Edwards was leading McCain 44% to 39% in May of 2007 and by even more 48% to 37% in April 2007 in this same poll]

So Edwards was actually the only Democratic candidate that WAS NOT within the statistical range of defeating McCain in the most recent Diageo post-Iowa survey.

That misses what happened during all of 2007 that set the stage for the results in the Jan. 10-12 2008 poll not the least of which were the Iowa Caucus and the New Hampshire primary. Edwards finishes 2nd in Iowa but the Clinton-Obama storyline continued.

After Obama announced in February the press began trashing Edwards. The trashing continued from that point on and finally in the last months of 2007 Edwards all but vanished and the press turned the Democratic race into a two person event.

In spite of that, I saw head-to-heads, by state, in the fall showing Edwards beating every Republican, including McCain, and by comfortable margins even in Kentucky. In Ohio it was a blowout for Edwards against all Republicans.

The press wanted McCain and look who the Republican nominee will be.

The press wanted a two person ‘historic’ Democratic race and look what we have.

The press wants Clinton beaten so the Obama South Carolina primary win was blown way out of proportion and her big wins in Michigan and Florida were ignored or otherwise marginalized. The no delegates angle was played as an excuse to ignore impressive wins. In Michigan the press set amn abitrary threshold of 60% for Clinton claiming that less than 60% would be a loss. When she got 55% the press declared it a ’setback.’ The press ignored the no delegate situation in Michiagn to report failure (against their declared threshold). The press used the zero delegate count in Florida to justify ignoring a 17 point triumph but had no problem ignoring the zero delegate count in Michigan to advance a story of failing based on their (the press) standard for success. The press wanted to shrink Clinton’s nationwide lead and what have we got.

The press has once again suckered us in they’ve controlled the primaries to get the match-up they want.

They seem to like Obama and look who appears to have the momentum. They ignore Obama’s negatives and have granted him, for the primaries, a teflon coating.

If Obama wins and opposes McCain, Obama’s teflon will be replaced with velcro.

Remember, the press LOOOVES McCain.

Lamont has endorsed Obama but in the Senate race, Obama campaigned for Lieberman in the primary and was not to be seen during the general. Edwards DID campaign for Lamont side-by-side.

To be precise, Obama sent out an email of support in the General election supporting Lamont over Lieberman. I don’t know whether he campaigned for Lieberman in the Primary or not…though I would suspect he would have tended to favor an incumbent Democrat over an untested primary challenger. But that may have been for the simple reason that he feared losing the seat (and the Senate) to the Republicans. But I don’t know if he actually raised funds or made public appearances with JoeLie.

As well, was his so-called “lack of support” for Lamont unusual? Did he appear with every other Democratic Senatorial candidate in 2006? Was he focussed on supporting Democrats in Illinois? I’d say that his even sending an email was a bit of a slap to Joe-Lie, as was Edwards not supporting his mentor in the New Democrats caucus group in the Senate.

“Now thinking about the next election for president in 2008, if the election for U.S. president were held today, would you be voting for the Democratic candidate or the Republican candidate?” Options rotated.

Republican 33% Democratic 48% Neither 4% Unsure 15%

“Now, suppose the general election for president in 2008 were being held today between Republican [see below] and Democrat [see below] — for whom would you vote?” If Unsure: “Which way would you lean as of today?” Names rotated

John McCain (R) 42% Barack Obama (D)43% Unsure 14%
John McCain (R)48% Hillary Clinton (D) 45% Unsure 8%
John McCain (R)48% John Edwards (D) 40% Unsure 12% [Edwards was leading McCain 44% to 39% in May of 2007 and by even more 48% to 37% in April 2007 in this same poll]

So Edwards was actually the only Democratic candidate that WAS NOT within the statistical range of defeating McCain in the most recent Diageo post-Iowa survey. I still believe that he would have proportionately picked up many undecideds, since there is a strong tendency for the public to want a Democrat in the WH (Q#1). Consider the dire fact that even if all of the “undecideds” broke for the Republicans in that result that they’d still only have a horse-race. Another quirk is that some of those that might not vote for EITHER MAJOR PARTY might still have selected McCain in a head-to-head question.

McCains rise is very odd to me. Exit surveys suggest that many of his supporters actually oppose the US staying in Iraq. He also has a large number of Pro-Choice Republicans behind him. Yet on both these issues McCain is definitively more conservative than these supporters. It may be that his erstwhile “maverick” position falsely leads moderate Republican voters to support him. Or perhaps although they are “liberal” on these issues they just aren’t very important to them vs. things like cutting the tax-rates on people making over $1 million/year?

One more, and very important point. Many of these surveys use weightings in their surveys that are very unlikely to have any meaning at all this fall. They weight by those who are “likely to vote” by prior voting records. Registration of new voters is massively up for Democrats. In California they just announced that Democrats had been registering new party members 4:1 over the Republicans. In every competitive primary thus far the Democrats have pulled in almost double the number of voters that the Republican primary did. This is true in “Red States” as well as Blue States.

The weightings for the Republicans tend to be higher in surveys and polls based on age, registration and voting history. The fact is that the raw data is never used, straight-up, for obtainining the results you see in these polls. There are different models used to massage the data to predict “probable voters” [Exit polls are a bit different since they are actual responses from real physical voters, but can sometimes be erroneous if some districts are over- or under-sampled. These surveys can, however, be corrected by going back over them and adjusting their results once all the precinct counts are reported]

Appearance in a primary to vote is also a high indicator of actual turnout, but cannot be obtained in these surveys until after the fact. In the Democratic Primaries that have just occurred, young people are voting at levels 25-35% above what they did in previous Presidential elections (and making up a larger amount of the total participants)…utterly unheard of levels of response in Primary elections (which tend to be older voters, again).

None of this is going into these surveys of “success” against a Republican candidate.

I’d also point out that in the last set of surveys in January both Clinton and Obama were within the statistical range of defeating McCain…they were not definitively losing to him. But they were easily defeating the other Republican candidates.

It’s a love fest for Senators. “Why did you have to be so good” Carly Simmon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cE7V_cOMamw

It seems none of us are as clever as the MSM. Their manipulation of the campaign(s) becomes chrystal clear.

I am very upset about how the media treated Kucinich and Edwards.

Bob in HI

pluege February 2nd, 2008 at 10:45 am
162

Big Media has the last 8 years now denied us 2 of our very best candidates in Gore and Edwards, leaving us once again the choice of least worst.

There is NOTHING more important for progressives to make a better today and tomorrow, for restoring America and American values, for defending the Constitution and the rule of law than to…

BREAKUP BIG MEDIA NOW!!!!!!

Odd you should say that. This thread plus one over at Emptywheel have had me wonderng just what benefit We the People derive from the current arrangement, and my answer to myself was, “Almost nothing, and that little is outweighed by the toxicity of the lockstep, blindness, and willful deception.” If I could get a good daily crossword puzzle, I think that I would be quite happy with a ‘grapevine’ approach to news. It would not be 48 hours after the demise of the MSM before the net coughed up a Google-like service on an RSS feed that gave you better, wider, and fairer coverage than we get now. You could probably cobble together something like that right now.