Editorials

Don’t count Hillary out! April 21, 2008 - No reporter cited

The pundits and pollsters have already proclaimed Senator Barak Obama the winner in the Democratic Presidential Primary race. They discount the upcoming votes in Pennsylvania and Indiana. And the talking heads don’t believe “the Clintons” can pull a rabbit out of the hat this time.

They may be right, but a recent Gallup poll has Sen. Hillary Clinton leading Obama for the first time since mid-March.

The lead is insignificant, 46 percent to 45, but it does indicate there is positive movement in the Clinton campaign, and best of all from the Clinton camp, Obama’s negatives are rising.

In political campaigns, candidates use tracking polls to see how they are doing. Voters are asked simply if they have a favorable or unfavorable feeling about the candidate. These polls are cheap and quick but they indicate a strength or weakness.

Surprisingly both Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama have negative ratings higher than their positives. Obama has a 47 percent favorable and a 50 percent unfavorable opinion rating while Clinton has a 45-53 percent rating. What those ratings indicate is that both candidates are vulnerable.

And Republican John McCain has a 54 percent favorable compared to 43 percent unfavorable which means that Sen. McCain can beat either of the two in the fall.

Bear in mind McCain’s rating is high because no one is attacking him on a day-to-day basis like Obama and Clinton are doing to each other as they cage fight their way to the nomination.

The White House is the Democrats to lose however as America looks ahead to the end of the failed Bush Administration. In a few months the worst president in memory will be consigned to the ash heap of history.

President George Bush’s approval rating has dropped like a piano thrown out of a skyscraper window. From an approval rating of 85 percent in the months after 9/11, now only 19 percent of Americans rate President Bush favorably. That is the lowest approval rating of any sitting president in history.

All the Democratic nominee has to say in the fall is that if you liked the last eight years of the Bush Administration, you’ll love McCain because he supports the wars and has said he doesn’t understand economics. Sixty-five percent of American voters, Republican and Democrats alike, feel this country is on the wrong tack.

At the end of the day, the Democrats should win the White House in the fall.

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