Although Rasmussen should be taken with a grain of salt, it definitely puts a dent in Hillary's electoral college electability argument, especially since she relies also on Florida, which has not gone blue in a while.

I'd love to hear again how this nasty and drawn out race is good for the party.

Of course he's getting killed in Arkansas. The Clintons are still pretty popular there, so it must be tough for them to see this fight. Just like it is for all of us.

But, it's obviously not going to end anytime soon, so we have to just hope that Dems try to stay as civil as possible through to the end. Otherwise, you'll see these kinds of numbers -- huge swings between Clinton and Obama against McCain -- in every state in the union.

Wow, wait. You mean in a conservative southern state that would only even consider voting for Hillary because she used to live there prefers the Republican to Obama?!

Knock me over with a feather.

I think (read: hope) that the reason McCain is suddenly surging is because no one is aiming their fire at him. He's out of the country, he hasn't done anything that made his numbers go up. Instead, the Dems are doing everything in their power to make their numbers go down. Hopefully, when the general starts (though who knows when that will be), and we start attacking McCain instead of, ya know, each other, the numbers will look better.

But I'm not holding my breath for Arkansas...

"McCain does even better against Barack Obama, trouncing him 59%-30%, with Obama having a 35%-62% favorable rating."

I guess they do not like God damn America in Arkansas.

Who da thunk it?

THIS IS EXCELLENT NEWS!!! FOR OBAMA!!!

This poll is a disaster for Hillary. It could be an outlier just as any single poll can be an outlier, but Rasmussen has test polled the general in Arkansas a couple times before with Hillary winning big against any and all Rethugs. And it made perfect sense because Arkansas is basically a home state for Hillary (who has the unusual benefit of having both New York and Arkansas and arguably also Illinois as "home" states).

That there now is a trend against Hillary to the point that she now loses a virtual home state to McCain really hurts her badly since it means there now is NO state that clearly only she can win that Obama cannot.

Oh, and Obama doing badly in Arkansas, and worse than Hillary, is meaningless. It's an inelastically conservative state that we can't win the state without an Arkansan on the ticket, as even Gore who had been a Senator from neighboring Tennessee proved. And now even former Arkansan Hillary may have lost the benefit of having been an Arkansan.

If other polling corroborates this Rasmussen poll on Arkansas, undecided superdelegates will NOT misread it like some idiot Hillary supporters commenting here are doing. They will recognize this polling only as a reason NOT to choose Hillary over Obama.

Arkansas = stupid is as stupid does

Blah, blah. It's not November yet. Just wait until Hillary is out of the picture and Obama's campaign really begins.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkVM-jGNn04

I guess everyone was right,

Hillary Clinton staying in the race is bringing energy to, keeping attention on, the Democratic race and is a a boon to the party.

The big (mainstream)liberal bloggers are really starting to lose their credibility this primary.
I find myself increasing dissatisfied them. This came to a head yesterday when Josh, Kevin, and Atrios all failed to post about the Washington Post's new article about Hillary Clinton's big Bosnia lie and the newly revealed video. I find myself increasing relying on these reader posts and not the main posts at TPM for scoop on the election. Josh's focus on Mark Penn's incompetance is starting to feel like a form of avoidance; a way a seeming fair WITHOUT actually focusing on what is now becoming a laundry list of Clinont campaing lies and exagerations.

Is anyone else feeling the same way?

Sincerely,

100 REASONS NOT TO VOTE FOR HILLARY CLINTON

Obama presidency will be game changing in a global perspective. You might think I am a romantic or Obama mania has arrested my faculties but my argument is supported by a paradigm shift in the generational and conventional thinking. This paradigm shift is lost on many of the conventional commentators in the US. Global innovation and internet is altering the way white race was and is perceived in the world. Capital, West’ main growth driver, now has no boundaries and its deployment is solely based on the highest return. Hence it is fleeing the US economy in a hurry.

As we speak, a bankrupt economy and a shift in capital deployment coupled with the choke of Extreme Right on American politics are rendering itself in FEAR. Fear which is driving the working class whites in the arms of extreme right and moving them exactly opposite to globalization. Fear that drove Americans to elect Bush twice could again determine their next choice. Fear, watched live for the past eight years, if elected again has the potential to create havoc in global economic and social balance.

Obama presidency will be FEARLESS.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Match up polls in March are a joke. A couple of weeks ago, Hillary was ahead in AR. 2 weeks from now, she could be back ahead or further behind. 4 weeks from now, it could flip again. People, we have not even nominated a Dem. The GE campaign has not even begun. The election is 8 months away. 8 months ago, Rudy Guiliani and Hillary Clinton were trouncing everyone and McCain was thought to be dead in the water. And at this time in 2004, Kerry was ahead of Bush in the match up polls. Pay no attention to these polls.

I call on TPM not to publish any more match up polls until summer.

kens dad--while I'm convinced the majority of HRC supporters in the world are perfectly sane people, the swath on this site tends not to be. It is nice to have you here. It can't be easy, and I appreciate your good-nature.

Al Gore lost Arkansas to George Bush 46 - 51; John Kerry lost it 44 to 54. My hunch is that if Obama were to get the nomination, he might be able to recover 10 to 15%, making his loss of AR in the general election roughly equal to Gore's in 2000 and Kerry's in 2004. So who cares? Except for favorite sons (and maybe daughters), in presidential politics Arkansas is a red state.

Gore and Kerry didn't lose to Bush because they lost Arkansas, and Bill Clinton didn't win against Bush Sr. and Dole because he won Arkansas. Gore "lost" (note the scare quotes) because he lost his home state of Tennessee and such winnable states as New Hampshire. Kerry lost because, well, he was kind of a loser.

In 1996, Clinton beat Dole 379 electoral votes to 159. That means that had he lost (instead of won) AR (6), LA (9), TN (11), KY (8), OH (21) and PA (23), and FL (25), he still would have won the presidency with 6 electoral votes to spare!

I'm not saying that Obama can win without at least one of those last three big states. What I am saying is that we should look to states like Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, and Virginia for the difference in this election. Arkansas has no place at all in the Democrat's game plan, not even (I suspect) if Hillary Clinton is the nominee.

Sorry, Arkansas, land of my fathers and source of fond memories.

Obama can start repeating Kristof's Iraq math: $5000 a second, $50,000 for a family of five.

And as everyone knows, "As goes Arkansas shitkickers, so goes the nation".

News flash - black man losing to white man in Arkansas. Who'd a thunk it...

Education does not have to be schooling, informative would have been a better word. Anyone on this site is just that. I suspect also that anyone who is informed/educated on John McCain would never prefer him to either democratic candidate. He is a putz.

Obama wrote a book about his drug use as a teen.
H.R. Clinton was a republican as a teen because she grew up in a republican household.

And it does look like she exaggerated the Bosnia trip. It's not really important though.