Obama opens 10 point lead.Follow

Stock Gbaji Response: "That's only for the primaries. Sure it doesn't matter with Obama and Clinton. But in the general, it will be HUGE"


Stock Jophiel Edit: Obama is also leading by 5pts in Rasmussen polling after sitting in the red most of last week.

Edited, Mar 31st 2008 8:48am by Jophiel

The country's democratic bowlers will NOT be backing Clinton. (people still bowl??)

If that had been a basketball and a net then it'd have been a different story.

That said, even I bowl better than that, and I'm horrificly bad at it. Somewhere in heaven my father weeps whenever I attempt it. (It doesn't help that the bowling alley around here is also a bar, and by the third pitcher of beer everyone is throwing gutterballs.)

Lol. That and these are daily tracking numbers from one survey group. They're good for noting trends, not so much for telling us what the results of any given election will be.

The only network still all over the Rev. Wright stuff is Fox News (who spend an inordinate amount of time on it). Given the electoral leanings of their audience, it's really a non-factor now and in the future.

At some point, Hillary is going to have to realize that she has no chance of winning the nomination and that she should quit wasting valuable campaign resources in a vain effort. However, given that her campaign is run by people that are more interested in getting continued kickbacks from vendors, it's unlikely that she'll get any help coming to said realization.

Also, with the increased violence in Iraq and McCain's promise to keep us there past the foreseeable future and long into our grandkids lives, expect the head to head polls to get even more ugly.

I was responding to Joph's post implying that tracking numbers had anything at all to do with expected results in a specific election.


I never once said that they don't indicate the public response to media stories (like the Wright thing). In fact, I said specifically that they are great for tracking trends. Of course, the numbers reflect day to day public opinions, and are incredibly media affected, so I'd suggest that the fact that the mainstream media stopped talking about Wright after about 4 days, and has spent the last week entirely on Clinton's "ducking sniperfire" comments, would have something to do with it...


Again. Irrelevant in terms of what will happen even in a primary, much less the general election. Hence my comment that these are daily tracking numbers...

Er? Most major media outlets did not start talking about or showing Wrights speeches to the public until March 13th. Obama's speech was given on March 18th. Pretty much all major media outlets have done nothing but gush about Obama's speech and declare the matter finished since that day.

So 5 days. And the 18th almost doesn't count, because that was all about Obama's speech. So. "about 4 days" is about right...

Are you saying that they didn't?

There was about 4-5 days of the news shows showing clips of Wright's sermons, and presenting them in a "This is bad for Obama" context. After Obama's speech, the clips of Wright started to disappear (pretty quickly), and were replaced with clips of Obama's speech usually followed by an interview or "man on the street" segment with people overwhelmingly saying that Obama's speech answered all their questions and the Wright thing is over as far as their concerned.


It's been one of the most blatant examples of media portraying the views they want people to have that I've seen yet this election season. They had to show the clips of Wright or be charged with bias, but they took the very first opportunity they could to reverse the message. Obama's speech allowed them to do that and it's all been about how well Obama handled it since then...


Obviously, if you think Obama's speech was wonderful and answered all the questions, then you'll buy this and think that the coverage is just peachy. If you don't think Obama's speech was sufficient (as I don't), you're watching the media and thinking "Wow! They really shifted that story fast...".

I already did.

Well, I'm saving time from not having to look stuff up.

I spent part of it getting a last minute donation in to Obama before the FEC deadline. So I guess it worked out well for all involved

I suppose he's thrilled that the Spitzer affair is being covered as it should. 20 days and counting!

That's not the whole issue though. The problem is that the media has been shocking in it's failure to vet Obama in any way. Any other politician would never have gotten this far without the media having done story after story about all the questionable aspects of his political past and his political record. Certainly, they turned a blind eye to the Wright story for as long as they possibly could. Conservative pundits were talking about it a year ago. The blogosphere was talking about it 6 months ago (possibly longer as well, but it was significantly present for as much as 6 months prior to the news carrying the story). Heck. The Wright videos along with taglines saying "This is Obama's preacher", were on Youtube for 3 months (starting in Dec/Jan timeframe).


Is anyone seriously under the illusion that a story practically thrown in the public eye would have taken this long to ever appear on your evening news if it was any other candidate? The media normally is almost ravenous about how it pursues any hint of scandal for any politician, doubly so for someone running for office, and 10 times more when that person is running for president. Why did they wait so long? It's not hard to conclude that when it comes to Obama, the media is essentially putting its hands over it's eyes and it's fingers in its ears and singing "la la la!" as loudly as it can so it can avoid having to write or tell any negative stories about him.


It's not just about Wright. Obama has a whole string of things about him, that if he were any other candidate would be connected together without any delay. I've already touched on many of these. In a campaign where the media jumps all over Clinton's embellishment of something she did 12 years ago is discussed, analyzed, and contextualized endlessly, it's startling that they don't seem to be able to put one plus one together for Obama. No one in the media has called Obama on his claim that he's a unifier by looking at his voting record and noting that he's got the most liberal record in the senate? No one? Isn't that "embellishment" as well? Heck. It's an outright lie, and something the voting public ought to know about. He's in favor of complete bans on handguns. He's got a 100% rating from planned parenthood. Not exactly stances likely to "end partisanship", is it?


He sells himself as something he's not. The Wright thing is just another example of this. He says he's above race, yet he's attended a radial black liberation theology church for 20 years. Yet another fact from his life that contradicts the picture he paints to the public in his campaign.


These are things that the public has a right to know. This is the kind of political analysis that the media is *supposed* to conduct. But for some reason, they're not doing it. We can speculate as to why, but it's abundantly clear that they're not. Obama is running on a lie. Plain and simple. The public is supporting him because they think he's something he's not (at least some of them anyway). I've touched on the "vagueness" of stated reasons for supporting Obama before, and this is just more of the same sort of thing. Barring a media actually investigating who a candidate is and what he really stands for, the public largely just has "buzz" to go on. They're allowed to imagine him as whatever ideal candidate they'd like him to be and that false impression is never challenged.


The media has blatantly and sadly failed at its job. Some of us are painfully aware of this. Sadly, most of the population is oblivious because their only source of information is the very media outlets that aren't doing any sort of proper coverage of Obama. And even when they're forced to cover a negative story about him, they seem to just skim the surface rather then digging for the incredibly obvious facts that are right there for them to see.


The whole picture of Obama in muslim dress is a great example of this. That wasn't the whole story. It was an easy story to cover though, since it was so easy to paint anyone talking about it in a negative light (and certainly some idiots did think it was just about what he was wearing). The real story was entirely ignored. It was about what he did in Kenya in 2006. Something that I'm betting almost none of you have heard about.

Google "Obama" and "Odinga" and read. Heck. Just read this page to get a quick primer if you want...


We can debate the significance of Odinga's actions, and Obama's support. But isn't it stunning that there hasn't even been a peep about this? A candidate for president (and active member of the US senate) actively campaigns for a presidential candidate in a foreign country, lending money and support, and no one's heard of it, or about who he supported? It's a questionable act regardless, but when you realize just how questionable the guy he supported is, it's jaw-droppingly amazing that this hasn't been reported in any way at all...


Wright is literally just the tip of the iceberg.