I'm so sick of democrats reinforcing this circular meme that Hillary is hated by a majority of americans.  While she does have high negatives, these are at a clear ceiling.  They have no where to go but down.  If she gets clear of Obama and is able to fight from the democratic party she will be able to lower those negatives just as she did in New York.

1. The nation is not NY
2. Her unlikability is a major obstacle
3. Hillary has not been tested with a strong negative national campaign against her

It is better to plan on what is true rather than to pretend it is not there.

I have nothing against Hillary. I like her. I find her likable. I find her life story inspiring.

But for conservatives, she is Fidel Castro running for president. Totally irrational, but true.

Those polls show strong negative feelings towards her. Not people who dislike her, but people who say that they will never vote for her.

This makes a race in November hinge on a small minority of voters.

I have to confess I hate her myself, not her as a person, but what she stands for. She will take any stand that will advance her cause with the terror Moms and on other topics. She is arrogant and her lying is not even veiled. Its so blatant. If someone is going to lie to me I expect them to have the courtesy to disguise it and make me go do research to make sure. You don't even have to do that with her. She is so in your face with the falsehoods. Is it any wonder that the less educated voter is going for her? The code word for the educated voter who is voting for Obama is "latte drinking". If lattes make your smart then I recommend that everyone drink three a day.

Hillary has demonstrated that she will fight for the nomination and Barack must be able to counter what is thrown at him with speed and agility. Whatever negative stuff is floating out there- it should be fleshed out now. Consider it an early "pre-test" for the fall season.

Regardless of who wins the Democratic Nomination, one thing is certain, RNC et al will demonize the candidate as F.Castro's N. American counterpart.  

I only hope that whoever ends up with the nomination, that he/she will show respect and humility toward the other side,  AND understand that a "house" divided cannot stand.

won't vote for the candidate who eventually wins the Presidency, and it doesn't matter if the winning candidate is Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John McCain, or Jesus H. Christ.  A 20% margin of victory simply isn't in the cards for anyone.

I'm not sure why that needs to be pointed out, but since we're going to throw out the 40% to 50% thing....

Hi, Silence, Dogood,

You are right: between 40 and 50 percent will not vote for a candidate. But that is not what I am calling attention to.

The difference here is between "never" and "won't." Having people saying that they will >>never<< vote for your means that you will not be able to persuade them to change their mind.

Your working margin is automatically smaller. And if this is the case, you better make sure that everyone on your side shows up to vote.

This is why Hillary must run a positive campaign for the rest of the primary. If she wins, she must make sure that her 50% stays there.

That was my mistake. After the first link, the rest track the number of people who will "never" vote for Hillary.

If less than 40% of people aren't saying they won't or would never vote for Obama (or McCain), then a sizeable percentage of the survey sample is lying.  It's not an intentional lie--it just means there are more undecided voters who don't yet know who they will or won't vote for.

But given the one man, one vote principle behind our elections, if someone doesn't vote for Obama in November, that's functionally the equivalent of never voting for Obama, so the implication behind the numbers you cite is obviously untrue.  Between 40% and 50% of voting-age Americans will never vote for any of the remaining three candidates in any matchup.

Stating that someone will never for for Hillary vote is a strong position against her.

Spin it however you want it, but that is what it means. Is it unfair for Hillary? Yes. Is that what he will have to work on if she win the nomination? Absolutely.

Hillary needs the Obama supporters if she hopes to win the presidency since she is working with a thin margin to begin with. Running a positive campaign will help her win over Obama supporters.

Unfortunately, some of the people who say they will vote for Obama, won't actually do it. Remember Harold E. Ford Jr form Tennessee?  I am pretty sure he was ahead in the polls coming up to the election. When white people pulled the curtain, they didn't vote for him like they said they would.

Now, the same happenes with women.  Republicans and Dems say they would vote for a woman. They just can't think of a single one.  Not Condi, not Hillary, not Liddy Dole, not anyone.

I don;t trust the polls when it's about candidates people are SUPPOSED to like OR hate. And when we bitch about Hillary because she is as ambitious as any man running, we make it harder on ourselves, and feed the Republican machine.

When people say that they will never vote for a candidate, they are stating strong dislike.

This is not anti-Hillary. If anything, I was expecting to get flack from Obama supporters since I am basically thinking in terms of what could happen if she won.

I am afraid that Hillary will wage a campaign where she win a battle but loses the war. If she turns off Obama supporters with negative campaining, her chances for winning in the general are reduced.

I really want a democrat in the White House. If Hillary wins, I am willing to try to persuade Obama supporters to help her campaign.

But if Hillary alienates Obama supporters enough, I won't have any good will to work with.  

I would say that she has a slim chance.  Anyone who looks at the delegate math says that it will be virtually impossible for her to make up the difference in terms of pledged delegates.  Her best option appears to be to run a scorched earth campaign - going nuclear negative to try and force the superdelegates to come to her, and that sort of thing is going to destroy the party.

If she were running a positive campaign with humor or something else (i.e. not trying to tear down Obama), I wouldn't mind so much.  This is sort of the role that Huckabee was playing - he was still running but he wasn't attacking McCain either.  Thus there really wasn't much of a cost to McCain to have Huckabee stay in the race so long.  Clinton's strategy is like setting fire to the house and then seeing who heads for the door first.

I suspect as we get past Penn., and assuming both candidates remain at that point, people will start to take a closer look at how the superdelegates work exactly.

This idea that the superdelegates should reflect the will of the people can mean different things to different people.

Does it mean that superdelegates as a group should just back, en masse, whichever candidate earned more pledged delegates? Or does it mean something else.

Are those superdelegates who are elected representatives under a different obligation, when it comes to "following the will of the people," than superdelegates who are party elders or operatives?

For example, should the Senators from California (both of whom are superdelegates) back Obama because he won the pledged delegate count? Or should they back the candidate that their voters -- the voters to which they are accountable - chose?

If superdelegate votes were counted like this, I have absolutely no idea how this would shake out as between Clnton and Obama at the end of the day, but it may be quite different than the split of pledged delegates, the numbers of which for any given area are often based on an arcane set of rules that includes data points unrelated to this election (such as turnout in past elections).

Finally, it is by no means an original point, but isn't it fair to ask whether the votes of Sens. Kennedy and Kerry, and Gov. Patrick, all of which will go to Obama, really reflect the will of the voters? If their independent exercise of judgment is worthy of respect, and it is, then isn't that true for every superdelegate?

She hasn't endorsed a candidate, but will vote for HRC at the DNC because Clinton won the California primary.

See here:

http://www.mercurynews.com/new...

After Edwards bowed out I was ambivalent about whom to support and spent quite a while thinking it over before going for Obama.  I was worried about Hillary's negatives because they can be brought out in the general election.  What hasn't been addressed here isn't whether Hillary can make herself likable to the voters, but whether she can withstand the kind of negative attacks which are bound to come from McCain if she has the nomination.  

So far, Obama has run a positive campaign.  Most of the negative attacks have come from Hillary, and as we saw with the kitchen sink strategy she's really willing to get down in the pit and sling mud.  Not only has this made ME start to dislike her, but it's causing backlash among many Obama supporters.  Moreover, now that she's busy burning down her own house in an effort to win the property, she's not going to leave much to build on if she should get the nomination. But my point is, given that Obama has NOT run a negative campaign, I think we are being lulled into complacency about just how ugly a campaign against Hillary can get.  There's a lot to attack her on, both from Obama's point of view and from the Republicans' POV.  

In spite of Hillary's ridiculously inflated Canada NAFTA "controversy" Obama still hasn't gone negative.  In spite of her attacks on his relationship with Rezko he still hasn't gone to Whitewater, to the Rose Law Firm, to the FBI files, to Travelgate, and more recently to her own involvement with that Chinese guy who was indicted last year (sorry, no time to look it up).  Just because Obama isn't airing out Hillary's skeleton closet doesn't mean McCain won't, and in spades.  Moreover, her central claim against Obama, that she has more experience and can pick up the phone at 3 a.m., pales in comparison to McCain's experience.  She has little to compete with against McCain because she hasn't staked out very many positions in opposition to his in the Senate, and she cannot begin to claim superior experience, and she cannot begin to claim squeaky clean background to his Keating 14 scandal.  She would have to win on things like likability, but she's effectively torching that avenue with her relentless attacks on Obama.

Sorry, people, I think if Hillary gets the nod we're in serious danger of a McCain presidency.

"In spite of her attacks on his relationship with Rezko he still hasn't gone to Whitewater, to the Rose Law Firm, to the FBI files, to Travelgate."

Did you sleep through the late 90s?  All of these were manufactured non-scandals by an out-of-control GOP and an al-too-lazy and compliant media.

It isn't even a matter of nothing ever been proved. These have been investigated as much as it is possible to investigate something and no wrong-doing was found.

If Obama were to go to Whitewater, what would he find, except for a failed vacation home development?

How many people on the street interviews have you heard where the interviewees refer to Obama as a Muslim?  It's part of the res gestae of this campaign.  

It doesn't have to be truthful for it to harm Hillary; however, it certainly is not like she and Bill were fully exonerated, either.  Something like Travelgate wasn't a crime, but it was a low thing to do.  It happened, that's indisputable.  Same with the FBI files.  They clearly were in the wrong place and probably being used for the wrong reason.  It's not like the story was made up out of whole cloth.  The Rose law firm DID have questionable real estate dealings.  It was just a question of how much could be attributed to Hillary.  To call all of what happened during the Clinton years a mere fantasy by the right wing implies that maybe you slept through the 90s.  And how about that contributor to the Clinton campaign, you know, the guy who fled the country and was indicted and later brought back for trial?  Are you trying to tell me that's nothing but the Rezko situation is something else entirely?  Don't we have a little pot and kettle problem here?  On NAFTA, this morning I heard Hillary refer to the alleged statements by Obama's adviser at the Canadian embassy when in fact the Canadian embassy is supporting Goolsbee's account of what happened and Goolsbee has firmly stated that the words used were those of the Canadian reporting them, not his.  However, to listen to Hillary, it's as if the words quoted came directly from the mouth of Obama.  She either lied, or she has advisers who lied to her about the situation.  She's playing dirty pool.  

Whitewater, Travelgate, FBI files, Rose Law Form --

Yes, it was exactly like that.

Oh, and you forgot to mention the murder of Vince Foster.

Sorry, not buying it.  Don't go to the Vince Foster nonsense when I have not (although I seem to recall something about files disappearing from his office, possibly to avoid embarrassing revelations).  But there is no question that there was some questionable behavior on Hillary's part over things like the Rose Law Firm billing records that couldn't be found for two years and then turned up mysteriously in her file room, and the travel office firings about which, when called before the grand jury, she made some questionable statements contradicted by others, and the presence of FBI files on former Republican WH employees which some people at the WH claimed came about at her instigation.  I'm not saying she's committed any crimes, but there are some apparent ethical lapses or lapses in judgment on her part over the years.  

You still haven't answered the question of why she's hammering away at Obama over Rezko when she had that contributor issue of her own last year.  That's because you have no answer to why she would assert that hers don't stink but his does, if you catch my drift.  She hasn't satisfactorily answered why it's taking so long to produce her income tax records.  Obama did so months ago.  How hard is it to copy them onto a disk or website and make them accessible?  

As I said before, it's not a question of whether anyone can PROVE wrongdoing on her part, just whether they can introduce enough to make people scrutinize her and her answers and wonder what she's hiding.  When people are being scrutinized it's better for them that they are perceived as likable rather than strong.  Hillary's going for strong and unlikable.  Guess what?  People like to dislike and question the integrity of unlikable people if they've got something before them that would lead one to question a person's integrity.  It's human nature to ascribe all sorts of bad behavior to unpleasant people.  Likable people's integrity is harder to impugn, and forgiveness is greater for those who might be regarded as having a touch of larceny in their hearts but a merry smile on their lips.      

I've been consistent in saying that Rezko is a BS issue.

As for the supposed Clinton scandals, I think the record contradicts you, but also think it is a pointless battle.  

In any event, you needn't worry. Apparently, Obama surrogates have been alluding to these issues anyway.  

Obama surrogates feel compelled to go negative because she's pushing them to it.  Hers is a poorly run campaign with no sensible strategy.  They want to win the nomination and have sight of the ultimate goal.  Hillary didn't need to go negative on Obama.  She could have lavished him with praise for his vision while at the same time stressing the alleged prematurity of his entry onto the scene.  She could have enticed Democrats with the prospect of a strong, accomplished, older candidate with a neophyte young guy in the wings just waiting for a bit more time in the trenches before he would be ready to assume the mantle.  There were plenty of other ways to package Hillary without turning negative and threatening the welfare of the party in general and both their campaigns   in particular.    

the problem with that is Obama claims to represent a different kind of politics that is a break from that.

The inconsistency doesn't particularly bother me (I don't look for or expect perfection in candidates), but it leaves him vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy.

Hillary's experience pales compared with McCain's. Hillary's security credentials are nothing compared with McCains's.

The 3 AM ad was an ad for the McCain for president. I am sure that Republican strategists are laughing themselves silly that Hillary is paying for ads with Republican perspectives.

I defended Clinton's statements over the weekend about McCain being able to claim he is more qualified to be CiC than Obama as her imagining the line of GOP attacks on both herself and Obama, and arguing she was better positioned to respond.

It's a debatable position, but, IMHO, a legitimate argument to make as long as it was done in the hypothetical and in the context of discussing electability.

If this article is accurate, however, then Clinton has crossed the line in discussing this issue. It is simply wrong to claim that McCain is, in actuality, better qualified to be CiC than Obama, because he is not. It is not even close:

http://weblogs.chicagotribune....

I hope this is the last she tries to frame this issue like this. If she can't do it correctly, then she ought not do it at all.

This story is very disturbing.

Hillary seems to be in auto-destruct mode and ready to take the party down in flames with her.

She knows that if she loses the nomination, all of these statements will be used against Obama.

Some may argue that this is the purpose: have so many sound bits of Hillary supporting McCain that the super delegates will give her the nomination because Hillary praised McCain so much that the super delegates will be hesitant to support Obama.

Hillary is campaigning for McCain, plain and simple.

And this must be stopped.

What hasn't been discussed is the implication of having Hillary, as opposed to Obama, at the top of the ticket in Virginia come this November.  Hillary would probably drag down the votes for the Dems' candidates up and down the line.  Mark Warner could probably survive that, but what about some of the lesser known Dem candidates?