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]

Obama's taken at least some tentative steps toward attacking Clinton, such as at that debate where she mentioned Rezko and he then responded with her lawyering for Walmart. But there's still a perception of him as being the positive candidate, as not having slung any real mud. That perception can't last long, though, if he's forced to take the kid gloves off in the general election.

[clafount.livejournal.com]

I'm not so sure that's true. McCain has plenty of spots to attack him legitimately, that won't look like "playing dirty." I mean seriously, 100 years in Iraq?

The attacks about NAFTA and her health care plan seemed like "real mud" but not dirty tricks. I don't see why he can't keep that up in the future.

I think it's one thing to attack another dem and another to attack a republican too. I hope his supporters aren't quite so "idealistic" that they want him to be all "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" when it comes to the general election.