"I hope everyone gets that-- Clinton won the Indiana gas tax debate over the last week of the campaign, haha. "

Small victories, in a much bigger battle?

When the national polls come out, the fact every pundit and all the economist ripped her for that will take away one of her last metrics:

A National Poll Lead against Obama?

You give, you take....

Your clarity is only in your mind.  Clinton always wins the late deciders because she always wins the low information voters.  Low information voters make up their minds at the last minute.  When was Clinton behind in Indiana?  She was ahead in 18 of the 28 polls taken and had a +12 margin in the SurveyUSA poll taken on 5/4.

Clinton won the Indiana gas tax debate over the last week of the campaign, haha.

I read "late-deciding voters" as "latte-deciding voters."  Maybe this campaign really has gone on too long.

I think a lot of people, including Jerome, Paul Krugman, and a host of others, are guilty of jumping to conclusions on who won the gas tax debate.  I simply don't think we have the empirical evidence to answer that question.  One of the paradoxes of politics is that people often understand that they're being pandered to and still appreciate the fact that you care enough to pander.

As well as the popular vote and delegate counts. But who cares about those, am I right?

The fact the media is in the tank for Obama doesn't hurt. It always helps put on the most favorable narrative for him.

Well, we have got another McGovern/Dukakis in our hands. AAs also have a right to their losing candidate.

Jerome-

Are you honestly pushing this?  Maybe you were gone for the previous week, but the Gas Tax Holiday wasn't the only thing that happened in the past week.  Isn't it far more likely that Wright, who dominated the news coverage last week (was technically covered more than both Clinton and Obama) was the far more likely reason that Clinton won the "late deciders" in IN?

For that matter, this was actually no different than other sort of "lean" Clinton states, where there are lots of "undecideds" going into the polls who actually sort of favored Clinton anyway (and ended up voting that way), just as in "Obama" states there's "compression" among the black vote and undecideds broke for Obama (Clinton managed to win last day voters, but Obama won last week voters by a slightly bigger margin).

In any case, to draw your conclusion that this was a direct result of the Gas Tax holiday argument is sort of absurd, when there are not only a litany of other factors that probably contributed far more to these exit poll results.

Do you really want to get into a discussion of how (once) trusted, high-profile, public officials are able to sway public opinion, in the short term?

It's not a subject with a proud history.

I hope everyone gets that-- Clinton won the Indiana gas tax debate over the last week of the campaign, haha.

Did I miss that bit in Crashing the Gates when the netroots jumps into the De Lorean and we're all back in High School?

Critical Thinking 101 here I come

That is the stupidest post I have ever read.

How in God's name can you correlate that those people who decided late did so based on the gas tax issue?

How about the fact that Obama nearly caught her on what has been her strongest issue- economics?  That is a better guage of what happened with her gas tax issue.

But, if you need to keep coming up with excuses for why Hillary will not be president, please continue. Just know you're kind of making yourself look silly and losing the respect of fellow bloggers.

WTF is that, Jerome? Nevermind the completely presumptuous leap of logic that late deciders broke for HRC because of the gas tax debate (which she was wrong about). In truth, you have no idea why they broke for her, because they weren't asked as a subset. All we know is that they broke for her. It is entirely typical for late-deciders to be low-info voters as pointed out above, and to vote for a known quantity or name absent other compelling reasons. Your spin is beginning to look a wee bit disingenuous - and no, I wouldn't have said that two weeks ago.

I hope everyone gets that-- Clinton won the Indiana gas tax debate over the last week of the campaign, haha.

Going with the adage of those who decide late are more likely to be least informed and so more open to the gas tax plan, I could see it working on late deciders, but don't see the gas tax debate connection.  Late deciders broke for Clinton, as they have in the past.

is not a river in Egypt.  Whether it is the the proximity to Chicago or whatever else one comes up with- an essential tie where Hillary was supposed to do better because of demographics and polls finishes her of as a viable candidate- this was a very poorly run race by her. So 14 % of the dems decided to vote for her in the last week versus 10% for O- the 4% difference in such a sample is almost statistically insignificant. She would have done better running as liberal instead of offering to obliterate Iran, chastise economists or raise false alarms on her opponent- is too bad becasue I voted for her when she was running a positive campaign and I am not sure I would have voted for her now with all the pandering. The book on how not to run a campaign should be written by someone close to her. The real shame is that she would have certainly won (and so will O) and would have been a great president.      

Gallup is reporting Obama does roughly the same amongst Whites as Kerry did in 2004.  This is without the post-nomination bump...mind you when McCain became the nominee he went up 7-8 points in the polls.  I would expect the same here.  I really think the fall is going to be a blow-out.  If McCain is only even, now, with Obama... the only place he can go is down as people get knowledge of his stances.

I bet by the weekend we see Obama open up 6-7 point leads in national polling against McCain.

Given a multitude of options... you conclude that the policy HC has that will hurt our country the most is the one voters fell for.  Why do you hate the electorate so much?

Something is not jibing here with these numbers. The poll average was +6 for Clinton on REal Clear Politics. She won by under two. It stands to reason that something positive happened for Obama in that last weekend. And certainly if he "lost" the gas tax  argument in the popular vote, it energized him and brought him back to fighting shape. so however you want to slice the numbers, something good happened for Obama in the last 48 hours of the Indiana and NC races.

I hope everyone gets that-- Clinton won the Indiana gas tax debate over the last week of the campaign, haha.

Once again a terribly argued, illogical, ridiculous post.

Think this through, Clinton has won late deciders in Indiana-type states (OH, PA, etc.) in the complete ABSENCE of a gas tax policy debate.  So how on Earth is this phenomenon, paralled exactly by similar situations in the past, possibly linked to a NEW development.

And in North Carolina Obama won late deciders decisively, except for those who decided on the actual day of polling (so indecisive it's hard to believe they're voting on policy at all). So what are you talking about with this "gas tax" business. What, do they not care about gas prices in NC?

Any why on Earth would you crow about your candidate's terrible policy?

Bizarre post.

The expectations game has kept this show on wheels since it was, for all practical purposes, finished after Wisconsin.  Fitting that it essentially ends in a similar fashion.

Can we stop talking about beating expectations as if that's what determines our nominee?  The fact is, Obama increased his delegate lead and took the possibility of Clinton winning the popular vote off the table, so all the superdelegates wavering on that issue can instead look at pledged delegates, where Obama is back to being ahead by 160, with only a couple hundred left to assign.  He's getting real close to passing her in superdelegate endorsements.  Whether or not Clinton did better or worse in Indiana than people expected her to do is irrelevant.  The fact is she won it 51-49, and netted about four delegates.  Obama won North Carolina 56-42, and netted between 15 and 19 delegates.  It's over.

It's disappointing that for some reason you seem to be happy that an extremely bad policy gets votes.

Perhaps you should rethink your statement Jerome.

Haven't we stopped twisting logic since after you maintained that John Edwards was really the front runner late last year?

And not economically, I'm talking politically.

It gave Obama something to attack, and shifted the focus to his area, "change of old politics."

It was a liberal loser of an idea, because Hillary, apart from her much earlier claims to it, it first got press as originating from McCain, and had already been established in the left as a bad idea.

It's announcement came right around tax time, with the incentive checks forecasted to appear...great, a few hundred from the Bush admin, and Hillary's idea of helping out is 70 bucks at best?

Give this one up, Jeremy, don't pick another loser.

Anti-intellectualism is bad.

Given her pretty consistent leads in the state for the two weeks preceding the contest, her impressive "come from behind" win strikes me as a hard sell.  But whatever.  In my mind, the whole expectations BS stopped mattering a long time ago.  Also, the idea that Obama won older voters here b/c of proximity to Illinois seems silly.  Among white voters in the so-called Chicago suburbs, Obama got his butt kicked.  Likely because those markets heard even more about the Wright BS than the rest of the state.  

If she won the gas-tax debate, let's see how much she talks about it going forward. I guarantee that she'll back away from it, and speak in far more ambiguous terms about challenging oil companies and so on.

She stood alone on that plan (or with McCain in the perception of the press) and Stephanopolous' grilling of her to name one economist that thinks its a good idea stumped her. It looked bad.

There's no two ways to slice this. Whether you think it's a good idea or not, good politics or not, the verdict was made in the media, so she loses that battle. That makes it bad policy, AND politics. It's all that counts. Perception is everything in politics, and the meta-narrative (the media framing) goes against her.

There's absolutely no evidence that she "won the gas tax debate" at all. She's always won the late deciders.

To me that points to a theory that many people don't really feel all that strongly towards her, but when pushed to actually decide they say OK fine and vote for her. That there's something (gee what could it be) about Obama that takes him off the table, but they're not that fond of Hillary either but suck it up and vote for her when they  have to pick.

Or some other theory. We're both just making up idle theories... difference is I'm happy to admit it.

Is there a crosstab on how many of those late deciders thought that Obama was a Muslim? Or even knew who he was?

These are low-info voters and you don't really prove the point you are trying to make. This follows the trend and doesn't prove Hillary's gas pander worked at all. I know you are a part of her campaign and all, but try harder next time to make a believeable argument.

Given that Clinton won late-deciders by a lower margin than she usually does, I'm inclined to think the gas-tax issue actually hurt her.

Unfortunately, there's no way to measure this for sure with this data set. Even exit polls calibrated to results have margins of error, and these are awfully close to 50%.

In conclusion, this last, desperate argument in favor of pushing terrible policy for political gain doesn't hold much water.

Ha.
Ha.

Right, before Indiana late breaking deciders went 2-1 in favor of Clinton.  Clinton underperforms that mark in Indiana and you credit her with a win on the gas tax issue?

Why would you even want to credit her for anything at all concerning the Gas Tax Holiday.  One would hope on environmental concerns alone you would oppose such an idea.  

Jerome, you seem to come up with more and more inventive ways to discredit yourself.  Hillary's a mess, Bill has turned in to a real pig and I say that as someone who has voted for both of them.

Carville and Davis and Begala and all the other Clinton cronies have proven that it was always about them and their power, not the party or what it's members stand for. Bill Richardson is a Judas?  I also love the way you, like them, have a deep need to turn blacks in to some kind of poisonous "other" that is to be viewed as some kind of necessary evil. You seem to be eager to join their ranks.  Good luck with that.

Also, it's complete b.s. that the tax issue worked for Hilary, it backfired, and you'll see it in W Va when she barely mentions it.

Sorry, just nitpicking but I see this mistake so often and it drives me nuts:

"So, why did Obama do much better then, among women in Indiana, then he did among women in places like Pennsylvania and Ohio?"

You want:

"So, why did Obama do much better among women in Indiana than he did among women in places like PA and OH?"

Ah i knew it was too good to be true.  I cannot wait for the Jerome posts during this summer.

The overall exit poll says she should have won by 6. She ALWAYS wins late deciders who "come home" to the familiar. I bet most of those late deciders for Clinton lived in Southern Indiana where Obama was less known.

The big divide is NOrthern and Southern Indiana. Some people don't realize just how racially polarized NW Indiana is. For Obama to come near even in Laporte County and break 40% in Porter County is amazing. Then there's heavily white Hammond, which the mayor says went to Clinton by only 600 votes.  

Unfortunately for Clinton, Indiana was held on the same day as North Carolina, and with its early win in hand for Obama, he ruled the media narrative of the night.

Geez Jerome, you sound "bitter."  Enough already.  Time to quit making excuses, or coming up with technicalities a la Lanny Davis for how Clinton is still in this thing.  I was an early voter supporter of Clinton.  I can read the writing on the wall. It's over.  Obama is our candidate.  Time to stop negating his victories and start helping him frame the message to keep independents in his corner.  

I'm reminded of a song....
Yes it's over.
Call it a day.
Sorry that it had to end this way.
No reason to pretend.
We knew it had to end.  It's over. Yes, it's over.
Too much too little too late to try again with you.
Too much too little too late to lie again with you.
We're in the middle ending something that we knew...is over.  Yes it's over!

I hope everyone gets that-- Clinton won the Indiana gas tax debate over the last week of the campaign, haha.

People are indeed laughing. That must be why Clinton may be about to dump her "winning" proposal...

With a big loss in North Carolina and a razor-thin victory in Indiana, the Times reports that Senator Hillary Clinton's advisers are expected to reconsider her campaign strategy for upcoming Democratic primaries -- specifically, whether to continue pushing for a federal gas tax cut.

She pulled more voters in the last month than he did...why? Pollsters need to ask more precise questions such as  did Rev. Wright had an impact in changing your vote or did you change your vote since the Re. Wright issue came to light?

Questions like that would make it easy for us and everyone to assess the impact of Wright.

Hillary lost the age group under 65, the over 65s she won 70-30. Hillary did not win the gas tax debate, its just that the fogies decided Wright was too scary, or they didn't want some inexperienced whippersnapper, or they don't like the fact that young people think they know better than they do. The gas tax debate made Hillary look like a pandering jackass (70% of respondents said she was saying it just to help herself get elected) and lost her respect among the few on the fence in the party who were still playing nice with her (Udall, and the other Congressional members who openly spoke out about it - right down to Colbert and Stewart who flat out called her George W's second advent). And now she's lost the nomination.

Ha ha.

Hey Jerome,

I'd like to know where you get the idea that these late deciders made their decision solely on the gas tax issue.

If you can't come up proof for that, well, then congratulations on yet another post that makes you look incredibly foolish and willing to grasp at anything to not appear wrong in your prediction that Clinton would most likely win the nomination when you said:

I don't pretend to know how we get from "the math" to the final outcome, but I do I believe that the contest has made a dramatic turn, and it points in the direction of Clinton winning the nomination.

This game is over!  What happened is that Obama won!

Now Clinton will continue to convulse and "fight" and try and keep preaching that Obama isn't ready for the White House but for what purpose?  To undermine his chances against McCain?

You lost Hillary.  People rejected your sales pitch.  I know it's a tough one.  But suck it up like a big kid would and do the honourable thing for once in the past 5 months and graciously accept defeat.

Your base should wince in shame at your petulance.

I had naively hoped Hillary's operatives would follow her gracious behavior last night and today. But I just saw Wolfson on TV attacking Obama in the old fashion.

So the strategy is apparently for Hillary to be all soft and cute while her people gnaw on the ends of the old plots to damage Obama.

Oh well. That strategy is what got her beaten so far, and so it will continue. Hillary and her operatives are incapable of learning, growing, and accepting accomplished fact. And voters have dealt with it as they should -- by rejecting her.

"I hope everyone gets that-- Clinton won the Indiana gas tax debate over the last week of the campaign, haha."

To be sure about that you would have to be sure that people were telling the truth to the pollsters when they said they were late deciding.

Perhaps one set of the candidate's supporters more than the other are keen to portray themselves as open minded rather than having made up their minds based on factors other than policy long ago.

Not sure "Democratic voters are suggestible morons" is something to be happy about.

I would agree with most of the analysis here, with the exception of the Chicago media market theory.  While Obama did indeed win in Lake County, he did not win by as large a margin as expected (something like 58 percent?). Also, the surrounding counties went for Clinton.

I think also places like Indianapolis and Big Bend went equally if not more than equally stongly for Obama as did Gary.  So it looks to me like were seeing the same Obama base (college grads, urban centers, and youth) carrying most of the weight in Indiana.

Wow.  If you are really determined you can miss the forest for the trees even if there are only two trees.  Hillary has been losing for some time and list night only drove another nail in her coffin.  She's getting beyond delusional.  Too bad.

70% for Clinton in West Virginia.

With all due respect to Jerome his comment that "Given all that, Clinton did make a somewhat surprising win in a state that she was behind" is simply not based in fact.  The SUSA poll released just a couple days before May 6 showed Clinton with a TEN point lead.  Similarly, the InsiderAdvantage poll showed her with a 4 point lead.  Instead of winning Indiana by 6 to 8 points, she only won by one percent (50.5 to 49.5).  The expectations that Jerome is talking about were based on her performance in state wide polls conducted just before the election, an election she fared far worse in terms of performance than those polls indicated would occurr.

IT'S STILL A FUCKING SCAM, JEROME!

I'd rather lose a few votes for supporting good policy and opposing bad policy than win them by pandering and lying to everyone.  We tried that for the last eight years and how ell did that work out?  What kind of president do you want?

The argument about the Chicago media market also fails to take into consideration that Clinton and Obama basically tied one another in Evansville, Indiana, in the southwestern part of the state, a location where she was expected to do much better than she did.

I don't understand why we are laughing at the fact that Clinton's spin on the gas tax worked. The further our society moves towards rewarding masters of rhetoric rather than encouraging debate and actual thoughtful deliberation the worse off we will be.

And just so the Clinton supporters don't jump on me by reflex, I'm not claiming Obama's hands are completely clean either (though I'd argue he's done a better job at creating an atmosphere for reasonable debate, see his race speech for example). I'm just citing a particular example that I find disturbing.

This stupid analysis depends on the exit polls being 100% accurate.

"I hope everyone gets that-- Clinton won the Indiana gas tax debate over the last week of the campaign, haha. "

Like Karl Rove laughing at the faith-based crowd "haha"?

I mean. Hillary used a calculated deception to temporarily trick people into voting for her and it worked. Fabulous.

Jerome - that ain't crashing the gate - that's playing the same game the paid for the gate to be built. It's the very antipathy of why we're all devoting so much of our lives to the premise of your book.

Jerome,

Does it even begin to sink in when 90+% of your readers disagree with you and call you out on your BS.  I believe we are here because we (used to) generally agree with you.

Okay, so the pandering worked. I don't know if that reflects positively on Senator Clinton, because the tax gas holiday was, is, and will always remain a stupid, stupid idea.

I hope everyone gets that-- Clinton won the Indiana gas tax debate over the last week of the campaign, haha.

Whoopee!!  Dishonest pandering works!!

Hooray, hooray, I'm your silver lining...

Go Clinton!!

well, I'd like to cut Jerome a break. Anyone who uses exit polls to make a point is quite the humorous type.

This doesn't prove a thing.  It's quite possible that without Obama's counter-attack on the gas tax, those proportions of late-deciding voters going for Hillary would have been well in the 60s rather than the mid to upper 50s as they were.

The evidence for this is in the sudden slump in Indiana tracking polls for Hillary during the last few days of the campaign.  I have little doubt that without falling for McCain's pander, Hillary would have been bagging 60 percent plus of those late-deciding voters and she would have won Indiana comfortably.

Jerome Armstrong's efforts to justify the gas tax holiday, at least politically, are becoming quite strained, almost sad.

Because one thing (late breakers marginally turning to Clinton) follows another (Clinton making gas tax a cornerstone of her late appeal) does indicate the latter caused the former.  It is a logical fallacy.  All the more so since every state to date, with few exceptions, have followed this pattern of late deciders going to Clinton.  This pattern was observed in many states before the gas tax was an issue, often in greater proportions than IN and NC.  One could more justifiably make the claim her gimmick reduced the size of the late decider break to Clinton.

There is nothing in the CNN exit poll data Armstrong cites regarding the gas tax holiday.  There is nothing regarding issue preferences among late deciders, gas tax or otherwise.  It could be comfort with the known, it could be Wright, it could be endorsements, it could be a lot of things but the poll he cites provides no evidence to support any conclusions as to issue preferences of late deciders whatsoever.

On the other hand, evidence from the CBS/NYT poll on the eve of the IN and NC primaries suggests most Americans view the proposal as an election gimmick and they were evenly split as to its merits (Q49 & Q50)
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pd f/politics/20080505_POLL.pdf

This evidence does not disprove that late deciders made their choice on the basis of the gas tax gimmick but it is at least some evidence on the question as opposed to assertions entirely devoid of such on-point evidence in favor of logical fallacies.

Most late polls suggested a Clinton surge coincident with her gas tax gimmick and yet final margins were tighter.  This would more reasonably suggest the gimmick had a negative or insignificant effect, but certainly does not substantiate any claims about a positive effect, at least on the strength of the data Armstrong cites.

The Obama campaign has been very effective - they had effectively made the election a racial divide. Everything that Bill Clinton said was racist, according to the Obama campaign. Bill Clinton's years as President was even suggested as worst than Bush's.    Very sad. In the last 28 years, we've never had the kind of prosperity that we had during the Clinton years. But, the Obama campaign has obliterated it beyond recognition. Very sad.

Hopefully, this is not to the detriment of the Democratic Party.

I think the folks in Lake County, Indiana intentionally withheld their voting results so the state would not be called for Hillary until very late, thus giving Obama a big win early in the evening and making Hillary look bad.  It was a great political tactic by the Obama campaign and supporters.

Jerome, you are wrong.

First, this analysis discounts the voters that had already decided, but were not polled. There were the new registrations, over 200,000 of them in fact. There were alot of people who had decided already. The battleground was not in the small margin of those who had not decided.

Second, you make the claim that Clinton came from behind.  In Indiana? Where she was polling has having been +12 points ahead for months on end?
That was not correct.

You are choosing a well sharpened axe to grind.
Do you remember saying "The Clinton campaign should make a big deal out of Guam " as part of your bullet points for success.

Clinton lost there too.

How can any reasonable intelligent person write such gargage about a shitty policy suggestion?

The Blogfather has fallen and he cant get up.