Excellent. This is exactly where I was hoping we would be at this point in the game. Last week I was tickled to see the race narrow to a dead-heat, with Obama slightly behind, because I knew that this simply indicated his gaining momentum. Now the next stage is arriving right on time - still in a statistical dead-heat, but with Obama pulling ahead of Clinton within that gap. By next Tues when the election actually arrives, I expect that he will be ahead of her by a gap wider than the MOE. Everything is moving exactly as I had hoped.

So what? Texas doesn't count anyways.
http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stump/archive/2008/02/25/bill-clinton-on-the-tx-caucuses.aspx

If ARG was reputable enough to report with respect to Clinton's Ohio lead (which you did this morning), why is it (presumably) not reputable enough to report Obama's lead in Texas? If I recall, it has him winning there as well.

Just want to understand the difference. TIA.

Ah, that photo of Obama in the cowboy hat more than makes up for the Somali thing. Expect to see Hillary in a full Annie Oakley outfit tomorrow.

which puts BHO ahead in TX for the first time on the Pollster.com average.

this is EXCELLENT NEWS!!! for HILLARY!!

!!!HILLMENTUM™!!!!

Well, let's see exactly what mr. bill said concerning texas and ohio. These are the quotes reported by the ap:

Bill Clinton: Hillary needs Texas, Ohio

BEAUMONT, Texas (AP) — Former President Clinton said Wednesday he believes his wife needs victories in the Texas and Ohio primaries next month to save her presidential candidacy.

"If she wins in Texas and Ohio, I think she'll be the nominee," Clinton told several hundred supporters during a campaign appearance for Hillary Rodham Clinton in a downtown parking lot. "If you don't deliver for her, I don't think she can be."

It was an acknowledgment he repeated earlier in Galveston when he began a daylong Texas tour trying to stop the momentum of Sen. Barack Obama, his wife's rival for the Democratic nomination.

Texas and Ohio hold primaries March 4.

Knowing the clintons and knowing the way they parse words, like when he said that he didn't say anything bad about obama in south carolina, which he didn't. It was in NEW HAMPSHIRE. Word parsing to the extreme.

Mr. Bill did not say that if she loses either or both that she will not be the nominee. He said that he doesn't "think" that she could be the nominee. Well, of course his thoughts could be wrong, so if she loses, he can come out and say that he doesn't think she will be the nominee if she doesn't win puerto rico and this train wreck will go on until June.

Clintonisms at their best.

It is over.

Poor Bill.

Damn...
He even looks good in a cowboy hat:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattwright/400394507/

Wow, these Obama-rising polls are rolling in like waves on a beach.

Hillary has high negatives in most red states.

Barack's numbers seem to do nothing but go up where ever he goes but in red states the effect is especially true since Dems there know that Hillary has no shot what so ever and Barack just might.

Thank God!!!

I don't care who wins.

Don't get me wrong- I still support Obama. But at this point, I just want Senator Clinton's campaign to END.

If this is true, then:

THANK GOD!!!! I MEAN REALLY, THANK YOU GOD!!!!!

Join the Ranch Party Gang

Deep in the Heart of Texas

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjNdJ1beygg

I have said it before folks and I say it again. It boils down to this The more people are exposed to Senator Clinton, the less they like her. The more people are exposed to Senator Obama the more they like him. It is as simple as that. That is why Hillary failed so badly in caucus states where more people had a chance to meet her. The big States on Super Tuesday that she carried were places that she was seen mostly on TV spots, so people were voting more on name recognition more than anything else.

Here is a prime example of what I am talking about. Hillary was very close in the Wisconsin Polls while she stayed in Texas and Ohio. When she spent the last weekend in Wisconsin, and people got exposed to her, she got trounced

The same thing has been taking place in Texas and Ohio. Her leads in the polls were far larger in those state s before she spent any time in them and the more time that she spends in them, the more her poll ratings drop.

She is both the Hillary and the Anti-Hillary all by herself.

People do not like her, and they do like Senator Obama.

When people develop a visceral dislike for a person, they will never be able to vote for that person. That is human nature. She is through.

There is no political remedy for an abiding dislike.

Where's the photo of Michelle in a cowboy hat? She'd still make a darned good-looking rodeo queen!

I wrote to Paul Krugman a while back and tried to explain to him that the people he called "Hillary haters" don't necessarily hate her all that much. They just hate the fact that's she's still in the race, causing a distraction and tearing down the sure nominee and the party. We don't hate Hillary. We just want to slam the door on her candidacy so Obama can get to work winning this thing.

If she doesn't drop out after March 4, I swear I'm gonna donate every dime in my savings AND checking accounts to Obama's campaign. I'm sure the extra $37.82 will put him over the top...

If the Margin of Error is 3.5 points, and Obama's lead is 50-46, does that not, in fact, put said lead outside of the margin of error, and therefore make it meaningfully significant?

Guess I've never thought about the +/- part, and whether that makes a 3.5% MOE an actual MOE of 7 points for assessing whether a lead is "real" or not.

My first instinct, though, is that Eric was spinning this latest setback for Hillary Clinton the way that the weatherman justifies having a 9 degree window for his "4 degree guarantee".

Listen My Fellow Obama Supporters:

For full disclosure I am passionately supporting Obama- he is the most (and the first) exciting candidate since Bobby.

I have a request bordering on a demand: Stop trashing Hillary AND her supporters, especially with Nader in the race. If you are not motivated for the sake of being classy and humble in victory, then DO IT FOR OBAMA'S GENERAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN.

If we continue angering Hillary's supporters, and additionally do not garner Hillary's very strong support, many of them will not come out to votein November. While I think that should Hillary beat Obama to become the candidate, she would need Obama's supporters more than Obama will need her supporters for the General Election, I want to smart.

Which one of you wants to take the chance that sufficiently angering and humiliating Hillary's supporters will not trigger some of them into not voting for Obama in November? Try to look at it like this: every snipe toward Hillary or her supporters is a potential lost vote! (Gut check time- look at the Florida 2000 numbers's- Gore lost by

So please, let us all be conscious of the implications every time we open our mouths for Obama.
Thank You- now let's go get Texas and Ohio!

TEXAS DOESN'T COUNT. TEXAS DOESN'T COUNT.

One thing to factor into Ohio,,,,,,, there is a deep resevoir of good will for the Clintons for the support over the years they gave to Ted Strickland in his struggles to gain, retain and regain his House seat against some really over the edge right wing Republican smears and candidates. Likewise for their help,,,,, not so much needed after two terms of Bob Taft as Gov and voter suppression ace Ken Blackwell as Secy of State,,, in his win the the Governors race against the self same Blackwell, now a DC lobbist I hear.

That notwithstanding, if Obama can work Ohio as well as he has worked other primaries, he'll do well. There are four distinct regions in Ohio
which increases the challenge, but with the ground operation he puts in place,,,, which sounds like the way the late Mayor Daley of Chicago did it,,,,, the hard work will save the day.

GOBAMA 08

Finally, a real candidate.

How come the Messiah won't answer these questions? How come all you cultists won't even consider them, yet insist on calling yourselves 'progressives'. Yeah, right . . .

Nader, to Obama:

"Above all, explain why you don't come down hard on the economic crimes against minorities in city ghettos: payday loans, predatory lending, rent-to-own rackets, landlord abuses, lead contamination, asbestos," Nader said.

"There's an unseemly silence by you, Barack -- a community organizer in poor areas in Chicago many years ago -- on this issue," he said.

I had been an ardent Clinton supporter up to a point.
That point was when I heard Obama's speech to the DNC. That, and the speachless look on Mark Shields face when the camera came back to him in the Newshour booth.
Obama is a kairos man in a kairos moment,,,,,, that sort of thing comes by once in a generation,, once in a lifetime. It is either seized, or lost, never to return again. Think RFK. The Clinton campaign thinks in kronos terms, and has no idea what it's up against,,,,, resistance is futile.
Michelle is coming to speak on campus Wednesday, can hardly wait.
GOBAMA '08

I really do not care that Ralph Nader is running again, and I have never cared that he has run in the past. I figure that anyone who actually cast their vote for him, and thought that he was even going to carry a single state, is not the type of thinker who was going to make a more rational voting choice, absent the fact of not having Ralph to vote for. They would have found some other fringe loon to piss away their vote on just so that they could go around annoying the hell out of rational majority of people with their constant Holier than Thou declarations. Ralph is a perfect fly paper for that sorry lot. Let them go. They were never going to vote for Gore, or Kerry, or Obama. That daft lot alway find some feckless fool to follow.

She's all done. Hillary is toast. With her finally out of the way, this campaign can finally begin.

I hope once Hillary drops out, people will take the time to look at Obama's record, and realize he is the TRUE progressive.

In any case, Obama will have little trouble defeating a McCain no conservative will vote for.

I live in San Antonio, and even today Huckleberry is on the airwaves, saying he's going all the way to the convention.

With any luck, Texas could go Blue at this rate.

I understand what you're saying. There are some people out there that will never, ever, change their ways, and will always be nasty towards those they disagree with. Bu not all people are like that. I've known some genuinely religious conservative types who are hard-core Republicans - and they're really nice people too. When I set aside my attack mode, and just listen to what they have to say, the guard goes down. They talk about their concerns, fears, beliefs from a heartfelt place. I don't usually end up in agreement, but I get a deeper understanding for what motivates them... even a little compassion. In that setting, if they're open to a conversation about it, we can talk calmly about other ways of seeing things. (Usually, the Socratic method works best. Keep asking questions instead of making accusations or bold assertions. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.) In the end, there are many people I've known who have political positions in opposition to mine, and we can talk about it in a respectful way... and sometimes even end up being friends. It does happen... sometimes.

"Which, btw, merges very well with one of my biggest criticisms of Obama: That is, his almost disdainful, contemptuous remarks on disunity, on quarreling and partisan bickering and confrontation and fighting. I mean, come on. Quarreling and partisan confrontation got him a seat in the front of the bus, for god’s sake! It got him a seat at the drugstore counter; it got him a drink out of a white’s only water fountain.
And now to hear it spoken of in such a derisive manner . . . like it was all pointless and artless and unnecessary. Well, I beg to differ, it was damn necessary. And it isn’t over, and all those fascists aren’t going anywhere just because Obama is coming to town."

miki, you and I must live in a different country. We were raised with a much different set of lessons to be drawn from the civil rights era. You think the sit-ins and strikes and marches were about petty divisions and partisanship? And you think we're in the same place now, as a nation, that we were in the sixties? It's 2008. It's not the sixties. And Ralph Nader is not Rosa, Martin, Malcolm, or half the measure of any of the other giants of that era. You come into this discussion talking about how annoyed you are with Obama's supporters, and how naive we are, and how foolishly we're being led around by the nose. That's productive.

Maybe you're right about all of it. And maybe you can make your points so clearly to the people to whom you reach out that Ralph Nader will generate the same enthusiasm that Obama has done. Maybe Ralph will have a network of a million donors and thousands of grassroots volunteers in just a little while. Nader has a lot of ideas and a lot of experience, so maybe he'll be able to "speak truth to power" as the tired cliche goes, along the road to 1600 Penn. I'm sure he'll be able to enlighten us as to the folly of our ways. Or maybe he'll be a footnote in the history of yet another campaign.

Somebody asked me, as an Obama supporter, how I felt about Nader getting in the race on Sunday. I'll tell you what I told them: I welcome it. Barack Obama is about to make history. His supporters are going to help him do it. And we're going to enjoy watching a lot of smug people eat their words over the next, ohhh... 8 years. And when my grandchildren ask me to look back on this time in American history, I'm going to say "Barack Obama made history. He made history out of Hillary Clinton. Then he made history out of John McCain and Ralph Nader."