed "policy" positions Barry puts forward are really veeeery clever ploys to keep the Republicans off balance. The people voting for Hillary are those who are one paycheck away from disaster, or who can make ends meet, but have nothing left over for college, retirement, or even a nice vacation to Disneyland.

Obama also cannot win a solid majority within his own party. Over and over, he has failed to attract a majority of Democrats who are not Black. He pulls a collection of Independents and, like his mentor Joe Lieberman seems to think this makes up for not having the solid backing of the party. Even in states where he wins, he often doesn't win the party.

Obama's supporters scream and squall about how much more electable he is than Hillary, how much lower his negatives, how much he is energizing the party, etc. Given that polls conducted by Gallup and other organizations are consistently showing her with positives in the 70s and 80s among Democrats and over 50% with the public at large, these claims simply cannot be taken seriously any more. Given that she has cleaned his clock in California, New York, Massachsetts, New Jersey, Michigan and Florida, it is getting difficult to argue that she is not as or more competitive in the big races than Golden Boy Barry.

Professional Clinton concern trolls like Josh Marshall wring their hands and publically fret over how muchy Hillary will be a drag on down-ticket votes should she somehow manage to eke out the nomination (no doubt through underhanded means...). I am looking at the county by county voting maps on the New York Times, paying close attention to the suburban and rural areas in the red states. Obama can't even win majorities in these counties in a Democratic primary unless they are majority AA counties. Hillary wins them handily. Just how is someone who can't even win his own party's support in these areas supposed to add strength to these ballots?

Hillary has won despite every major media outlet trashing her, in the face of enormous amounts of vitriol from the left and right blogosphere endlessly repeating bullshit and hurling groundless accusations, and finally by corrupt polling operations, like Zogby, simply manipulating poll results to try to throw the elections. Obama has been showered with money, praise, adulation and a free pass on his sleazy campaign by the media.

Hillary wins white and hispanic votes. She wins women. She wins Democrats. She wins middle income voters. She wins the suburbs. She wins in red states. And, when she doesn't win, she still does strongly with both her own constituency and usually with Obama's as well. His threat to take his supporters and go home if we don't coronate him is both toothless and petulant as she is obviously more acceptable to a wider group of people than he is.

As I said back in September, Hillary is *so* going to win...

Anglachel

Crosstab Factoid

I'm tracking a new parameter in the crosstabs tonight - when did the voter decide to go with their candidate?

In EVERY state I've analyzed so far (AL, AR, CT, DE, GA, IL, MA, MO, NJ, NY), even the states where Obama won big, like Georgia, Clinton received the majority of votes from people who decided today, often by more than 50% of that group.

This supports the broad evidence of both the Gallup and the Rasmussen tracking polls, that Hillary has been going up within the last three days. Undecideds broke for her. What is also evident in the crosstabs is that Obama had his biggest pickup of voters more than a week ago, with a significant bulk of people deciding for him. Conversely, people who decided more than a month ago are majority Clinton.

She held her long standing supporters and is collecting a large number right at the polls.

Anglachel

PS - And she just won Arizona, whoo-hoo!

It looks like California is going big for Hillary

Women - 57% to her, Latinos - 65% and Asians - 72%. White men going for Obama - 59%, white women for Hillary - 53%. Black vote going to Obama - 78%, but low turn out.

I can't tell if the exit polls are finals. I will monitor.

Anglachel

Bwhahahahahahahahaha!

OK, this is going to be a long night for Hillary fans (though she is doing wonderfully and I have lots of crosstab goodness to blog about), but here is the real giggle for the evening:

In several states, Hillary and Barry's votes as winners are bigger than all the Republicans combined. In addition, in most states, both Hillary and Barry are getting more votes coming in second than the Republican winner is getting. Hillary is not only beating Huckabee in Arkansas, it looks like she will get more votes there than all the Republicans put together.

One of the biggest stories of the evening has to be that Democrats are going to the polls in numbers that simply dwarf the Republicans.

Anglachel

Sex and Race

I'm back from casting my vote for Hillary and have settled in for an evening of cross-tab goodness.

Looking over the available exit polls, it is clear that sex and race are the determining factors, with a small nod being given to age.

Black men are voting heavily for Obama and white women are voting heavily for Clinton. There are a few anomalies (CT, which has an abnormally high under 30 turnout and IL, where Obama gets 60% of the white female vote) that I can spot, but the story here is that white women are turning out in record numbers and they are voting for Hillary.

The one state that probably should have gone for HRC was Delaware, but Biden got 4% of the vote and cost her the win.

The other pattern I think I see, though I need to go more carefully through the tabs is that people who decided late, in the last three days, aqre more likely to vote for Hillary.

So, incredibly heavy female turnout, usually 58-69%, with women and late deciders going for Hillary. No western state numbers yet. Obama is winning where he was forecast and Hillary is winning where she was forecast to do so. The Gallup poll this AM shows HRC up by 5 and Rasmussen has her up by 7, but those are national numbers and include people not in tonight's primary states.

Anglachel

The Campaign to Date

It's going to be close tomorrow and Hillary will earn every delegate she gets. She has to as nothing is being given to her, not even the benefit of a doubt.

Let me reiterate what I said way back in September: There is only one person running for the Presidency in the primaries in either party, and that person is Hillary Clinton. As she showed in her Town Hall webcast tonight, she is on top of every issue facing the nation, from the bad economy to Iraq to rejuvenating our rural areas to green energy to immigration. There is nothing she doesn't have a comprehensive and well-considered view about. You may not like her view, but it is there and ready for discussion.

Every other candidate and every media outlet is against Hillary. Every other campaign has been built to defeat her, every blogospheric screamer proudly proclaims how he isn't going to be railroaded into voting for that bitch, and the entire campaign has turned into a mad trashing of all things Clinton. This is, if anything, worse than during the impeachment. It is not a mistake that HRC's entry into the presidential contest has brought every slime bag out from under his rock.

As I pointed out in my last post, there are divisions in our national soul that require us to stand up and fight for what is right. Contrary to the bluster and the bravado of places like TPM or Daily Kos, the last thing the blogosphere (or the nicely comfortable with the status quo party hacks) want is a real, in the trenches, partisan battle. They want nice clean wins, like the Social Security "save" in 2005, where Democrats were shamed into refusing to play Bush's game. Sorry, that was barely preserving the status quo, not gaining any new ground. Unless the game is "Bash the Clintons," and then they are all for it. Why? Because if Hillary is in office, there will be no way to avoid the show down. There will be no compromises because the right will never compromise with a Clinton. Ever. There is also no other way to defeat the movement conservatives.

One of the key appeals of The Golden One, and one of the chief impediments to HRC, is the leftist fantasy that some how we can win back the nation from the grips of the Movement Conservatives without actually having to fight for it, that we can just "Wow, cool!" our way into power. The left needs to get over its distaste for the weilding of political power. We need an FDR, not an Adalai Stevenson. Reading the comments just about anywhere on line, over and over we see the same themes - Hillary is divisive and will rouse anger from the right, while Obama will unify us and deflect or deflate those awful battles.

People like Josh Marshall (who complained about the negative campaign being run against Joe Lieberman until it was obvious that Lieberman was losing, then quickly switched to Lamont, if you all remember), are busy trashing Clinton day in and day out, promoting a candidate who sounds like a weak-version of Bill Clinton from the early 90s, has promised to call Social Security into question, vows to end the bi-partisan bickering in Washington DC by reaching out to the Republicans, and is now running Harry & Louise style ads against universal health care.

You begin to understand why Thelma & Louise went a bit crazy.

You begin to wonder how Hillary holds it together under a kind of barrage that no ordinary human being could withstand.

It comes down to the simple fact that she is running for President for all the right reasons. She knows how government can make life dramatically better for the majority of Americans and she is determined to see it done. It's not so much about making history, which would be all about the winner.

It's about making a future, which is all about us.

Hillary Clinton stands for the liberal democratic proposition that government can and must be used for the betterment of the ordinary citizen. Her vow to enact true universal health care is how the New Deal of this century will be cemented.

That is the reason I am voting for Hillary tomorrow, and in November.

Anglachel

Mandates: Clinton, Obama, Insurance

Krugman explains the political costs of Obama's opposition to mandates in terms clear enough for even Josh Marshall to understand (my emphasis):

The principal policy division between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama involves health care. It’s a division that can seem technical and obscure — and I’ve read many assertions that only the most wonkish care about the fine print of their proposals.

But as I’ve tried to explain in previous columns, there really is a big difference between the candidates’ approaches. And new research, just released, confirms what I’ve been saying: the difference between the plans could well be the difference between achieving universal health coverage — a key progressive goal — and falling far short.

Specifically, new estimates say that a plan resembling Mrs. Clinton’s would cover almost twice as many of those now uninsured as a plan resembling Mr. Obama’s — at only slightly higher cost.

...

To answer this question you need to make a detailed analysis of health care decisions. That’s what Jonathan Gruber of M.I.T., one of America’s leading health care economists, does in a new paper.

Mr. Gruber finds that a plan without mandates, broadly resembling the Obama plan, would cover 23 million of those currently uninsured, at a taxpayer cost of $102 billion per year. An otherwise identical plan with mandates would cover 45 million of the uninsured — essentially everyone — at a taxpayer cost of $124 billion. Over all, the Obama-type plan would cost $4,400 per newly insured person, the Clinton-type plan only $2,700.

That doesn’t look like a trivial difference to me. One plan achieves more or less universal coverage; the other, although it costs more than 80 percent as much, covers only about half of those currently uninsured.
...

Now, some might argue that none of this matters, because the legislation presidents actually manage to get enacted often bears little resemblance to their campaign proposals. And there is, indeed, no guarantee that Mrs. Clinton would, if elected, be able to pass anything like her current health care plan.

But while it’s easy to see how the Clinton plan could end up being eviscerated, it’s hard to see how the hole in the Obama plan can be repaired. Why? Because Mr. Obama’s campaigning on the health care issue has sabotaged his own prospects.

You see, the Obama campaign has demonized the idea of mandates —most recently in a scare-tactics mailer sent to voters that bears a striking resemblance to the “Harry and Louise” ads run by the insurance lobby in 1993, ads that helped undermine our last chance at getting universal health care.

If Mr. Obama gets to the White House and tries to achieve universal coverage, he’ll find that it can’t be done without mandates — but if he tries to institute mandates, the enemies of reform will use his own words against him.

If you combine the economic analysis with these political realities, here’s what I think it says: If Mrs. Clinton gets the Democratic nomination, there is some chance — nobody knows how big — that we’ll get universal health care in the next administration. If Mr. Obama gets the nomination, it just won’t happen.

Clinton, Obama, Insurance

It really comes down to this. Everyone needs to be in the plan to make it cost effective, and the only way to do it is to make it mandatory, like Social Security. You know, the single biggest success story of the Democratic Party?

Anglachel

United to What End?

One of the things the spousal unit and I have discussed about Obama's mesage of unity is what exactly is it in the nation that requires unification?

Paul Krugman has consistently pointed out since W's election that the right wing movement conservatives want no part of unity. They want complete and utter authority. The overriding message of his book The Conscience of a Liberal is simply this: There's no working with these people. On the right, they make no secret of their contempt for liberal democratic rule (and I mean that in the formal, political theory sense of the term), far preferring autocracies like Franco's Spain.

As Bob Somerby pointed out over and over, the problem with Obama's Reno talk with the conservative newspaper editors wasn't really the overly adulatory comments about Reagan. It was his airy dismissal of the turmoil of the 60s as something the left got wrong. Wrong about civil rights? Wrong about women's rights? Wrong about protesting the Vietnam war? Just what national political contests were wrong? The other half of the uproar was his claim that over the last 15 years (which covers all of Shrub's presidency and much of Bill Cinton's) it was the Republicans who were the party of ideas, with the clear understanding that these were somehow good or commendable ideas.

Rick Perlstein has an op-ed in the Washington Post today, "Getting Past the '60s? It's Not Going to Happen", getting to the heart of why unity for unity's sake is not just gaseous, it is simply ignoring the fact that there are divisions in this nation that cannot be mediated - they can only be contested:

One of the most fascinating notions raised by the current presidential campaign is the idea that the United States can and must finally overcome the divisions of the 1960s. It's most often associated with the ascendancy of Sen. Barack Obama, who has been known to entertain it himself. Its most gauzy champion is pundit Andrew Sullivan, who argued in a cover article in the December Atlantic Monthly that, "If you are an American who yearns to finally get beyond the symbolic battles of the Boomer generation and face today's actual problems, Obama may be your man."

No offense to either Obama or Sullivan, but: No he isn't. No one is.
...

The fact is, the '60s are still with us, and will remain so for the imaginable future. We are all like Zhou Enlai, who, asked what he thought about the French Revolution, answered, "It is too early to tell." When and how will the cultural and political battle lines the baby boomers bequeathed us dissolve? It is, well and truly, still too early to tell. We can't yet "overcome" the '60s because we still don't even know what the '60s were -- not even close.

Born myself in 1969 to pre-baby boomer parents, I'm a historian of America's divisions who spent the age of George W. Bush reading more news papers written when Johnson and Richard Nixon were president than current ones. And I recently had a fascinating experience scouring archives for photos of the 1960s to illustrate the book I've just finished based on that research. It was frustrating -- and telling.

The pictures people take and save, as opposed to the ones they never take or the ones they discard, say a lot about how they understand their own times. And in our archives as much as in our mind's eye, we still record the '60s in hazy cliches -- in the stereotype of the idealistic youngster who came through the counterculture and protest movements, then settled down to comfortable bourgeois domesticity.

What's missing? The other side in that civil war. The right-wing populist rage of 1968 third-party presidential candidate George Wallace, who, referring to an idealistic protester who had lain down in front of Johnson's limousine, promised that if he were elected, "the first time they lie down in front of my limousine, it'll be the last one they'll ever lay down in front of because their day is over!" That kind of quip helped him rise to as much as 20 percent in the polls.

...

A President Obama could no more magically transcend America's '60s-born divisions than McCarthy, Kennedy, Nixon or McGovern could, for the simple reason that our society is defined as much by its arguments as by its agreements. Over the meaning of "family," on sexual morality, on questions of race and gender and war and peace and order and disorder and North and South and a dozen other areas, we remain divided in ways that first arose after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. What Andrew Sullivan dismisses as "the symbolic battles of the Boomer generation" do not separate us from our "actual problems"; they define us, as much as the Great War defined France in the 1920s,'30s, '40s and beyond. Pretending otherwise simply isn't healthy. It's repression -- the kind of thing that shrinks say causes neurosis.

At least there's some comfort in knowing that our divisions aren't what they once were. Heck, in the 1860s, half the nation was devoted in body, mind and spirit to killing the other half; in the early 1930s, many sage observers presumed the nation to be poised on the verge of open, violent class warfare. We'll manage to muddle through again -- even burdened with mere flesh and blood human beings, not magical healing shamans, as our leaders.

There are decisions that face the nation, and anyone who leads it, that cannot be resolved through good intentions or thoughtful mediation or any other Kumbayah mechanism. These are divisions that are rooted in a constitution that declared part of our population to be less than fully human, and which will never be resolved as long as part of the population fundamentally does not regard that proposition as wrong, that entire categories of people (Blacks, women, gays, immigrants, Muslims, etc.) can be declared as less than fully members of this polity, and that it is right and good to do so. This is what the Movement Conservatives have laid bare in their march towards their goal - they simply do not believe in the promise of America that I and the majority of the nation hold dear, and that they have no compunction about destroying it root and branch as long as they remain in power.

Our divisions are not what they once were because of the contests that the Left won when rooting out the social, economic and political institutions that maintained the divisions in the first place - such as chattel slavery, legal apartheid, denial of full citizenship to women, and so forth. The last thing we need is to compromise those victories so that no one has to be exposed to public contestation of who we are and how we shall conduct ourselves as Americans.

Which is another reason why I support Hillary Clinton.

Anglachel

Down to the Wire

I've been ignoring politics all day. Instead, I've been running errands and packing boxes, getting ready for my move into my new house at the end of the month. It was a good break. I've returned to find a few shifts in the polls and a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth all around. So, what do I see?

First, Harold Meyerson is a lying son of a bitch. It's looking more and more like he simply made up a story about the "racist" phone call. He tried to soften the statement, he kinda-sorta walked it back, but not really. What he is doing is trying to keep "Hillary is a racist" meme out there to discourage Blacks from voting for her. This is just disgusting. I am waiting (NOT!) for Obama to distance himself from this "surrogate". What Meyerson has done is revolting, as it is a crude, personal attack on Sen. Clinton directly, done solely to exacerbate racial tensions in California. Kudos to Taylor Marsh for breaking this story.

Overall, there appears to be problems in a lot of the polls where the percentages don't come anywhere near 100%. I think there are a number of them out there who have simply taken Edwards out of the picture without trying to repoll or refactor their results. Rasmussen in particular is reporting numbers that do not have any solid reallocation of Edwards supporters. Always look for the dates of the polls (Do they date on or before January 30th, for example) and/or do the percentage totals give you 95% or more? If you can find some methodology notes, read them to see what they did about Edwards.

Next, the Gallup tracking poll today shows a sharp downtick in HRC's support and a balancing uptick in BO's. Without Edwards' presence, there now is a direct relationship between these two. Undecideds are deciding.

Here is another interesting report from Gallup, Clinton and Obama Tied: Both Are Satisfying to Democrats. There is a lot of polling goodness in this report, so I recommend you go read it. Hillary remains preferred by Democrats, though the difference is statistically meaningless. More than 50% of Democrats and Dem-leaning Independents enthusiastically support either candidate. Overall, more of this voting group say they will support Hillary (77%) than will support Obama (75%). The voter intentions break out this way:

.	Hillary	Barry
Enthusiastic	53%	55%
Party Vote	24%	20%
Vote Rep.	09%	07%
Not Vote	10%	13%
No Opinion	04%	05%

Enthusiastic means the voter has no problem voting for that candidate at all. Party vote is more a vote cast for whatever Democrat is running, just to keep the Republicans out. Vote Rep. means the respondent will vote for the Republican rather than this candidate. Not Vote means they will stay home and No Opinion is just that. I look at this table as the refutation of the Hillary-hater claim that she's unelectable. More respondents say they will vote for Hillary than will vote for Barry, though it is a huge majority who will vote for either. More people say they won't vote at all rather than vote for Barry than say that about Hillary, which I think shows the disparity (and danger) of their appeals to the part loyalists. Why would an Independent care about voting along party lines? An interesting number is those who say they will go Republican, which to me points at the number of Republicans who prefer Barry to be the Democratic nominee. Even so, the number is tiny. In short, the majority of people polled will vote for Hillary, completely demolishing the claim that she can't mobilize support on the left. I read the poll to say that more people will vote for Clinton, especially if they are committed Democrats.

Rasmussen's daily tracking poll shows HRC gaining considerable national support. My guess is that they are now seeing the bump that Gallup caught the day before. Again, what I see in these polls is that Hillary is eminently electable, and al the screaming and temper-tantrums by Kos and Josh won't change the facts on the ground.

The California polls are mostly unreliable at this point. Never believe anything that comes out of Zogby, period. The Field poll is probably accurate, but is spread across a long period of time and most was done before the Florida primary and Edwards' departure. Rasmussen's latest shows fewer undecided voters than the other recent polls (5% rather then in the mid/high teens); instead, they report that 24% of those polled say they could change their minds. The Mason-Dixon poll may be most pleasing for me as an HRC supporter to read (Clinton 45%, Barry 36%), but the number for Obama just seems way too low for Califonia. I don't expect a New Hampshire style upset by either candidate in California. The final result will probably be less than a full percentage point of difference between the candidates.

If there is going to be an electoral surprise on Tuesday, my bets are on Georgia. I think HRC is closer there than the polls are showing, though I still think it will be an Obama win. The reason I think this are two recent polls (Mason-Dixon and PPP) showing her above 40% and because neighboring Alabama is consistently polling for her. Here is one part of the country where Edwards voters appear to be going strongly to Hillary. Still, I don't think she will win Georgia.

It seems I ignored my own lectures about comparing apples and rutabagas and read too much into an Illinois poll showing HRC going up strongly. Rasmussen's recent poll shows BO with a still commanding lead. However, they also say (in the fine print) that it was conducted before Edwards left the race, and that they have not tried to account for those votes, so I do expect to see Hillary's numbers improve in Illinois, and the vote balance will look more like an inversion of New York. Just as interesting is the news from Illinois that 68% of those polled view Hillary favorably (Darn, there goes that old canard about her negatives being so high!) and that "Half (51%) of Illinois voters think the economy is the most important issue in the upcoming Presidential election. The War in Iraq comes in at a distant second with 23% who find it to be the most important issue. " Why is this good? Because it blunts McCains appeal, which is on security, not the economy.

I don't think the rest of the number have either changed that much or else aren't reliable enough to be worth commenting on. Don't believe anything a Zogby poll says and take all ARG polls with half a shaker of salt. They may show Hillary ahead, but they are rarely accurate.

Overall, my take away from the polling, the crosstabs and the specialty reports is that the myth that Hillary Clinton couldn't get the solid and strong support of the Democratic voters has been shown to be hogwash. Given the reports of the block-buster crowds she has been getting at her appearances, the strength of her hold on her share of the polls (compare, for example, to Rudy Guiliani, who had a better numbers all over than HRC six months ago and who dropped like a rock in actual voting), and the way in which the attacks on her are not having the desired effect, I think this proves that HRC is more than holding her own. One can only exclaim in wonder at what her numbers and support would look like if she didn't have every corner of the MSM and the blogosphere screaming invectives and throwing out smears every 10 nano-seconds. If she had the positive coverage that Barry has been coasting on, her numbers would be in the high-70s.

Anglachel

Galluping Along the Wrong Track

I'm always amused at how poll readers can't look at the data set in front of their noses and do a little serious thinking about the events that inspire the numbers. I'm looking at the Jan. 30 - Feb 1st Gallup poll information. Across the blogosphere, disappointed ObamaBots just can't believe that Hillary has gone up sharply in the polls. With Edwards dropping out, everyone knows that those supporters will go to The Golden One because everyone knows that everyone Hates Hillary! Let's examine the data. EDIT: Also, the Gallup poll is a three day tracking poll, used to smooth out highs and lows. Thus, the numbers are really trends of voters, and lag the daily indicators. A high point and a low point must be viewed against the subsequent data point. Abrupt changes indicate an even stronger reaction in the direction of the trend than is being reported.

The key here is to look at the poll movement along two dimensions - the first being the events happening in the days immediately before the poll result, and then look at the pattern of movement between the three candidates. My argument is that while Hillary and Barry were the ones making the big news and setting the trends, it was the behavior of Edwards supporters who shifted things one way or the other.

The numbers start on Janury 10th at the left hand side. What was going on at that time? HRC had won the New Hampshire primary big time about a week before, and there was the start of an anti-HRC vote drive in Michigan. You can see she goes up for three days and Obama drops sharply, losing the last of his bounce from Iowa. It would be interesting to see the full poll results from January 1. My own guess is that Obama may have polled ahead of HRC immediately after Iowa, and probably was at 39-40% - approximately where he is now. Edwards is unaffected.

The NH buzz peaks on the 13th, which is about when the first accusations of race baiting were being thrown at Hillary and as Barry's side makes hay over the CWU endorsement. There is a decline for a few days and then the Nevada debate on the 15th. What is interesting to note is that Edwards goes up during this period of time almost the same amount as HRC declines. Also to remember is that there are a bunch of undecideds swirling around because Biden, Dodd and Richardson have left the race, so there is substantial volatility as their supporters decide where else to go.

HRC begins upwards again within two days of the Nevada debate (following the first news cycle after the debates) and peaks the day of the Nevada caucuses. Obama has a sharp drop, probably due to the abruptly nasty turn his campaign takes and word that his CWU endorsement may not translate to actual support. Edwards also declines the day of and the day after the caucuses.

Then begins the long slog towards South Carolina, with the media, the blogosphere and Obama's campaign screaming at every turn that the Clintons are racists. The low point in the polls for Hillary is the day of the Florida primary itself, with Obama riding a huge surge of primary success and slobberingly sycophantic media promotion. Edwards sees an upturn just before South Carolina, but has it peak just before Florida, the same time that HRC begins to go up again.

The day after Florida, HRC sees a bump up in the poll, plus Edwards leaves the campaign. The next day, she goes up again and the LA debate is held. The day after the debate, she bounces up by 4 points. To me this marks three things:

1. The end of the South Carolina bump for Obama. I also think this marks the end of any gains he can get from pushing the racism line. People aren't buying it anymore, not after Florida. It's also becoming clear that there isn't anything like that coming from the Clinton campaign, Harold Meyerson's pathetic and shameful lies not withstanding.
2. The departure of Edwards is making a large group of voters have to make a final choice between HRC and Obama, and they are going to HRC. Edwards' numbers stopped at 4. The next day, Hillary picks up four. No, I don't think there was a simple transfer. Part of that were Obama fence-sitters swayed by the debate, but I'm willing to bet the bulk were people who had been Edwards supporters or leaners.
3. But something else had to happen to catalyze that movement, and I think it was the LA debate. She came across better than Barry did, and (with Edwards out), people could unequivocally ask "Why not both of these candidates?" When asked (as it was all over the blogosphere and I suspect all over TV viewing America) in the context of the very strong, very enjoyable presentations by both candidates, there was the recognition that you put your strongest person in the top slot. And that's HRC.

Now, study the graph carefully. People tend to look at the top two lines, Hillary and Obama, and draw foolish conclusions that somehow a gain in support for him is a direct loss of support for her and vice-versa. It's not completely wrong, but it's wrong in terms of causality. Look at Edwards' lines and compare to HRC. Notice that when he is increasing support, hers decreases, though the two are not perfectly correlated.

It is a reasonably well known phenomenon in political science that voters do not generally jump directly from one candidate to another if they have had any investment in the first candidate. You usually see them move to an "undecided" or "leaning" position first, then they see or hear something about the second candidate that makes it OK to commit, such as a great deabate performance or hearing that someone said something inflammatory. Loss of support for one candidate shows up a few cycles before transfer of that support to another. Since people don't all make up their minds at the same moment, you see patterns that indicate trends which are always lagging signifiers of final opinion. (Hint, this is why Hillary in NH and Obama in SC exceeded the declared preference in the polls just before the respective votes. The polls didn't catch the final movement from the uncommitted bucket.)

Though blogospheric conventional wisdom holds as an article of faith (it must, since no facts support this claim) that the patterns of support for the candidates are H---E-O or else H---O-E, meaning that there is a bigger distance between Hillary and the voters next choice (be it Obama or Edwards) than between Obama and Edwards themselves, voting patterns actually reinforce that, controlling for class (and isn't that ironic!), the patterns is actually H-E---O, or even E-H---O. Thus, looking at the Gallup trend lines, when Edwards loses support, it tends to go to Hillary and vice-versa. Their defecting supporters who move all the way to another candidate tend to move to each other (H=>E or E=>H), and the amount of switching between them is probably higher than the switching between either of them and Obama. The one demographic group where this is probably not true, where Hillary and Obama are likely to exchange support more than H-E or O-E is with Black voters (regardless of class).

Thus, HRC's long decline after SC (which was no worse than her sharp decline after New Hampshire, btw - everything is relative) should be see as a combination of defections: Weak support leaving for undecided, weak support leaving for Edwards, weak support leaving for Obama, and weak Edwards support leaving for Obama. This allows Edwards to maintain position even if he loses support to Obama because he recovers the losses because of Clinton defections. HRC is back up to where she was before the race-baiting tactics, Obama has probably collected as many defections from the HRC camp as he is going to get before Super Tuesday, and what remains is to see how the Edwards support will go.

The blogosperic screamers need to understand that they are a very unique slice of the American demographic and are disproportionately Obama supporters because they hate HRC. In this, they resemble the MSM more than any ordinary voter demographic. (C'mon, do you think Barry would get the time of day from the likes of Tweety if he wasn't competitive against Hillary?) I remember the slams and shit thrown at Barry by the very people now on their knees worshipping him. The anti-Obama spew at FireDogLake, for example, after his speech about religion and the public sphere was so vitriolic and, yes, racist, that I stopped going to the site.

Barry is rightly worried that Hillary will strongly appeal to former Edwards supporters who are very policy oriented and want to see those kinds of policies implemented, especially healthcare (Prime example - Paul Krugman. Not an HRC fan, but big on progressive policy), and are not so inflamed about Iraq as long as the candidate has a decent plan for leaving. It is not a mistake that the current round of attacks are focused on healthcare, though it is offensive that they are doing a pure Karl Rove FUD maneuver.

I could be wrong, but I think that people who supported Edwards are more likely to move to Hillary than to Obama, and I think this is what the Gallup poll, taken in the context of other polls, is telling us.

Anglachel

What do the polls say?

I've spent a little time looking over the latest offering from Pollster and all I can say is there simply isn't enough tracking data to be certain about much. Very, very few polls have been taken since Florida and they are not by the most reliable polling agencies. Still, it appears that there is a distinct advantage to Hillary from Edwards dropping out. What does it look like?

• Alabama - 60 delegates. All bets would have been on Barry until Wednesday. Survey USA has a poll of likely voters taken yesterday that shows HRC and BHO in a tie. It looks like both Edwards and undecided voters went 3-2 for Hillary. I wouldn't bet on a win, but grabbing about half the delegates would be nice.
• Arizona - 67 delegates. No polls since before South Carolina. HRC has edge. I would guess it has gone up.
• Arkansas - 47 delegates. Clinton country.
• California - 441 delegates. Crazy time around here. The effete latte sippers up north are going big time for Barry, while the effete latte sippers down in SoCal like Hillary. LA Times endorsed Obama, but no one pays much attention to it. The last poll was Rasmussen on the 29th, so not including Florida or the debate. They have the gap narrowing, but other before that had RC getting stronger. It will be close and the vote count is going to take forever because of all our Diebold machines being decertified. (Heh-heh) I say 5-4 in Hillary's favor. SoCal Edwards voters are going HRC.
• Colorado - 71 delegates. A caucus state so plenty of opportunity to scream at and intimidate people. BarryBots may be more drag than push, though, after the last few weeks. Also, no polls since FL or Edwards dropping out.
• Connecticut - 60 delegates. I smell Joe Liebermnan's clammy hands on this one. HRC came out early and strong for Lamont, sternly rebuking Holy Joe, while Obama kept sucking up. The one poll has Obama ahead by 4, but another done on the same day has him behind by 13. HRC herself is steadily increasing support there. It will be close.
• Delware - 23 delegates. Not enough data points and polls are heavily skewed to HRC. I don't trust these numbers.
• Georgia - 103 delgates. Obama will win this strongly. HRC consistently has polled low in GA since this time last year. Just not her state. She's actually stronger now than last year.
• Idaho - 23 delegates. Who knows? They look about tied. This is probably the worst state in the union for someone non-white and non-male could run in.
• Illinois - 185 delegates. Very interesting phenomenon here. Obama is steady at @ 50% and HRC has zoomed up to 40 since Florida. I dont' see him losing, but she obviously has strength here. She was born in Illinois, after all, and has some strong partisans there.
• Kansas - 41 delegates. Almostt a dead heat between all three in the single poll reported on Pollster. It was taken in May and is worthless. I bet on Obama because of Sebelius, but HRC may surprise with some strength.
• MA - 121 delegates. HRC is bursting up in the Survey USA poll. That is Florida and Edwards being out.
• Missouri - 88 delegates. Edwards voters appear to be breaking to Obama here, though polling is tight. Too few data points for real accuracy. McCaskill is promoting Barry, of course, but HRC seems genuinely popular there.
• Minnesota - 88 delegates. Not enough data and it's a caucus state almost next door to Ilinois. Expect BarryBots in droves. Even so, HRC is polling strongly ahead.
• New Joisey - 127 delegates. HRC.
• New Mexico - 38 delegates. More than Delaware. Whoda thunk it? Wide open, no reliable data, and Bill Richardson trying to get into the White House. Flip a coin.
• New York - 281 delegates. HRC by a mile. She's regularly polling over 50 and Baryy can't break 40. This is a different dynamic than in Illinois, where HRC is gaining on Barry who can't seem to break 51% among Democrats. She'll win her state and delegates more strongly than BHO, and looks to gain a larger share of Illinois than he gets of NY.
• Oklahoma - 47 delegates. HRC is polling well, but so is Edwards and his votes reallocate. Wes Clark won here last time and is stumping for her here.
• Tennessee - 85 delegates. HRC should win strongly here, but watch out for the large pack of undecideds.
• Utah - 29 delegates. Strongly for Hillary.

So, no knock out punch, but that delegate scorecard is going to look a lot different come Wednesday morning than it does now. I will be pounding back mojitos in honor of Mardi Gras Tuesday evening (after I cast my paper ballot for HRC, of course), and expect to be partying well into the wee hours. The drinking game is take a swig whenever one of the media tries to excplain that votes don't count if they are cast for Hillary.

But beware of alcohol poisoning.

Anglachel

Needs

So, it appears that my observation that Hillary and Barry on the same ticket generates more power than simply looking at their relative strengths is the meme of the evening in the blogosphere. However, there is an assumption among the blogbots that HRC gains more from having Obama as a running mate than Barry gets from having Hillary.

Horsepuckey.

Look at the cumulative cross-tabs. Obama's weaknesses among voters are more pronounced than Hillary's weaknesses, and his strengths are either concentrated in small voting groups or are based on unreliable constituencies.

• HRC pulls over 50% of the white vote, and appears to be pulling more than that of hispanic voters, who are a constituency that is wavering between Republicans and Democrats.
• She significantly outpolls everyone in either party on women voters who are the single largest demographic voter group. To the degree that people do identity voting, the sheer numbers of women voters quickly provide volume.
• Hillary consistently outpolls Barry with people over 40, who make up 60+% of the voter turnout. Her margins with younger voters aren't too shabby, either.
• On issues, more people care about domestic policy (economy, health care, housing, etc.) than about Iraq, and they favor Hillary. As far as Iraq goes, more voters will agree with HRC's position than with Barry's, if only because they intially supported the war and now feel foolish.
• HRC also attracts and holds the Democratic base far more than Barry, and these are voters who will not defect in the general, the way cross-over Republicans or weekly committed Independents might be.
• She gets union, pink and blue collar votes far in excess of Obama or Edwards, and she inspires voting among low income, less educated women.
• Finally, she strongly out perfroms Obama in the suburbs where the soccer moms congregate and where voter turn out is highest. As it happens, she also polls better than he does in urban and rural areas.

In short, she already dominates the core constituencies on the left except for African American voters. If she keeps her campaign clean, that constituency will probably give her at least a strategic if not very enthusiastic vote.

What Obama can do is bring in a new cadre of younger voters who will likely stay committed to vote for him down the road. He can bring in some of those Independents and convert them to Democrats. This is a group that is increasingly made up of people who have defected from the Republican party, but need some extra "oomph" to take the final step and join up. I'm not sure about the male vote, as guys sexist enough to refuse to vote for HRC overlap considerably with guys who vote along racial lines, too. Finally, he gives a fig leaf to the HRC haters who wil have to walk back their bigotry, allowing them to hold onto their disdain but claim to be seeting up a strategic situation for the next time.

Hillary's strengths are deeply rooted in the core of the party. Barry would do well to cultivate that connection.

Anglachel

Win in November

As goes Florida, so goes the nation.

After watching the juxtaposition of the querulous white guys (they aren't quite energetic enough to be angry white men) last night and the "too much talent and intelligence to safely occupy the same auditorium at one time" dynamic duo tonight, it becomes painfully obvious that the only force that can defeat the Democrats in November will be the party divided against itself. There is less than nothing on the Rethuglican side of the aisle and they know it.

The obvious solution is for Clinton and Obama both to be on the ticket. With that, there would be a political tsunami to sweep the Democrats into power the likes of which we have not seen since 1964. Coattails don't even begin to describe the effect of that combination on down-ticket voting. It might be possible to win outright a 60 seat Senate majority - without Lieberman. Apart, with only one or the other on the ticket, there will be a decent but not overwhelming win. This is truely a situation where the whole would be much greater than the sum of its parts.

I think that HRC will win a clear majority (though not a super majority) of delegates to the convention. This is what the demographics of the polls are saying - she wins women, registered Democrats, blue collar, white and hispanic, over 40, and polls strongly with all others. She has the longest and more complete experience of dealing with economics and finance at a national political level. How the Democrats handle the deepening recession could lead to a multi-generational electoral dominance. She is a person ready to face the immediate future.

Barry is potential that needs shaping. Too much like the Big Dog at the same point in their careers, trusting to their own intellect and "personal touch" approach to politics more than is good, better campaigners than executors or leaders. Barry has been too eager to rely on the anti-Clinton vein in American politics than is healthy for his campaign or his psyche, confusing those who see him as a useful tool with those who actually want him elected. Such as the entire Republican party. The nation needs to NOT have such talent thrown into the political malestrom to be worked over by the VRWC while trying to learn on the job.

Hillary can handle it. Indeed, there is no one, not even Bill, who has better psychological resources against it. The more the right screams, the stronger she gets. I compare the person she was during Big Dog's presidential run and the person she has matured into being. How many others would have been able to take on what life (and the Right) threw at her and come out as whole, as mind-bogglingly normal as she has? Just compare her to good old Bill, who as Bob Somerby noted a few days ago, still lets the press get under his skin and bait him into self-defeating acts. Bill's always needed to be the smartest smart-ass in the room, and therein lay his downfall.

The big question, then, will be whether the professional Clinton-haters on the Left will set aside their own Tweety-level obsession with Hillary and promote the party. The Naderites will always be with us, like the Paultards on the Right, but what about those who are in the grips of CDS and who literally cannot escape their prejudices against HRC? Most HRC supporters can treat Obama with equanimity, but certain opinion leaders on the Left cannot treat HRC as a human being, let alone as the well liked, well supported, much respected leader of the party that she is.

So, for November, the Obama faction has a chance to actually walk their talk and bring unity to the Democrats, a strategic maneuver for long term political gain.

Besides, won't it be fun to watch Tweety's head explode when he has to say "President Hillary Clinton"?

Anglachel