By Big Tent Democrat

The worst pollsters, ARG and Zogby (PDF), have new PA numbers. ARG has Clinton by 13, 54-41 (down from a 20 point lead) and Zogby has Clinton up 6, 48-42 (up from a 3 point lead). Watch Zogby hedge his bet:

“A big one-day of polling for Clinton. If a 10-point victory is the pundit-driven threshold she needs on Tuesday, it looks like she can do it. This does not look like a one-day anomaly – undecideds dropped to only 5% in this latest single day of polling, and they are breaking Clinton’s way. As I suggested yesterday, if white and Catholic voters, who still are the biggest portion of undecideds, actually vote, Clinton will have her double-digit victory. Just today alone, she polled 53% to Obama’s 38%.

Sure, Zogby, whatever you say. ARG's internals make sense to me:

By Big Tent Democrat

We have certainly had our differences this campaign season, but this is a great post by Oliver Willis.

Alton Logan's mother and grandmother both died during his 26 years in prison. He had the chance to visit their graves this weekend, after his release from a sentence for a murder that was likely committed by someone else.

Two attorneys for a convicted cop killer had known for 26 years of Logan's innocence but had kept silent because of the attorney-client privilege. Their client, Andrew Wilson, had confessed to them that he shotgunned a security guard to death in January 1982, but he insisted they only reveal his admission after his death. Wilson, who was serving a life sentence for the murders of two Chicago police officers, died in prison of natural causes Nov. 19.

On Friday, a judge listened to the testimony of a former employee of the McDonald's where the security guard was killed. The employee identified a picture of Wilson as the killer. A witness who tutored Wilson in prison testified that Wilson once told him about shooting a gun in a McDonald's. Prosecutors insist that Logan is guilty, but Judge James Schreier ruled that the new evidence made it reasonably probable that Logan would be acquitted if he were tried again. He freed Logan on $1,000 bail.

Obama is airing an ad attacking Hillary's health care plan. Hillary now fires back. Here's the support for the statements in her ad.

I do think the ad takes it one negative too far. Rather than say:

He couldn't answer tough questions in the debate. So Barack Obama is making false charges against Hillary's health care plan.

I think she should have just opened with:

Barack Obama is making false charges against Hillary's health care plan.

More...

Earlier I wrote why I think Hillary Clinton is more electable. Here's what Hillary said today in Pennsylvania:

Clinton also said there was no "contradiction" from her previous position when she told last week's ABC News debate audience that she thought Obama was electable after weeks in which her main case to the superdelegates who could decide the nomination was that Obama could not win a general election fight against presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

"Yes, yes, yes," Clinton said during the debate last week at the National Constitution Center on Independence Mall.

Today, she said, "He can be elected. I WILL be elected." "There is a difference," the New York senator said. "Look at the electoral map: I've carried states that a Democrat must have to win. Anything is possible, but I am more likely" to gain the White House against McCain.

McCain's strategy now is to go after the toss-up states, particularly in the west and southwest. [More...]

Bump and Update: The AP reports superdelegates are not feeling bound by primary results, but more concerned about electability. And the International Herald Tribune says McCain's new strategy is to go after the toss-up states.

***

There's no question that superdelegates will consider electability as a factor in deciding whether to vote for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Based on this analysis by long-time Democratic party activist William Arnone, which I return to again and again for the numbers, here's what I think they need to look at:

• Who can best hold on to the 20 states the Dems won in 2004? Which candidate is more likely to put these states at risk in a battle with John McCain?

• Which candidate has the better chance of winning states that voted Republican in 2004 but are now seen as vulnerable for McCain?

• Which candidate has a better chance of getting the votes of four key constituencies that could carry the election for McCain?

Answers below: [More...]

By Big Tent Democrat

Speaking for me only

I think well of Nico Pitney, but this post is a bad show from him. Nico argues that the ABC Debate was unlike any other. But how does he do this? He only looks at the last four debates (2 by CNN, one by NBC and the ABC Debate.) From this analysis, Pitney argues that ABC was unlike any other. But Pitney's cherry picking reveals the problem:

Policy Non-Policy Scandal

CNN (1/31) 31 3 1
CNN (2/21) 23 5 2
NBC 24 17 5
ABC 32 14 13

Even with this cherry picking, Pitney's own data proves the point - NBC in its post SNL debate in Cleveland, when it would have been on its best behavior, had 22 non-policy questions. (Pitney's "scandal" designation seems rather convenient to me.) Moreover, Pitney ignores the 20 odd debates PRIOR to January 31, 2008 and PRIOR to the SNL debate skit. He particularly ignores the infamous October 30, 2007 NBC Debate. By doing that, Pitney makes his analysis a mockery. He is better than this disingenuous post. More . . .

By Big Tent Democrat

Matt Yglesias writes:

McCain[']s [priorities] are reducing the level of government services in order to pay for an indefinite prolongation of the war in Iraq, the extension of Bush's tax cuts for the highest-income Americans, a large hike in non-war defense spending, and a series of new tax breaks. Clinton and Obama are both, in somewhat different ways, offering more services paid for by returning to something more like the levels of taxation that so devastated the national economy in the 1990s.

(Emphasis supplied.) I think that is right and it is what made Obama's comment on the Clinton economic policies of the 1990s so perplexing:

You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration . . .

As Yglesias rightly points out, both Hillary Clinton and Obama are promising a return to the fiscal policies of Bill Clinton. It makes no sense for Obama to lump the Clinton era with the disastrous Bush Presidency.

Sen. John McCain appeared this morning on ABC's This Week With George Stephanopoulos. You can watch the video here. Some quotes (received by e-mail from ABC News):

On Sen. Obama’s approach to the economy:

“..He obviously doesn't understand the economy, because history shows every time you have cut capital gains taxes, revenues have increased, going back to Jack Kennedy. So out of touch? Yes, they are out of touch when they want to raise taxes at the worst possible time, when we're in a recession.”

On William Ayers:

“…his relationship with Mr. Ayers is open to question. …Because if you're going to associate and have as a friend and serve on a board and have a guy kick off your campaign that says he's unrepentant, that he wished bombed more -- and then, the worst thing of all, that, I think, really indicates Senator Obama's attitude, is he had the incredible statement that he compared Mr.Ayers, an unrepentant terrorist, with Senator Tom Coburn, Senator Coburn, a physician who goes to Oklahoma on the weekends and brings babies into life -- comparing those two -- I mean, that's not -- that's an attitude, frankly, that certainly isn't in keeping with the overall attitude.”

By Big Tent Democrat

You always hear these stories about "organization." I am always skeptical about the claims of how much organization matters in actual election states, as opposed to caucus states. But today E.J. Dionne said:

I want to go back to this polling business in Pennsylvania. You know, it seems to me, when you look at these numbers right now, the most likely outcome is that she’s got a five point lead, he probably picks up three or four points, maybe two or three points on organization. This is from a very smart Democrat I talked to yesterday when I was up there. But she—those undecideds look an awful like her people, and they seem if you push them that they’re going to go to her. So if you sort of just do it on the numbers, she probably should win a healthy victory. . . . [S]he ought to win that by a pretty decent margin.

I actually do not follow Dionne's math there - if Obama picks up 3 points on organization and Clinton is leading by 5 then even if she wins undecideds by 6-3, she only wins by 5. But I am always skeptical of these claims of organizational advantages, particularly where Clinton has the Governor of PA and the Mayor of Philly working hard for her. But if Dionne is right, then it seems to me he should be expecting a close race in PA. I must say I do not follow Dionne's logic there.

By Big Tent Democrat

This is funny:

Among bowlers (24% of the electorate) and gun owners (38% of the electorate), Clinton leads big. She's up 54-33 among bowlers and 53-28 among gun owners; There were 13% undec. among bowlers and 17% undec among gun owners.

Heh.

By Big Tent Democrat

Speaking for me only

Atrios writes:

One place I decided to try to avoid going was to the land of the "electability" argument. . . . First I reject the idea that one should pick a candidate based on some imagined preferences of other voters. And second, there just isn't enough evidence out there to support the idea that either candidate is "stronger." People can have opinions about this, of course, but I don't think there's much of an argument to made either way.

As someone who has a preference solely based on who I think is more electable (due to the fact that there is, save for health care, not a dime's worth of difference between the two candidates on the issues), I have to quibble with Atrios. What would he have me base my preference on? Of course, it is only my opinion that Barack Obama is more electable, but I have no other issue to differentiate them on.

What has amazed me is the vitriol, a nice word would be passion I guess, that has come, from both sides, for two rather cautious, left center candidates who stand exactly the same on the issues (save for health care) and in the mainstream of the Democratic Party. There is nothing that I have seen that makes one preferable to the other, other than the electability calculus. So I disagree with Atrios on this.