I'm not surprised she's moving up, that disconjunct couldn't last, and she was either gonna move up online or down in the telephone polls:

First, I think we're in a lull period. There was the initial excitement of various candidates announcing & the beginning of their campaigns. We're so far from the actual primaries that public attention has waned. Hillary has the most name recognition, most money & best organized campaign & thus has been better at message imaging during this down period.

Regarding blurring of positions: There are some tremendous differences among the candidates, particularly Edwards economic populism vs. business as usual for Hillary & Obama. Both Obama & Edwards favor just leaving Iraq vs. Hillary's we need to have some presence in Iraq.

I've been disheartened the past few weeks as my personal interactions with other, less involved, kinds if progressives, have revealed to me that many have tacitly accepted the dominant role of corporations in our economic & political life. The Right has effectively inculcated society with this perspective the past quarter century.

In particular, here in Philly where there was an intense race for mayor, many people on the liberal side have accepted the argument that cutting the business tax is good for the city though it would result in the loss of tens of millions in badly needed revenue with general studies on the subject showing negligible returns in job creation.

PS. I don't think Hilliary fucking up health care in 1993-4 is accurate. This has been the conservative meme since it wasn't passed. The major tactical error was rolling out the plan in its entirety after Repubs asked for specifics. This allowed them to nit pick the plan. It would have passed the Senate if not for a threatened filibuster & certainly passed the House. I'm for national health insurance (like Medicare) rather than the Hillary plan but it wasn't a flawed plan. Another 2 obstacles hindering passage was the Harry & Louise commercials, which the media repeated endlessly - Thus aiding the opposition - & the Repubs intense attacks on Bill's personal life, which caused Bill to divert good numbers of staffers, who would have been involved in pushing through national health, to putting out fires.

She had a good debate performance and benefitted from low expectations. Not so next time. She will not go back to 3% I think, but rather stay around 5% which is still awful.

It's becoming more and more obvious that Obama is the only candidate who could possibly beat Hillary. To do that he needs to receive more netroots support - or at least less (IMO unfair) front page attacks. I still think Obama will win it in the end, because he has the most appealing personality and is getting more and more experienced at campaigning (watch out for the next debate). There's a chance that he will outraise Hillary in Q2 and that would give his already good poll numbers a huge boost. He will be going into the autumn with momentum, and picking up defecting Edwards supporters who wan't to stop Hillary. If he manages to translate all the energy of his supporters into a real outreach effort he will lead the polls before Christmas. Then he wins Iowa and New Hampshire - thanks to huge amounts of independent votes - and the nomination is his.

Clinton Is Quiet on Her Past Role With Wal-Mart

I agree with point 1, the candidates need to do more to distinguis themselves from Hillary's stances.

for an account that could make this jump , Mark Penn probably just got a bunch of people to sign up .

Clinton had a very very good debate performance.  Further, whether you like her or not, even the most cursory review of her resume reveals a history as an advocate for progressive principles.

I think Obama's style and substance is a bit too intellectual to this point. I think he can ramp up his rhetoric if he wants (see Boston '04 speech) but for whatever reason Obama has chosen to take a muted approach.

I think keeping the base excited is a bit like fishing for tuna. You have to put chum in the water to keep the fish biting. Obama's not putting any chum in the water.

If and when Obama lets loose with a barnburner of a speech talking about judgement and the Iraq War then you'll see the underlying fundamentals of the race. If Obama never makes that speech or flubs it he's not going to close the gap. If he makes the speech and it's as good as Boston he's going to roll like Kerry out of Iowa on to the nomination.

For starters, the shrill hatred of Hillary from many on the blogosphere especially some on the prominent blogs has really backfired. She was supposed to be this evil incarnate, corporatist, cold, calculating figure. Well, people watched the first debate, and that unfair image of Hillary Clinton fell apart. She came across as smart and warm and thoughtful. A lot of people who watched that debate had to admit to themselves that she has been and continues to be unfairly portrayed by some on the left. So guess what? People who once didn't like Hillary are doing a double take. They are starting to think for themselves instead of following the herd mentality of the blogosphere.

I am a strong Barack Obama supporter and I will walk a million miles to ensure that he gets the nomination. But if Hillary gets the nomination, I'd be fine with that. I reflexively cringe sometimes when I read the rants of the Hillary haters. The more she's attacked, the stronger she would get because people hate unfair vitriol in this country.

1. Clinton (and Gravel) were considered most impressive in the debates by the combined blogosphere, while Edwards and Obama underperformed, blogospherically speaking.   So, she was bound to move up by virtue of an assured and impressive debate contrast.

2. She has made strong anti-Bush statements and is clearly favoring withdrawal from Iraq.  That is one litmus test of the left blogosphere, and she is starting to convince more and more bloggers that she would end the war in Iraq.  An argument about residual forces can be had, but in principle those who claim that she would just continue the war in Iraq the same way it has been conducted by Bush and perhaps expand it into other regions look somewhat foolish.   The blogosphere is taking note.

3. She is starting to get a lot of people looking at her campaign differently.  Unlike other candidates she injects a healthy dose of humor into her ads and campaign appearances.   The latest Youtube video (mentioned by Jerome Armstrong in the Breaking Blue section) is a perfect example.  It already is a massive Youtube hit, has easily passed the hitcount of any Obama Youtube video and is poised to be the most-watched video of a political candidate.

4. Bill Clinton is injecting some extra pizazz.  His foundation recently struck a deal with pharmaceutical companies to lower the price for AIDS medication dramatically.  Yesterday, the Bill Clinton foundation announced that they got Microsoft and Trane to partner with them in developing free global warming fighting tools.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9596_22-61845 43.html

The William J. Clinton Foundation and Microsoft on Thursday announced a partnership to develop new technology tools to help large cities create, track and share strategies to reduce carbon emissions.

Global warming and AIDS medication are issues important to the left blogosphere, so for Bill Clinton to actually DO SOMETHING about important issues instead of just TALKING ABOUT them is an important message the blogoshpere is taking note of.      

Mainly it's the fact that Edwards is running a poor campaign right now. I had thought that the fault in 2004 was primarily with the Kerry camp, but now it's beginning to look like it was a team effort. Obama hasn't put himself on the truly progressive map yet as far as I'm concerned. If I were running one of the other campaigns I'd be running against Hillary as another Creature from K St. I'd would disassemble her health care proposals into their component parts and confront her about her union busting consultants and her Friedmanesque trade policies.

When I worked on the Clark campaign in 2004 the netroots support on the netroots was mostly for Dean and to a lesser degree for Clark. There were tiny pockets of support for Kerry, Edwards, Lieberman, Gephardt etc. There were a lot of anti-Kerry diaries on various sites along with a lot of disagreement between Dean and Clark supporters.

If someone from another planet looked at the 2004 election only by observing the netroots they would have reached the conclusion that either Dean or Clark would be the nominee and there was a less than zero chance that anyone else could be nominated. There were a lot of Dean and Clark supporters who were bitterly disappointed after Iowa and NH because they were so certain of the outcome.

The netroots is a small but important part of the overall picture but online support can be completely different from offline support because the demographics.  

1.  Candidates are starting to put commercials up on the air in key states.  This hasn't been the case until relatively recently.
   
2.  Candidates are only just getting their ground operations going.  Obama is hosting a National Canvassing Day on June 9th and his first canvassing day in New Hampshire today.
   

3.  In the second Republican debate, we saw candidates more willing to engage and challenge each other.  Could that happen in a second Democratic debate as well?  Might this shake things up a little?  (At this stage, I'm not really sure how it could.  None of the second-tier candidates really seem to have the debate skills to make a break-out performance.)
   
4.  The end of the second fundraising quarter at the end of June:  Will Barack beat Hillary for a second time in a row, which would be huge?  Will he continue to grow his number of contributors?  Will Edwards pull closer in the money race?  Will any of the second-tier candidates start to make a better showing (especially Richardson)?  A lot of second- or third-tier candidates might start be so out-paced in the fundraising that they call it quits early, in which case there would be a rush for their support.
   
5.  Or maybe we'll see the candidates mostly hold even in the national polls but start to fluctuate more in the early primary states only once we get closer to the election and more people are paying attention.

Your shock that HRC is seeing increased, that Democrats could ACTUALLY disagree with your HRC hatred is the core answer here.  Just as with the contorted arguments about why HRC's lead in the polls is not real, it's all about "YOU" (read in the plural for netroots leaders).  YOU can't imagine good Democrats actually excited about HRC.  Hence your blindness.

I love the netroots, and encourage continuing to push.  For example, would HRC have voted for withdrawal without the netroots?  Maybe not.  So, a victory.

But, as I said above, it's not only intellectually dishonest to disregard honest and decent motives for supporting HRC, it's also more than a bit narcissitic.  Most important, it signals the need for the ANTI-HRC VITROL to stop, as it only weakens our likely nominee.

some support.  But there is a complete disconnect between her showings in general polls and relative lack of support in the netroots.

I disagree with this statement: "Edwards is not running a particularly coherent or inclusive campaign."

Let's see:
Support the Troops. End the War.
Cut poverty in half in 10 years.
The only major candidate with a Universal Health Care Plan.
A Plan on global warming and the environment.
Growing unions.

Please check out johnedwards.com sometime for more details.  

Your point about Hilary's small growth was interesting, but I thought your shots at other candidates (not just Edwards) detracted from your overall point.  

I guess we disagree.

This might be due to a growing realization that Gore won't run (hence the drop in "Other" from 9 in March to 6 in May), and some of that support going to Hillary. I wonder how this will change in June once Gore's book is out.

"Other", Hillary, and Gravel were the only numbers that moved 3 points or more from March to May.

(The April poll seems odd, with Richardson at 13, while in both March and May he was at 8, and no events to explain that boomlet, other than a very subpar performance in the debate).

Earth to blogosphere....

Earth to blogosphere...

Uh....America doesn't really give a fuck at this point....

over and out....

And her husband is out actively campaigning for her.

I'll add another tactic for her opponents to use: Seperate her from Bill.

Point out that she is running in his coattails, and that she is no Bill Clinton. She doesn't have his charisma, intellect (although she is very smart) or political instincts.

I said in the past that if Obama or Edwards wants to overtake HRC, they have to go negative.  They need to be sufficiently critical that they take themselves out of the running for the veep slot if they end up whiffing in the primaries.  If they don't show an ability to go on the offensive in the primaries, I have strong concerns that they are incapable of properly attacking the Republicans in a general election and that we will somehow lose a presidential election again.

At the very least, Bowers' was able to show that Clinton's support is VERY VERY SOFT. She is besting Obama by just a little.  Most of the spread between Clinton and Obama (7-11 points) is made up of folks who are basically undecided but would lean toward Clinton if pushed.

Just wait.  Obama has pulled almost even in firm support operating a very mild campaign so far--running against Washington DC, against the war, introducing himself, and building on word of mouth from supporters.

Obama has not yet gone after the base, he hasn't been aggressive with any constituency group.

But when he does he will pull some of those undecided's. Will he pull enough?  I have no idea.  But it seems that a very good possibility.

I think he has been the object of way too much criticism by the media on matters that do not deal with substance, but are more in the gotcha or gaffe realm.  These are veiled attacks on his character.

His detractors on the blogosphere like to perpetuate these criticisms, often under the guise that they need more information or have questions.  In fact, these people would not vote for him anyway, and they use these feigned comments of concern in no more a legitimate way than the media.

All this has caused him to lose any momentum at the present time.  The campaign is far from over, however.

To illustrate what the media has done, please see my comment on DKos:

http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2007/5/ 18/123058/611/14#c14

No other candidate has been subjected to the same scrutiny as of late.  Indeed, no other candidate is promoting an agenda that is so inimical to the corporatist ownership of the media or to corporatist power.

It's a shame that supporters of other candidates so readily help the media spread their message, just because they perceive Edwards as the enemy.  One might see all this and reasonably conclude that they, like the media, seem afraid of Edwards, even though he is behind their candidate in the polls and in terms of money support.    

The ongoing food fight between Obama and Edwards partisans makes Hillary look better by comparison.  She basically has been sailing above the fray of late.

Clinton is a charismatic television figure...

Say what? I thought you were talking about HRC.
If she is charismatic on TV, then Dick Cheney is a 'rock star'.

This is from the NYTimes piece "Obama's Narrator" Axelrod is the political operative who has formed Obama's "authenticity" for 15 years-Here's a part about Hillary which could explain why Obama is "soft" on her-She deserves better than a hit squad-

"David and Susan Axelrod have three children in their late teens and early 20s. Their eldest, Lauren, has developmental disabilities associated with chronic epileptic seizures and now lives in a group home in Chicago. But for years her illness required enough of her parents' time that it kept Susan Axelrod out of the work force and kept David from moving to Little Rock during the 1992 presidential campaign. Susan and two other mothers of children with epilepsy started a foundation, Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy (CURE), which Susan runs, to promote research and raise funds for a cure. ... It was January 1999, President Clinton's impeachment trial was just beginning in the Senate and Hillary Clinton was scheduled to speak at the foundation's fund-raiser in Chicago. Despite all the fuss back in Washington, Clinton kept the appointment. She spent hours that day in the epilepsy ward at Rush Presbyterian hospital, visiting children hooked up to machines by electrodes so that doctors might diagram their seizure activity and decide which portion of the brain to remove. At the hospital, a local reporter pressed her about the trial in Washington, asked her about that woman. At the organization's reception at the Drake Hotel that evening, Clinton stood backstage looking over her remarks, figuring out where to insert anecdotes about the kids. "She couldn't stop talking about what she had seen," Susan Axelrod recalled. Later, at Hillary Clinton's behest, the National Institutes of Health convened a conference on finding a cure for epilepsy. Susan Axelrod told me it was "one of the most important things anyone has done for epilepsy." And this is how politics works: David Axelrod is now dedicated to derailing this woman's career."

My opinion, is if you look at the general shift in national polls from April to May, 4 of 5 polling groups had Obama getting closer to Hillary.  

Time is all it'll take.  

Campaigns are still bubbling.  

Hillary Clinton is the Democrats' Best Chance to Win; Statistical Analysis of Polls from the Battleground States

http://www.usaelectionpolls.com/2008/art icles/hillary-clinton-best-chance-to-win .html

As for Edwards campaign- Any one who would build a 28,000 square foot house (in the last two years) and then talk about "two Americas" and the environment-is out of touch - I'm sorry but 28,000 square feet is a department store-No one needs or wants a blot like that in their neighborhood- How do Edwards supporters justify this? I think he is sincere and intelligent but something is definitely wrong with this picture.
(and I didn't even mention the $400 haircuts!)

She's climbing only because she and Bill have more of the right credentials to those seriously concerned about world politics than any of the others.

But she'll never get my vote.  I'm sick of this f!@#ing DLC pandering to special interests again and again that go against our own and the world's long term interests.  Against my children's and grandchildrens interests.

She and Obama for example voted with a few other Dems and all of the Republicans to suport Israel, over U.S. and world humanitarian efforts, to continue the use of cluster bombs, specifically in civilian areas.

They voted against the majority of other Dems when Sen. Feinstein tried to ban their use.

How brutal.  How un-democratic. Do they like the smell of children's burning flesh in the morning?

If that's the new 'Moderate' direction she wants the party to head for, I'm out will not vote in 2008.

Nationalism is not terrorism.  

candidate.  Watching Bill Moyer's Journal last night, I heard the discussion over the closed door trade policy meeting between DLC democrats (Pelosi, Hoyer and Rangel) and the administration.  Forget about openness in government and including those who brought about the Democratic majority; it's back to business as usual.  The Clintons, MacAullife, Carville, Begala folks want to lead the parade made possible by the grassroots.  Where were they when Gore or Kerry could have used real, honest and committed support; sitting on their hands and giving lukewarm support.

Let's support someone with real Democratic values ala FDR; yeah, I'm that old, born during the depression and attended a school built by WPA.  We need leadership like we had then, that will insure that the people control corporations, not the other way around.  The middle class is being sold down the river and at some point will be as destitute as the third world, unless we put an end to this surrender to corporate power.  Corporations have a valid function in society but the incentives and benefits provided by government must be offset by oversight and verification.  Since Reagan, the fox has been in charge of the chicken house.

Personally, I'd like an Edwards/Obama ticket which I think would insure 16 years of government of, for and by the people.  We'll need that long to recover from the present mess.  If Clinton is nominated, we'll probably be back in the desert for at least another four years.  

and HRC's inaction with Russ Tice.

How is Edwards' campaign "not particularly coherent and not inclusive?"

Edwards clearly has been inclusive through outreach to bloggers (meet and greets, liveblogging, conference calls with bloggers, etc), his interactive website, OneCorps, YouTube videos, social networking sites, etc.

Why is Edwards the favorite netroots candidate if he has not been inclusive?

A quick scan through the comments indicates that no one else has asked this crucial question: Matt, is this a put-on?

An entire thread about a three-point gain that still leaves her far behind the pack. Good Lord, get a grip. She gained in this poll because DKos is quickly gaining in readership and the newer, unindoctrinated readers are more representative of the general population, in which Hillary does better.

I'd say this wasn't worthy of comment except that I'm a little alarmed that so few people here understand that statistical noise is meaningless.

Why is Hillary Clinton gaining online netroots support?

The comments above are a striking answer to that question.  They sort out into the usual hate-Hillary rants on the one hand, and a very broad assortment of thinking observations on the other.  Hillary Clinton supporters are inspired by her competence and general right-mindedness; she does not inspire either misty or impassioned idolatry.  It's not her style or ours.  The hate-Hillary rants, regardless of the excuses they offer, are based in sexism, and it shows.  They can't stand her because the only woman they could accept would be Joan of Arc, and Hillary is just an American political leader.  Boo hoo.  Happily, most of us seem to be getting over it.

Granted that Hillary Clinton does not come from the right place in the Democratic Party real estate. She comes from the only progressive niche available to Arkansas Democrats of her day. To her great credit, and our good luck, Hillary Clinton found and maintained better models among American Southern Democrats, notably Marion Wright, and she herself was always better than the average DLC Democrat. A lot better. Regrettably, Barack Obama's base is the same consultant-driven, large-donor-funded brain-dead middle of the road, and, 14 years younger, he cannot claim that there was no real progressive wing of the party when he came of political age. He has other strengths, but that is a problem for me.

Face it, we are blessed that we have three, possibly four or five, very acceptable candidates for the Presidency in 2008.  Lots can happen in the year ahead of us, and if Clinton or Obama or Edwards should stumble, if Gore should get in, or if Richardson should rise, I can happily support the one left standing.

Rather than imposing political litmus tests, I believe we should be considering more carefully just what the job description will be for the person who is inaugurated in January 2009.  Isn't it clear by now that the federal government has been corrupted top to bottom since the disaster of 2000? Iraq is only the tip of the iceberg. If we are really the "reality-based" party, we should stop ranting about who voted for what on Iraq and accept the reality that the primary job of the 44th president will be cleaning up a political mess comparable to global warming. And if I ask myself who is the person best equipped to clean up the mess George W. Bush has made, Hillary Clinton looks like the one.  

has nothing to do with Hillary going from almost nothing to a little over nothing.  A blip on a blip.

What is interesting is that, despite the MSM media smears that were then perpetuated by "concerned" talking heads and even more "concerned" Dems in the netroots, Edwards has maintained such a dramatic lead over every other candidate.

That is because, your conclusory #2 guess not withstanding, Edwards is running an inclusive, coherent, substantive and progressive campaign.

The uptick in support for Clinton could simply be new voters in the straw poll -- people who weren't Dkos readers before, but Hillary supporters who are starting to follow the race on the Internet.

It is a mistake to confuse serious polling with straw polls that are easily manipulated and are not even the same demographics every time.  

However presuming that the blip is real and actually due to a change in opinions I'd say that reflects my own change in opinions.  I don't support her, but my estimation of her has increased after looking more closely at her and edwards policies.