Friday, May 09, 2008

It's Over, I Insist... No, I Insist


You know I've thought the Dem primary has been over since the second week of February. The news networks now say it's over. Rasmussen is calling it a day on their primary tracking poll. Obama today passed Clinton in the superdelegate count, the last remaining metric of victory, picking up five more today as well as the endorsement of the American Federation of Government Employees. At least one major advertising outfit for Clinton is backing out of West Virginia (which she'll win, but must win big to maintain her fantasy). It turns out that Hillary won Indiana by less than 1%. And state party chairmen are meeting with Obama today. Plus, John Edwards has seen the writing on the wall.

Not only is the primary over, I think the general election is also basically over. Why? One of the reasons was pointed out by several commentators recently: despite the angry battle between Obama supporters and Clinton supporters, McCain has been polling roughly even or behind either candidate with only a brief blip where he passed them both. Once we get back to general election issues - economy and jobs, the wars, healthcare, diplomacy, environment and energy, education - Obama has the more popular and more sound proposals on each one of them. Really, all that's needed is to put them side by side and have them speak. Further, the absurd gas tax holiday - originally McCain's idea - seems to have been viewed by Democratic primary voters as precisely the pandering it is. The GOP has already seen Clinton give her best Rovian shot at Obama and fail. Oh, and plus this.

UPDATE:

See also this latest LA Times poll (via TPM):
Clinton 47, McCain 38, Undecided 11.
Obama 46, McCain 40, Undecided 9.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Not to mention the upticks Obama should get when Hillary finally gives up and after the convention.