Drudge claims Clinton internals +11 in Penn

This is not helpful for the Clinton campaign.

There's a very odd splash headline that Drudge is running claiming that Sen. Clinton's internals show her with an 11 point lead in the state. Now, Sen. Clinton's campaign has taken some heat during the campaign for opening lines of communications with Drudge and even giving him some exclusives. And the way Drudge writes the updates suggests he's gotten the numbers from them, even including some trash-talking quotes from Clinton "insiders".

As Josh Marshall points out, if accurate, this is not a good leak by the Clinton campaign. Remember, Drudge rules Mark Halperin's world, hence disproportionately influences the conventional wisdom. At a time when the campaign (via Rendell and other surrogates) has been moving the goalposts for a "significant" Clinton victory around 5-6 percent, here is Drudge helping reset it back into the double digits. Given that this race is no longer about raw data (since Obama has won that already), but about "expectations", the Clinton camp had every reason to want to lower the bar as much as possible.

I'm holding out my final prediction until SUSA releases the internals of their last poll, but I suspect I'll come in at around an 8- to 9-point Clinton win. If expectations are that anything above 5-6 points is a "big victory" for Clinton, then that 8-point hypothetical win would be good news for her campaign. If people expect 11 points, then she underperforms and looks weak.

It may be a stupid way to declare a "winner" in this contest, but it is what it is.

Update: The Obama campaign's biggest weakness has been its inability to play the expectations game effectively. And given that Obama himself is predicting a close finish, either their own numbers look fantastic, or he's once again blowing the game.

Update II: As noted in the comments, the Clinton campaign has denied that poll exists.