Primary thoughts.

[phamos]

I haven't poked around on too many sites yet, but it looks like the meida isn't particularly into Clinton's "turned a corner" spin, thank goodness. Clinton was always ahead in Ohio -- I think only one poll in the last two weeks showed Obama ahead, and that was Zogby, who has had a terrible track record this election. SurveyUSA, which has been much more accurate, gave Clinton a 17 point spread before the Wisconsin election, a 9 point spread right after Wisconsin, and a 6 point spread last week. On Sunday, they got it exactly right -- 54-44. So instead of framing this as losing 7 points in the last two weeks, they say they won 4 points in the last week. It's all spin. In two weeks, this race went from "Hillary HAS to win BOTH Ohio and Texas to even stay in the race" to "Hillary won Texas and Ohio over giant odds and is now the front-runner" -- huh?

Texas is definitely more depressing, because it looks like the people who decided in the last couple of days went heavy for Clinton. That's validation for Clinton's camp for it's strategy of going negative. Unfortunately, the campaign is now going to get ugly, because Obama's going to have to go ugly back. I really, really didn't want this to happen, and it's disappointing to me. One of my favorite aspects of Obama's campaign has been his reluctance to play dirty politics, so depending on how gross things get in the next few weeks, it might seriously temper my enthusiasm for him.


OK, end of partisan grumpiness. Congrats to the Hillary supporters on my list, and let's hope everything stays civil until Pennsylvania. (Seven weeks? Jebus.)

Comments

[talamasca.livejournal.com]

The question is, even if Obama gets the nom while staying positive, will he be able to keep from going negative in the general election? Granted, McCain has himself been subject to very negative attacks (by GWB in 2000, for instance) and may have been disgusted enough to try to avoid using them on his opponent this time around. Or not. And even if McCain tries to avoid going negative, I don't see the mass of the Republican political war machine following his lead. I think it's inevitable that whoever gets the nom will be slammed as much as possible by the Republicans in the general election. Will not fighting back against Republican smears help or hurt Obama? Will Obama seem above the fray, or weak, or something else, if he doesn't respond in kind?

In other words, even if it doesn't happen now, is it not inevitable that Obama's armor is going to get tarnished by election day anyway?

[billyphuz.livejournal.com]

Man, I'm excited -- this is the first time in as long as I can remember that PA will have stumpers and political ads on TV. Whee!

I'll be curious to see Jon Stewart tonight, if only because he'll have whatever retarded fucking phraseymadoo the media latches onto to describe HC's ascension in montage, ie Brian Williams, Lipless Matthews and Wolfy the Blitz intoning "Hillary has grabbed the bull by the horns" or some other idiomatic masturbation.

Obamanation! can i get paid for that?

[ndykman.livejournal.com]

You know what bums me out, is that Clinton and Obama are going to go at it, and it's probably going to get ugly.

You know what I wish. That they'd both agree to reserve plenty of the time to get on McCain now. You've got two smart politicans, let's spend some time softening him up for the general election, probing his weak spots, etc.

As much as I hate negative politics, you have to kick McCain's ass over his sucking up to Bush foreign policies.