Hope Obama implodes in time due to some scandal, or that the superdelegates ignore the pledged delegate winner and hand it to her.  That's been her only realistic path to the nomination since super Tuesday.

Does Obama have a plan to win the GE without FL, PA, or OH?

I am telling you, marginalizing Florida to win the nomination is a phyrric victory at best.

No way is that right.  That poll is so far off the rest of the polls we have, it's not even funny.

Ditto for your comment.

And at what point has Hillary raved something about Obama's pastor disaster?  All I've heard her do is answer a question about it.

I think he would possibly have a chance in NC in the GE. According to a PEW poll, the number of North Carolinians identifying as Republican has dropped from 35% in 2004 to just 26% today.

There are alot of New Yorkers, New Jersey people who have moved to NC, much to the chagrin of North Carolinians.  

It may tip the election more to Hillary than some expect.  There is also a Hispanic community that is growing in NC (poultry farms and  mills).  They are solid behind Hillary.

This poll is flawed because the dynamic of North Carolina has changed a lot over the last 10 years.

Forget about it.  There is no such thing as momentum this late in the game.

Political scientists say that momentum is essentially a form of learning. Voters pay attention to the winning candidate and that candidate's press coverage is positive because she/he has won. However, this only matters when people don't know that much about the candidates, something not true this late in this cycle.

Wright appears to not be having much long term impact, contrary to the hopes of some.

I think the Wright controversy hurts the Democratic brand while hurting Obama.  Does it hurt Obama more?  Yes, but, really anytime two high profile party types fight or get tarnished, e.g., Clinton and Obama, it hurts the party nationally.  Yes we can rehash this.  It will hurt Obama, but as a party, I don't think we should hope this issue has been settled.

Perhaps the white voters, not wanted to be marginalized or NC politics determined by black voters, will come out in full droves for Hillary.

Bill was well loved in NC.  These polls are try and make Hillary look weak and unwinable.

All lies!!!  Hillary can win this, IF the DNC wasn't afraid of Obama and the Obama-bots and let the Florida and MI either re-vote or let the vote stand.

I'm with you.

I want to vote for Obama, but I'll vote for Clinton if I have to.

Amen.  I think Hillary is really taking the whole party down with her.  But, if she does somehow pull this off, my vote will be with her 100%.

The tone of this comment doesn't help at all.  

indeed this doesn't help the discussion here

come on.  Why not try to elevate the tone than pushing it further in the gutter?

You change your signature tag which equates HRC to Guiliani. These gestures of goodwill go both ways.

Change the signature...do whatever it takes!

It was that one poll coming in the middle of the Wright flap.  It very well could have meant something.  

Irrational Exuberance?  ;)

We all get a little over excited sometimes over outliers that support our candidate.  A lot of Hillary supporters fell into that when that super close NC poll came out, just like a lot of Obama supporters are touting this new Pew poll with Obama up big.

haha now that you mention it

a poster at Daily kos is calling her out on this post

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/3/27/ 155544/354/586/485550

That's the danger of reading such nakedly partisan sites.

In Marsh's rush to support her case that Obama is damaged goods she's willing to jump to conclusions. The oversampling was purposefully done to get a more accurate sampling from an otherwise too small sample of AAs. The larger number of AAs polled means that the sample has a better MOE. Good pollsters then weight the results from the oversampled group before incorporating the data with the rest of the poll. That's standard operating procedures.

She's confusing the sampling rate with the representation in the final polling numbers.  I don't know if she doesn't understand, doesn't care, or is showing willful ignorance to justify the dismissal, but she's just wrong on the facts here.

That Taylor Marsh post suggesting MSNBC bias because of an "oversample" of African Americans in a poll
has been discredited.  

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2 008/03/27/827746.aspx

I was fun to read all the conspiracy theories in the comments though.  

This is the wrong thread to post this in. There have been plenty of times recently where Jerome has editorialized seemingly with no regard to the facts on the ground, but this is not one of them. It seems he has taken to heart his own posts from last night and in that we should encourage him.

I think Obama will be the nominee, and I like the fact that your comment here is polite and based on rational arguments, not insults. (Although I recognize that I'm probably a lot more emotional about posts directed at me than about posts aimed at others.)

But, anyhow, strange things happen during campaigns all the time, and I think that it's a bad idea to press Hillary Clinton and her supporters to concede before they believe the size-enhanced lady has sung.

I think it might be better and more effective to focus on the tone of the campaign.

I would like it if we could get both Obama and Hillary Clinton to commit to saying something like the following at the end of every speech:

"By the way, in closing: this has been a tough primary season. My opponent and I have our differences, and sometimes we may not be so diplomatic when describing those differences.

"But let me make one important point: We are both Democrats. We both want to help this country sail through the current storms. And we are united in our belief that the Democrats are the ones with the best charts to get us to that destination.

"We may be debating today, but, come November, we and our supporters will join together to create a brighter future."

The candidates and their top aides might be so lost in campaign pon farr that they have a hard time seeing how very much we all have in common. But, to quote Bill Clinton himself, the things that unite us are much more important than the things that divide us.

i agree with this post but only because a lot of work needs to be done between now nad November.

Let Clinton sail the course that Chris Bowers has advocated for (run through N.C. and drop out if she loses it).

however, this blog's insistence to still shill for Hillary is past its uselessness at this point. At the very least more down ticket races should be talked about, on a more consistent basis.

too much energy has been given to Hillary style hope.

If anything, 17% sounds low to me.

Actually, I've heard it a thousand times on Kos already, usually with as much supporting arguments as you provide, sometimes with a little more.

:)

Good for her!  Seriously.  It's always good to see the Clinton that I loved.

I don't think it bodes badly at all.  It is the right thing to do and it is a nice statement.

I think when the fog of primary war lifts and we all get a little perspective on the past few months, we're going to see that neither candidate was as bad as we thought they were when "attacking", especially when we add up all the comments like this from both sides.

Wow, that was a tortured sentence.  Just trying to say, let's keep our eye on the real prize, a dem in the WH.

I don't know NC very well, except for the beach, so I am willing to trust you on HRC winning NC despite every poll going the other way.

Just curious, do you think the media will treat HRC better than Obama?  That seems contrary to a lot of the thinking around these parts.

A cardinal rule of all statistics-based practices like polling is:

Anecdotes are inherently untrustworthy and should be totally ignored

Data is only worth anything in aggregate.  You may think you know NC, but your group of friends and relatives is not NC.  I live in the USA.  If I said "I know the US, and from what I've seen it's voting for Obama" would anyone take me seriously?  

Yeah, being from NC, I've always thought of my lovely home state as harboring a whole lot of racist white people (not like Alabama or Ohio, but still...).

Still, these sorts of poll numbers give me a little hope.