Monday, February 04, 2008

Tepid Tuesday

The Obama campaign is pre-spinning tomorrow's primaries one way; Hillary the other. The polls have been wild over the past couple of days (different late polls show California, for example, ranging from a four-point lead for Obama to an eight-point lead for Clinton) and seem to say one basic thing: it's all going to be very close and nothing is going to be finished come Wednesday morning. That said, state polls generally show Hillary winning handily where she is ahead, and Obama winning by a hair in states in which he's ahead. This suggests that, given the narrowing gap in the national polls, an overall win for Obama, albeit unlikely, would say something quite devastating.

In the meantime, let's see what the Republicans are up to:
Bob Dole tells Rush that McCain is as conservative as Jesse Helms.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think that whoever wins California will be the nominee. It won't end today and I'm not saying that California's delegates will decide the matter, but California -- which is a toss-up with very conflicting polls this morning -- will give a real sense of whether the Obama charge has the inertia behind it to pass the Clinton machine or whether the sheer weight of that machine is enough to block out the new comer. An upset in California will take a lot of wind (and cash) out of the Clinton sails and a Clinton victory will give the sense that Obama has a lot of uphill left, perhaps too much with half the primaries gone.

helmut said...

You may be right, Steve.

Two more important things this morning:

1. From TPM: "Consider this spread. Zogby has his final California number as Obama 49%, Clinton 36%. SurveyUSA has Obama 42%, Clinton 52%."

2. From Andrew Sullivan: "Obama has beaten Clinton 3 - 1 in fundraising this year. If he survives today, it could prove critical."

I.e., who knows how CA is going to turn out? And, whatever the case, Obama looks in better shape post-CA, given the "momentum" and the cash.