Good grief, Eric. The RCP average in the tracking polls show him 10.1 points ahead of Senator Clinton.

I expect a small shrink in his lead in the next few days.

But patterns have shown that any progress Senator Clinton makes is quickly lost in a matter of days.

This too will pass.

I think the truth is that, nationally, Obama is polling 10% better than Clinton on a regular basis. I think that's the reality.
I also read a fantastic article today that discussed how different things would be if certain states (such as California) had voted later than Super Tuesday. The concensus was that Obama would likely have won California and other states.

That seems to fit well with current polling that shows Barack Obama performing better than Hillary Clinton against John McCain in most traditionally Democratic strongholds.

Well, d'oh.

Clinton will get a little boost from the election, just like she got a little boost from the clusterfuck jokingly referred to as a debate last week. And then Obama will bounce right on back up. Like he's done every time there's some kerfuffle. Every. Single. Time.

Answer to 'dembillc' and pre-emptive strike on the inevitable 'gotalife' post, quoted from www.balloonjuice,com: "If Barack is such a bad candidate, and he is so unelectable, and it is such a bad idea to have him as the Democratic nominee, why can’t Hillary beat him?

"Why is she behind him in every conceivable metric? Why is she behind in pledged delegates? Why is she behind in the popular vote (and don’t insult my intelligence by trying to pass that sheer nonsense the morons at certain pro-Clinton blogs are lapping up)? Why are super delegates flocking to Obama, while Hillary has picked up only a handful in the past few months. Why has she won fewer states? Why is she trumpeting her narrow delegate pickup in PA, when it is less than the number of net delegates Obama picked up in a variety of other states? Why is she behind in fund raising? Why was she unable to turn her double digit lead a year ago into any actual primary wins?

"Why, with her starting financial advantage and name recognition, was she held to a tie on Super Tuesday?

"Why to those questions and a hundred more like them. If your candidate is so much better, why is Obama kicking her ass?

"Why?"

Not very long ago, TPM pointed out that there was a consistent pattern of Senator Obama's Gallup
margin shrinking during mid weeks. Remember whent they made a big point out of that, guys?

So, why this week, when it holds to pattern, is
TPM going out of it's way to pretend that something
new has just happened. They are the ones who told us that it happens every week.

For the record: Obama is at 49%. Hillary would kill to have that number at this stage of the contest.

In fact Hillary would be willing to promise to
"Obliterate" for to reach 49%. It will never happen
because Sixty percent of the nation say they do not trust her. Hillary can never win support from all those people who do not trust her.

Awesome! 44 beats 49 in bizarro Clinton world!

A Political Wire reader runs the math and notes that before the Pennsylvania, Sen. Hillary Clinton needed to get at least 63% of the vote in the remaining states to have a chance to win more delegates than Sen. Barack Obama.

Clinton now needs 296 of the remaining 435 delegates up for grabs (or approximately 68% of the vote.) In contrast, Obama needs 140 of the remaining 435 to have the majority (or about 32% of the vote.)

Therefore, despite her win in the Keystone State, the results have in fact made it less likely Clinton can win.

Considering that most polls predict Obama should win North Carolina by a healthy margin and both campaigns think Indiana will be close, the chances of a Clinton victory are actually lower than ever.

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/politicalinsider/2008/04/pennsylvania-win-makes-clinton.html

Hey,
Obama is taking money from big Pharma too.

I just gave him $25 - $300 in all this year - and I'm a sales rep for a top 20 pharma company. And Barry (us big pharma fatcats call him Barry) promised me a night in the Lincoln bedroom in return.

Yeah, yeah, yeah - another hour, another poll. As Hoost said, only in Clintonworld is 49 Obama to 44 Clinton a victory - for Clinton.

I'm still waiting for a Greg/Eric post about Obama's superdelegate pickup today. But because I'll be waiting a hell of a long time, I'll repeat what was posted on reader blogs and other threads: he picked up Oregon Rep. David Wu, one of Oregon's 12 Democratic superdelegates.

So that's her big post-PA bounce?

Strange how the sound of a "tide turning" so closely resembles that of a toilet flushing.

Clintonian spin:

The joke that keeps on giving.

Hillary's now within 5 points!
Quick, call Lanny Davis to give us another HuffPo canard! Faux Noise needs a story!

What is this silliness about who's leading in "the popular vote"? That figure could not be more meaningless. Even if you are able to count all caucus votes -- which, coincidentally enough largely went for Obama -- those states' voters' choices aren't reflected commensurately in the popular vote.

For example, Washington has a larger population than Tennessee and has more delegates -- 97 vs. 85 -- and presumably thus should carry more weight in any mythical "popular vote" contest. And, Obama had three times the margin of victory in Washington (68-31 vs. 54-41) than Clinton had in Tennessee. But, because Washington chose to operate by caucus and Tennessee by primary, Clinton's 82,000 vote margin in such a "contest" carries seven times the weight of his 11,600 vote margin in Washington. Minnesota similarly carries only a fourth of the weight of the Missouri vote. And how do you account for the fact that states with open primaries had more voters, thus giving them extra weight? (For example, abouy a million Texas voters would have been ineligible if it were a closed primary.) This makes absolutely no sense, without even getting into the issue of counting the Florida and Michigan "votes".

The raw numbers:
Tennessee 85 total delegates
Clinton 332,599 = 54%
Obama 250,750 = 41%

Washington 97 total delegates
Obama 21,629 = 68%
Clinton 9,992 = 31%

So what we're left with is -- oh, that's an interesting bit of trivia, and nothing more. Gee, who won the vote among lefthanders? Allergy sufferers?

I don't understand how voters are so fickle, it is quite annoying. How could your mind not be made up after nearly a year and a half of this shit?

Hillary Clinton has less than 30% of Popular Vote!

Less than 3 in 10 voters in this election have voted for Hillary - therefore she must be unelectable.

Hillary has received 14,140,871 votes out of 48,012,892 (29,959,472 [D] + 18,053,420 [R]) votes cast. (RCP)

Just saying.

Ever notice how few delegates Clinton gets out of the states she wins? That's because she wins in the precincts that have a weak Democratic voting history. Obama wins big in the precincts with committed Democratic voters. These are voters who have reliably voted Democratic in past elections so they are awarded more delegates. And who is that base that is the most reliable Democratic voters: African-Americans. They are the strongest, most reliable base in the Democratic party. And that's why the superdelegates cannot throw the election to Obama. Not only for the presidential election, but for state and local election--they cannot afford to lose their strongest base. The African-Americans have voted for Democrats for generations, and when they put a viable candidate forward he is smeared by another Democrat as a black radical elitist (which translate "uppity black" in their language). Hell yes they are angry at Clinton, and she's not going to make nice and think they will vote for her. And without their votes, no Democrat wins. By the way, the weakest base is the hispanic vote because historically they don't turn out to vote.