Accidental Blogger

According to the Los Angeles Times, Obama leads McCain, 46% to 40% (9% undecided).  Clinton leads McCain, 47% to 38% (11% undecided).  It’s interesting that Clinton is outperforming Obama against McCain.  But here’s the really interesting part:

The results represent a shift from a Times/Bloomberg poll in February,
when McCain led Clinton by 6 percentage points and Obama by 2, within
the poll’s margin of error.

My guess would have been that Senator McCain has substantially expanded his lead over Senators Clinton and Obama since they started going after each other so viciously.  Now, the poll has a 3% margin of error, so if we trust it, this has been an actual and important change (and it’s certainly worth noting the possibility that we can’t trust a poll).  But what this says to me is, that big concern everyone’s been voicing — "they’re destroying the Democratic Party!" — is misguided. 

It may be appropriate for me to issue the disclaimer, once again, that I don’t care about the Democratic Party.  I would prefer a Democratic President to a Republican one, but that’s really as far as it goes; as a rule, I generally can’t stand Democrats.  But at least in terms of handing the election to that old dude from Arizona, the Democratic infighting isn’t doing it.

Maybe it’s not "time for Hillary to do the right thing and drop out of the race."

Oh.  One more interesting thing about these numbers: Hillary’s been the big winner.  Why?  According to the poll, she’s the person potential voters trust on the economy.  This is surely important.  But doesn’t it seem plausible that her race-baiting has been effective?  Given that this has been a noticeable part of her campaign, it seems likely enough.  But that would fail to explain Obama’s relative improvement vis-a-vis McCain.  (Maybe that can be explained by McCain looking so old and frail.  Or the fact that the Dems have been getting the press [because of this protracted nomination battle!] while he’s been out of the news.)

Still, either way, I did not expect to see numbers like these.  And unexpected = interesting.