Have you seen the favorable/unfavorable polling numbers for the Democratic candidates for president published by Rasmussen?
My take on the race is this – I am not moved 1 way or another either to or from any single candidate by a striking contrast in her or his ideology weighed against all the rest.
You don't find huge schisms, even on the war in Iraq.
As a practical matter, I want a nominee who's: in tune with the needs of citizens, less of a deceiver, and not so gungho to spill our soldiers' blood while ducking out on their own service obligations compared to the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
So who breaks comfortably over the 50% mark for favorability? [Link to Rasmussen Reports]
Obama or Edwards. 1 of them are electable.
To drive the point home, here's the ratio calculated for favorables/unfavorables -->
The Ratio [calculated] for favorables/unfavorables:
Clark-Edwards-Obama are the ones with less baggage, comfortably over the 1.0 ceiling (i.e., favorable ratings > than unfavorable ratings).
We need a nominee who has lots less muck to dredge than the one who was the target of the VRWC since 1992.
As far as HRC, most people's opinions on her were sculpted long ago, and now hardened. For this reason, I believe the party voters can do better than to offer a choice of the chronology of Bush-Clinton-Clinton-Bush-Bush-Clinton(?). The fights are all too fresh.
I am comfortable being quite hardnosed about this. When you're judging the candidates' debate, I'm suggesting you don't be carried by who the pundits announce is the one who has scored.
The pundits have been calling Clinton the favorite for 12 months.
Heck, Rupert Murdoch even hosted a July fundraiser for her Senate race at the midtown NY office tower that hosts Fox News. Roger Ailes attended. Hillary Clinton exited through a side door. The Daily News wrote about the event. AP, CBS News, and the New Yorker wrote about it too.
The Murdoch-Clinton courtship has been in the making a couple of years now, and Bill has smoothed the way.
Note too that Rupert Murdoch's daughter-in-law, Kathryn (also the wife to Murdoch heir James Murdoch), works for the Clinton Foundation with aide Ira Magaziner (on the issue of climate change).
So there's definitely a thaw in relations there.
Even with these dalliances, however, can anyone doubt that the news-view enterprise of Fox and the NY Post – whose editorial cartoonist regularly drew President Bill Clinton in his underwear – would hesitate to pull the rug out from under the Democratic campaign for the presidency?
Do you want to relive the news nightmare? It's time again for we voters who are Democrats to stand and say we won't be led around by the nose by the commentatators on NBC and Fox. The establishment is not in our corner.
For polling, you've got Gallup who's doing the CNN/USA Today polling and regularly undersampling Democrats and African-Americans in the leadup to the 2004 elections.
With these institutions, we're going to need a candidate who can give us better than a 50-50 split on the favorables.
Let's not head into another November election with the pundits telling us it's going to be "close."
The reason we won in November is because it wasn't close. We need to nominate someone with an edge. So think hard when you decide who you favor.