Poll: Hillary Back In National Tie With Obama; 3 A.M. Ad Might Have Helped
Sen. Hillary Clinton's primary victories in Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island have revived her near-dead campaign and brought her into a statistical dead heat with Sen. Barack Obama among registered Democrats and Democratic leaners, according to a new national NEWSWEEK Poll...Obama is the favored nominee among 45 percent of Democrats, compared with 44 percent for Clinton, according to the poll, which was based on telephone interviews with 1,215 registered voters March 5-6.
The controversial 3 A.M. ad may have helped, Newsweek sez, but the poll also suggests that it's unclear how much the "commander in chief threshold" that Hillary keeps talking about will matter in the long run...
[The poll] suggested that Clinton's ominous "3 a.m. phone call" ad benefited her campaign. Almost half (45 percent) of Democrats said they would trust Clinton to answer the red phone in the wee hours, while only a third felt that way about Obama. Similarly, on the issue of national security, almost half (47 percent) of the Democratic base said that they trust Clinton to protect the country; only a third feel the same about Obama.But it's not clear how much these sentiments will matter at the ballot box: just 4 percent of Democrats overall, and 4 percent of Clinton's supporters, name terrorism as their top issue.
And the poll also contains a key stat for Obama: She is still far more polarizing than he. Forty percent of registered voters view her unfavorably, while 35% have that view of McCain and only 28 percent view Obama unfavorably.
McCain supports torture, and........
Hillary has been running around endorsing John McCain. He has said that he is going to have the same foreign and domestic policies as George W. Bush. Yet Hillary has endorsed him, over Senator Obama. That makes Hillary just another traitor to the party. She is just the same as Joe Lieberman, and should be given the same treatment. She should be driven out of the party. She is not a loyal Democrat, any more than Joe Lieberman was.
March 8, 2008 10:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
THIS IS EXCELLENT NEWS!! FOR HILLARY!!!
March 8, 2008 11:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ok, this is a hilarious take on the red phone ad.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-david/on-the-red-phone_b_90338.html
Incidentally, I agree with the conclusion as well. If anyone should not be answering that phone, its clinton. Too funny.
March 8, 2008 11:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
No, I think you did it, Greg:
It's all Clinton talking points, all the time.
"Wolfson alleges Obama ... "
12 times a day
March 8, 2008 11:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes...it must be the 3am ad. Couldn't be all the other things like seeing Obama unable to win larger elections, seeing Hillary win them, seeing Obama stutter and complain about 8 questions, hearing about the Rezko trial and Obama's home purchase, etc. Must be because people are sheep and are responding to an ad that ran in two states. If only they were as smart and as able to master their fear as you are!
March 8, 2008 11:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hillary wouldn't know what to do at 3 am because the polling data wouldn't be in yet.
March 8, 2008 11:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
Fear works. Rove has shown us that over and over again. Hillary is certainly in touch with her inner neo-con.
But the bigger point is that this is a strategy that tears down Obama when Hillary tries to say that she and McCain are both experienced, and that won't work for Hillary if she does manage to get the nomination. Imagine a commercial with images alternating between Hillary's "experience" years as First Lady, lots of flowers and dinners and fancy dresses, etc., and images of McCain in uniform, images of him looking somber in meetings with foreign leaders, etc. Devastating.
And this:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/182303.php
March 8, 2008 11:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
So... lets assume that national tie translates into a split of the delagates. That would make her 150 delagates behind at the end, right? I can live with that.
March 8, 2008 11:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, but according to CNN (the Clintons' News Network), that means its a tie. Right now its a virtual tie. John king went through a bunch of variations on the remaining contests and obama came out about 100 or more delegates up each time. What did he say? Oh, its a tie, nobody wins so its up to the supers to decide. WTF. And the clintons complain that the media is biased??????
March 8, 2008 11:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Oh, but according to CNN (the Clintons' News Network), that means its a tie. Right now its a virtual tie. John king went through a bunch of variations on the remaining contests and obama came out about 100 or more delegates up each time. What did he say? Oh, its a tie, nobody wins so its up to the supers to decide. WTF. And the clintons complain that the media is biased??????"
WTF is right.
Clinton News Network = All Clinton talking points, all the time.
Greg too.
March 8, 2008 12:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
change isnt easy nor does it come quickly...voters in the remaining states and party elders have a critical choice to make in the coming weeks....support a style of frear/smear and hate as hrc/bush/cheney/rove have used successfully and mr king was kind enough to extend their talking points recently...or decide that our leaders need to be bark of a different tree....perhaps hrc can use king for their phone bank work in future contests....
ABC IN 2008=anybody but clinton
campaign like a bush/talk tough like bush/vote in senate like bush...very little difference between bush/king/clinton...regardless of future clinton spin....where are the ethical journalists?
March 8, 2008 11:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
If she should slime her way to the nomination, let's draft Gore as a third party candidate with Obama as his VP. He can promise to run for 1 term. Americans are so sick of both parties, a strong third party ticket might get an amazing number of votes.
March 8, 2008 11:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
It would be nice to see the latest polls finally reflected in the Pollster graph.
Somehow, it's not going to be so very impressive to look at Obama's arc anymore when the last part of it is going to be a dramatic downturn.
March 8, 2008 11:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Good thing a Pollster arc doesn't win an election. Delegates do.
And the curve on that keeps going up and up.
March 8, 2008 11:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
Let's see what the superdelegates think come June if Obama's arc goes down then flattens out, shall we?
Superdelegates are going to care about momentum and the ability of a candidate to keep on his game when the going gets tough.
Because, you see, from June to November it's going to be tough.
March 8, 2008 11:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
The polls are reacting to the current media hyperventilation over every HRC conference call. Even TPM, the one place I used to trust to give me the whole story, has gone insane with this. As soon as the WY and MS results come in, they'll swing to far to Obama, then hopefully they'll come back to an useful mean and I can start not having to double check everything TPM says the way I feel I have to with other media.
I miss TPM.
March 8, 2008 12:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nobody's going to much care about the results in WY or MS -- they're pretty much granted to Obama by all parties, and are small potatoes in their own right.
Really, if 11 wins in a row can't seal the deal for Obama, who's going to give one about piddly WY and MS?
March 8, 2008 12:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
shorter frankly0: states that don't vote for Hillary don't count.
i can see the general election now: Hillary and her faithful sock puppet frankly0 up on an overturned fruit box, screaming at a crowd "YOU DON'T MATTER! YOU DON'T MATTER!" as they file in to vote for John McCain.
March 8, 2008 12:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Shorter blackstar:
I have no answer to the point that you actually made, so I will go off on a talking point that has similar words in it. My skill is typing, not thinking!
March 8, 2008 1:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
you made a point? when?! this unprecedented event must be given a full front-page review by TPM.
March 8, 2008 1:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Shorter version of this story:
Negativity works. Who'd a thunk?
March 8, 2008 11:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
Isn't that what people have been complaining about forever over Obama's chosen approach to politics: that he acts as if it's all about inspiring "hope" and negotiation and bipartisanship and singing Kumbayah, when in fact it requires somebody who can fight?
Let's see Obama find a way to "hope" himself out of his current mess. Can't he compose an inspiring speech that will change all this around? Kinda funny how you don't hear so much about all that anymore, isn't it, since it was supposed to be a one-size-fit-all solution to every political problem.
March 8, 2008 1:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hillary keeps touting her foreign policy experience but we all know its baloney. First CNN took a look at her claims then the Chicago tribune(those links were already posted) and found them to be over stretched, now the AP is jumping into the chorus...
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CLINTONS_EXPERIENCE?SITE=NEYOR&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
If the MSM keeps digging and finding HRC to be padding her resume, she will soon start claiming the MSM is attacking her again...
March 8, 2008 11:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
Don't worry, Obama supporters. Hillary is currently engaging in a little thing called OVERREACH. The swing against her is already starting to gain momentum.
Because here's the thing - when you claim that you cross the "threshold" to be CIC, people are going to start investigating that claim.
And when it turns out that you "brokered negotiations in regards to the hostage crisis in Kosovo" with SHERYL CROW and SINBAD, you turn into a JOKE.
This is Hillary Clinton's "I invented the internet" moment. She has set herself up for a fall, and it's coming.
I only hope SINBAD will be there to catch her.
March 8, 2008 11:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
The problem is that she has been engaging in overreach for over a year and it has never caught up with her. She is the candidate of the right-wing corporate media and corporate america and they want her to win baaaaaddddd. It really is pathetic, and then she claims media bias????? Absurd.
There really is little difference between her drinking buddy mccain and her. Once again america is going to be f*cked.
March 8, 2008 12:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
NEWSFLASH: CHICAGO TRIBUNE FINDS HILLARY'S CLAIMS OF FOREIGN POLICY EXPERIENCE TO BE COMPLETE BULLSHIT.
so where's our fucking election news update? is that story not relevant? is it not MORE relevant than 50 goddamn stories about Samantha Power's "monster" comment? has TPM become as vapid as the big networks it mocks all the time?
March 8, 2008 11:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
Translation:
When things are going badly for Obama, balance at TPM is very important.
This is the corrollary to the other point:
When things are going badly for Clinton, TPM needs to devote all of its pixels to reporting those stories.
Don't worry guy, TPM could hardly be more favorable to your guy as it is. Look at the antics of Josh Marshall over the last number of months.
The fish rots at the head.
March 8, 2008 11:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
no, dolt. i want the reporters at TPM to do the kind of journalism i expect when i visit the site that did such a great job on the Attorney General firings. i want them to report ALL of the news, with insightful analysis, rather than just giving us Clinton (or Obama) talking points verbatim like they were slinging us cheap soup at a homeless kitchen.
i want REALITY and GOOD REPORTING; i just happen to believe these things are in my candidate's favour.
and have you even been reading what Josh Marshall has been saying? he's a SELF-PROFESSED Hillary supporter. this is fact, not opinion. i disagree with him, but respect his right to hold them (it is his site, after all). maybe if Sargent were as forthright with his own preferences he wouldn't take so much shit in the comments sections.
March 8, 2008 12:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
No, Marshall said that he is an obama supporter, not a clinton supporter.
March 8, 2008 1:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
The girl in HRC's 3:00am ad is now almost 18 and plans to vote for Obama.
Here's the link:
http://www.king5.com/topstories/stories/NW_030708WAB_hillary_ad_KC.328ab14f.html
This is just too funny.
March 8, 2008 11:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
It seems now that the MSM is looking at HRC claims into her foreign policy experience. The AP is now jumping into the fray
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CLINTONS_EXPERIENCE?SITE=NEYOR&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
She is obviously padding her resume.
March 8, 2008 11:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is kinda funny. Seems one of the kids in that 3:00 am ad is now 17 and was a precinct captain for Obama in WA. http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/3/8/03755/44140/948/471959
March 8, 2008 11:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
McCain has now endorsed TORTURE, and Hillary has endorsed McCain over Obama.
McCain promises to continue all of George W. Bush's foreign and domestic policies, and Hillary has endorsed John McCain over Senator Obama.
Joe Lieberman supports both George W. Bush and John McCain, and Hillary has endorsed John McCain over Senator Obama.
That makes Hillary a traitor to the Democratic Party, and just another Joe Lieberman. If you would not vote for Joe Lieberman, then how can you possible vote for Hillary Clinton. She keeps on endorsing the Republican Senator from Arizona, just like she did Barry Goldwater. She is not a Democrat.
March 8, 2008 11:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
I keep coming back to the broader issues. It's not just about Obama. It's about the direction of the Democratic Party. Is it still just a tired, valueless, amoral, incompetent version of the Republican Party or does it stand for something else? Does it have any intention of taking the country in a different direction? If not, why vote for it?
March 8, 2008 11:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Obama is the favored nominee among 45 percent of Democrats, compared with 44 percent for Clinton, according to the poll, which was based on telephone interviews with 1,215 registered voters March 5-6.
So after her big wins on Tuesday (Correction with Texas, that now falls in Obama's camp thank you very much) she's tied him in a poll with Democrats?
Since he's outgaining her HUGE with Independents (75 - 20 or something ridiculous like that) doesn't that still mean he's imminentely more electable?
Here's the polls that matter:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/us/general_election_mccain_vs_obama-225.html
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/us/general_election_mccain_vs_clinton-224.html
Please note that I won't be a total partisan and will point to the fact that Hillary's trendline with McCain is headed in the right direction.
The main point that I see Hillary fans overlooking time and time and time again (including Howard Wolfson on Bill Mahr last night) is that there are more important things than just the Presidential election going on. Super-Delegates HAVE to ask themselves who is going to keep the Democratic majority in the House and Senate.
Hillary's experience: Bill lost Dem majorities in his terms in office. Hillary has shown little inclination to campaign for others so far this term and even less to help them fund-raise.
Obama's HopePAC has given funds to many down-ticket Democrats, he's taken time off of the Presidential campaign to help down-ticket Democrats.
Perhaps Hillary will turn out to be a good 'rally-the-troops' leader that will help get fellow Democrats elected in the House and Senate. Thus far, it's been all about her all of the time.
Pathetic.
March 8, 2008 11:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
From today's Telegraph in the UK:
"Hillary Clinton had no direct role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland and is a "wee bit silly" for exaggerating the part she played, according to Lord Trimble of Lisnagarvey, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and former First Minister of the province.
"I don’t know there was much she did apart from accompanying Bill [Clinton] going around," he said. Her recent statements about being deeply involved were merely "the sort of thing people put in their canvassing leaflets" during elections. "She visited when things were happening, saw what was going on, she can certainly say it was part of her experience. I don’t want to rain on the thing for her but being a cheerleader for something is slightly different from being a principal player."
Mrs Clinton has made Northern Ireland key to her claims of having extensive foreign policy experience, which helped her defeat Barack Obama in Ohio and Texas on Tuesday after she presented herself as being ready to tackle foreign policy crises at 3am.
"I helped to bring peace to Northern Ireland," she told CNN on Wednesday. But negotiators from the parties that helped broker the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 told The Daily Telegraph that her role was peripheral and that she played no part in the gruelling political talks over the years.
Lord Trimble shared the Nobel Peace Prize with John Hume, leader of the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party, in 1998. Conall McDevitt, an SDLP negotiator and aide to Mr Hume during the talks, said: "There would have been no contact with her either in person or on the phone. I was with Hume regularly during calls in the months leading up to the Good Friday Agreement when he was taking calls from the White House and they were invariably coming from the president."
Here's the link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/08/wuspols108.xml
March 8, 2008 11:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
BREAKING: Obama says he wouldn't be Clinton VP!
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/03/obama-you-wont.html
Props to Barack for shooting down Hillieberman's ingenuous and creepy invitation to ride in the back of McClinton's Sleazeball Express.
March 8, 2008 11:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
Its funny all these reports about Hillary stat padding her resume (sorry for the game talk but yeah) and yet the MSM is just talking about polls and monster talk and FL/MI.
Obama needs to take the high road and every time Hillary does another baseless attack just call her silly. At the same time he needs to attack her bogus claims of experience which is just tea and cake.
March 8, 2008 11:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
NEWSFLASH: CLINTON OPPOSES NEW FLORIDA VOTE OR MICHIGAN CAUCUS, REITERATES THAT CAUCUSES "DON'T COUNT":
http://ruralvotes.com/thefield/?p=857#comments
“I would not accept a caucus. I think that would be a great disservice to the 2 million people who turned out and voted. I think that they want their votes counted."
-Hillary Clinton
(if the EC crew at TPM refuses to actually do its job, i'm prepared to keep posting these all day)
March 8, 2008 11:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
"(if the EC crew at TPM refuses to actually do its job, i'm prepared to keep posting these all day)"
lol..the spirit of volunteerism is EXCELLENT NEWS!!! FOR HILLARY!!!
March 8, 2008 11:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Looks like you'll be posting it all day.
There is no way that TPM will report anything but "According to Wolfson..." stories.
Watch Obama win Wyoming with a 8 - 4 split of delegates, and then watch TPM spin it as a better than expected performance for Hillary, rather than the fact that it means that Obama would've won by at least 64.01% of the vote.
Reading some of the MSM coverage, however, the pendulum is swinging back (I believe somebody else coined it "Blowback"). Now many journalists are questioning this "experience" that she has, and she and her staff are failing poorly.
She's being called out on her participation in Ireland, Kosovo, China. And that's without the White House records of what she really did during the Administration.
In the immortal words of idiotic: LYING ON YOUR RESUME IS EXCELLENT NEWS FOR HILLARY!
March 8, 2008 11:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
I know it is Sat but it looks like ya’ll (ieGreg) could find something nittygrittier than a Newsweek poll to base a post on. The lede in the Newsweek article is:
Sen. Hillary Clinton's primary victories in Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island have revived her near-dead campaign and brought her into a statistical dead heat with Sen. Barack Obama among registered Democrats and Democratic leaners, according to a new national NEWSWEEK Poll.
Last week, in the first graf of their poll piece, they informed us that:
The poll also found that no clear leader has emerged for the Democrats, as Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton remain locked in a statistical dead heat for their party's nomination. And as the candidate running hardest on a platform of "change," Obama enjoys only a small margin as the candidate Democrats view as likely to effect that change.
No news is NOT good news, kemosabe. And when the lede is based on Dems and “Dem LEANERS”, from a telephone survey of 1215 regestered voters, ya gotta wonder if there aren’t better polls to snatch a weekend post from.
BTW I appreciate the effort and thought that goes into this site; look forward to THM reopening. And like the guy said when he was told that the poker game he was steadily losing in was crooked - I know, I know what’s going on - but it’s the only game in town.
March 8, 2008 11:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
NEWSFLASH: OBAMA GAINS 4 PLEDGED DELEGATES, HILLARY LOSES 4 IN CALIFORNIA FINAL RESULTS:
http://calitics.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=5248
final numbers from California are 203 for Hillary Clinton and 167 for Barack Obama. most of the major news outlets aren't using the revised numbers in their estimates, as of today.
March 8, 2008 12:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
"NEWSFLASH: OBAMA GAINS 4 PLEDGED DELEGATES, HILLARY LOSES 4 IN CALIFORNIA FINAL RESULTS:"
I'm sure Clinton News Network will take its sweet time to update its delegate counts. Like about four months.
March 8, 2008 12:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
SINBAD!
People, seriously.
She went to Kosovo with SINBAD!
Maybe he was prepping for his role in "First Kid"?
March 8, 2008 12:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hillary/McCain 2008:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZsYWiywdCA
March 8, 2008 12:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
US senators are not allowed to answer the red phone
Navy pilots do not get to answer the red phone
First ladies do not answer the red phone
State senators do not answer the red phone
POW's do not answer the red phone
U of C professors do not answer the red phone
None of these candidates has any experiences answering the red phone at 3AM. Get it?
March 8, 2008 12:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Besides, when the phone rings the politician occupying the White House is probably out reading a book about goats to the second grade.
March 8, 2008 1:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Frankly0, HRC is losing because she can't stay focused on what counts- the delegates. She has too much fun bouncing of the walls screaming at people who oppose her.
What counts with WY and MS is a gain of another 10 or more delegates, fresh off her losing TX and losing 4 in CA. Eventually, the media will get tired of bashing Obama about nothing and turn on Clinton. Hopefully this time they'll actually go after something of substance, like her fluffly resume, her Lieberman qualities and her snotty devisiveness.
March 8, 2008 1:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
She's crossed the threshold. An experienced military policy insider. As in, she can legitimately claim to have had the CinC inside 'er.
March 8, 2008 1:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
So Monica is more qualified than Barack or McC? Or did he give Bush more than a hug?
March 8, 2008 2:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
What's with national polls? We just had the best national poll there is. It's called "THE ELECTION", where 40 states have voted already.
Maybe they can take a poll and see if Reagan still leads Mondale, or if Iran-Contra gave Mondale a bump.
March 8, 2008 8:33 PM | Reply | Permalink