Joe Biden ⇑ Biden has a strong background and a good campaign, and he’s creeping up in polls. Consistent in debates, and surprisingly well-organized in New Hampshire. Unfortunately, there’s not much opening for him, as Clinton and Richardson are blocking the “experienced” pathway he’s most suited to take.
Hillary Clinton ⇑ The juggernaut rolls on. The little contretemps with Obama seems to have ended in a tie, but polling reaction (much more important than “focus groups”) shows a slight uptick, while Obama went down. Currently struggling with the manufactured outrage on lobbyists, but she can only be hurt so much by having a skeleton that’s in everyone’s closet.
Chris Dodd ⇑ Enjoying a wee bit of a second look, and an impressive guy…however, it would take a sensational occurrence (on the scale of a freak debate accident or alien landing) to clear his path to the nomination.
John Edwards ⇓ Iowa, Edwards’ first and last hope, is moving away from him toward Clinton and Obama…a recent poll had him tied for second. With the attention lavished on any Clinton-Obama spat, Edwards is slowly losing relevance.
Mike Gravel ⇔ Still there.
Dennis Kucinich ⇔ Kucinich can tell people anything they want to hear because he’ll never have to deliver on it. However, he’s holding on to his true believers who might otherwise go to Obama.
Barack Obama ⇓ The first month of real adversity for the campaign. Sagging national and NH numbers, and Hillary starts working on the “naive” label. Stumbling on Pakistan just reinforces the not-ready-for-prime-time image. We’ll see how the lobbyist counterattack plays.
Bill Richardson ⇔ Momentum in early primary states has topped (aside from Nevada). An odd campaign that could actually benefit from skipping debates…but many candidates on both sides would love to have “bad at debates” the worst label that could be attached to them.
Id say Obama averages out to no change since he picked up in IA and NH and beat Hillary on money, but got savaged by the MSM and lost points nationally
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Also Richardson is increasingly losing relevance and getting the shit kicked out of you in debates should hurt
A couple things I didn’t get into were crosstab polling data such as this that shows that almost a third of Democrats have a negative view of Obama — twice the number for Hillary. Also, the fact that Obama loses to Hillary on the question “which candidate represents change?” I do believe that this is a good thing for Obama — the campaign was starting to be about the campaign, rather than about the candidate. They have plenty of time to refocus.
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It’s hard to get a handle on Biden and Richardson, as the numbers are low enough to be confused by noise. I can’t agree that “Richardson is losing relevance” as long as his poll numbers are going up or holding steady in early states — and for three months he’s the most prominent candidate for whom that is true. I just don’t think a lot of the subtexture of the campaign impacts voters’ decisions, and that includes a lot of the stuff we enjoy bickering about here.
First off that poll cited on TPM is viewed as an outlier especially when compares with every other polling group which shows just the opposite trend Hillarys negatives among DEMS staying in the 30-40% range. Though even I will concede that Obamas negatives will only go up as more and more people evaluate who he is, similarly his positives will go up as well since more and more people will be making a more informed opinion. We’ve had 16 years to form an opinion of Hillary Clinton.
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Also I had a bit of confusion by your statement
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Im assuming you meant to say that Hillary loses to Obama on which candidate best represents change? Since that would be a good thing but losing to Hillary on that question would be terrible.
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Also Id say we have to combine both media buzz as well as actual numbers and money to get an aggregate result. For your Obama description you mentioned him getting hit by Hillary badly and this hurting his polling a bit, but he is leading the Dems in money and he is gaining in IA and NH while maintaining a lead in SC.
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Combining both means that Richardsons upward gains in IA and national polls (at the expense of Edwards in my view) should also be combined with the MSMs dislike of him and his poor debating style.
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Anyway just a some more nitpicking.
You can call that poll an outlier, but I would like to wait until I see more data.
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“Im assuming you meant to say that Hillary loses to Obama on which candidate best represents change? Since that would be a good thing but losing to Hillary on that question would be terrible.”
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Nope…saw it on MyDD I think. Another poll where Hillary beats Obama among candidates who represent change. And yes, if he loses that, he may as well give up the campaign.
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Obama is leading in money, but money buys free press and little else…Howard Dean learned that. Regardless, Hillary and Obama are close enough in money that it doesn’t make a huge difference. You say that “[Obama] is gaining in IA and NH while maintaining a lead in SC.” Hillary is beating him in SC in two of the three polls taken in SC in July. NH seems to have a lot of static (though it could be interpreted as Obama had closed a bit, now the gap is widening again). I do agree that Obama is pulling even with Edwards and Hillary in Iowa.
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Obama’s upward swing has stopped in all 4 early states shy of Hillary, and his campaign clearly feels pressed to go more on the attack. That tells me that his campaign sees something that worries them.
You heard it here first: McCain will surge (no pun intended) to at least respectability, and can still take it.