Thursday, May 01, 2008

MORE DAMN HORSERACE BLOGGING

OK, I realize I'm letting blog coverage of the presidential race make me stupid and horserace-obsessed, but here goes:

What I'm seeing today is a split -- public opinion seems to be going one way, superdelegates the other. Obama's picked up twice as many superdelegates as Clinton since the Pennsylvania primary, including former DNC chairman Joe Andrew (who was a Clinton delegate) and three newly announced names from Illinois. Yet public opinion polls are going Clinton's way: She outperforms Obama against McCain in new CBS and Rasmussen polls and does better than Obama against McCain in big swing states according to Quinnipiac. Moreover, Clinton's actually leading in one North Carolina poll, while Obama's taken a significant hit in another.

If she now has a real shot in both states that vote on Tuesday, while superdelegates such as Andrew abandon her, I could imagine her starting to run against the very superdelegates she's been courting -- describing them as just more hoity-toity elitists who don't want her beer-and-a-shot campaign to succeed.

I guess she'll need to tell the persuadable superdelegates privately that it's all just for show. But it's imaginable.

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