Except Clinton will use this to justify her intention to stay in the race until the convention. Her argument will be superdelegates can switch sides as often as they like until the actual convention vote and so they may all switch to her over the summer.turbo-1 said:
Bravo, Obama!
jimmysnyder said:
It's one thing to 'not officially quit' and quite another to be actively campaigning. In her speech, she went over the reasons why she would be a better nominee than Obama. She's still in it to win it. Even Bush has congratulated Obama.TheStatutoryApe said:
One thing she needs is for people to keep donating to her campaign, so she can retire some of that huge debt she's acquired. She can seek donations only if she is actively campaigning. Another thing she will do is use the threat of staying in the race, till the party throws here a juicy bone. The majority leader position is clearly out of her reach, but maybe the NY Statehouse...maybe a committee chair...?jimmysnyder said:
IMO Obama would be far less likely to win with the issues and baggage the Clintons would bring to the campaign which may put off many traditional democrats and definitely reduce the support of independents and moderate republicans.Evo said:
Ivan Seeking said:
Not according to the latest polls. As of June 3rd, averaging the top polls, Clinton appears to be a stronger candidate against McCain than Obama. I don't think people realize just how popular she is. The last statistic shows that she has more supporters (votes) than Obama. Yep, Obama 17,773,626 48.0%, Clinton 17,822,145 48.1% (Obama's numbers include ALL of the unsupported votes in MI). Pretty damn close, so Obama won the DNC endorsement not by popular vote, (although the numbers are so close I'd call it a tie due to possible errors), but by delegates.mathwonk said:
I doubt these latest polls are late enough. Obama is going to enjoy a boost in popularity for at least a couple of days. My hat is off to Cindy Nunley of Wyoming. After polls closed last night, dozens of supers declared for Obama, roughly a dozen switched from Clinton to Obama, showing more party unity than Clinton herself, and nearly two declared for Clinton. Cindy is truly super.Evo said:
Evo said:
Yesterday is too long ago? Plus the number of voters in the primaries won't change that's over.turbo-1 said:
turbo-1 said:
As of now, polls of this nature are essentially meaningless. At around this time, back in '92, Bill Clinton was lagging behind not only Bush Sr., but also Ross Perot, in the polls. That's what turbo means by polls, "this far out" - the general election is several months away.Evo said:
I don't think people realize how unpopular she is among the Right. Having her on the ticket is the surest way to energize a lackluster Republican campaign. She has the highest unfavorable ratings among all the 20 odd candidates that participated in the primaries.
Those numbers are still not correct. FL and MI were not legally conducted primaries. The candidates were not allowed to campaign there, and it is meaningless to count the results from those states. Like I've said before, if all the races were campaign free, Hillary would have twice or thrice the vote that Obama could have hoped to get. And giving Obama all of the uncommitted vote still doesn't make it fair. How does one judge what fraction of Obama supporters voted for Hillary, because his name wasn't on the ballot? The latest Michigan poll shows http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/michigan/election_2008_michigan_democratic_presidential_primary . Compared to this, the numbers in RCP, give her a 15% margin in Michigan. The numbers in FL are also bad numbers because he wasn't allowed to campaign there.
There is no such thing as winning the Primary by votes. But if you do count the votes in all the states where Clinton & Obama were allowed to campaign, in accordance with DNC rules, he beats her vote total as well.
If you want to look at general election head-to-heads this early, do take a look at the more relevant electoral vote numbers:
http://electoral-vote.com/
No, too far out means that calling the matchups between McCain and either Clinton or Obama is very unreliable. There is too much time between now and November. The Dems were fighting for support from within their own party state-by-state, and the dynamics of such a race is very different than what either of them would have to do to win a national contest in a general election. The public won't get a really good look at Obama until he starts hammering McCain on policy - his numbers are going to get a LOT better in the coming months.Evo said:
Gokul43201 said:
Clinton was ahead of Obama in the early contests in part because of her name recognition. When Obama was able to campaign actively in a state, his numbers usually came up very sharply. The Clinton name combined with the older population guaranteed Clinton a disproportionate win there absent an active primary campaign.Gokul43201 said:
And he's not actually losing as many votes as one might expect, because anybody who is racist at that level is not likely to vote for a progressive administration anyway, and would likely have supported McCain in the end. Just my opinion.Ivan Seeking said:
"Likely" voters in these polls also miss the huge influx of students that rallied to Obama and will support him in the general election. Obama's get-out-the-vote campaign was the best thing to happen to the Democratic Congressional candidates up for election in 2008. Those superdelegates won't say it, but they wanted to be in an election topped by Obama and NOT Clinton, as her huge negatives would energize the supporters of their Republican opponents.Ivan Seeking said:
Ivan Seeking said:
Ooops, I certainly misread that one.Gokul43201 said:
Unfavorable just with Republicans? Because in popularity polls, Obama ranks 39.2 unfavorable , Hillary ranks 44% unfavorable and McCain ranks 38.8 unfavorable.
We haven't seen Obama in full-on GE mode yet. McCain wants to have town-hall discussions with Obama, and that is a very scary scenario for the Republicans. Obama is very smart, smooth, knowledgeable, and self-assured in public speaking, and McCain is wooden, clumsy, and prone to misstatements, including his apparent inability to remember that Iranians are Shiite and al Qaeda is Sunni, and that Iran is not arming them. He conflates the Iraq insurgency with al Qaeda routinely, displaying a stunning lack of knowledge about what will be one of the most critical problems that the next president will face.Evo said:
That's directly in opposition to what the exit polls have been saying time and again.Ivan Seeking said:
http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/06/04/clyburn-clinton-supporters-flood-office-with-hate-calls/
Based on what I was reading yesterday, that is a reasonable conclusion, unless Obama can change some opinions about himself, and find an appealing running mate.Evo said:
It's what you mentioned earlier, she has to continue campaining in order to be able to accept donations to reduce her debt. She's not stupid.Gokul43201 said:This is priceless! Y'all probably remember how her speech ended last night, but here's a reminder:
So, okay...you go to http://hillaryclinton.com, and what do you find there?
A form where you enter your personal information and an optional message, but get this - the form has a stock message from "you" to Hillary, already filled out, and it says: "I'm with you Hillary, and I'm proud of everything we are fighting for".
So much for wanting to hear from "you"!
I'll have to disagree here. Jimmy Carter has a pretty good "read" on Obama's campaign.Astronuc said:
It's perfectly fine to ask for campaign donations. But it's completely disingenuous and insulting to tell your supporters you want to hear their opinions on what you should do next, and then give them a filled out form letter to submit.Evo said:
I went there, you can skip it.Gokul43201 said:
Did you expect less from Queen Hillary? The only way to communicate with the campaign apart from the pre-packaged buttons is to click the almost invisible "contact us" link at the bottom of the page and send a comment. BTW, if you don't fill out the "required" fields that are not specified on the page, your comment will not be posted. After a couple of those "errors", it became quite evident that Clinton's web-site was designed to show a landslide of popular support for her candidacy. What a pig!Gokul43201 said:
It's the same as Obama's website.turbo-1 said:
