Hillary's New Uncertain Inevitability

Throughout the year, CNN has been 'supportive' of Hillary's Presidential campaign. Polls commissioned by CNN and conducted by Opinion Research have usually been lagging in reflecting negative Clinton campaign news that have been picked up by other polls. That's primarily because CNN's polling partner, Opinion Research, was bought by a 'Friend of Bill' and major Clinton donor Vinod Gupta. With Opinion Research's parent company infoUSA now under SEC investigation because of questionable practices that have allegedly been used to benefit the Clinton's, CNN seems to be turning to other polling entities to gather accurate, in-state information on many of the primary states.

That's bad for the Clintons. CNN's not going to let its 'credibility' be weakened with other Democrats by continuing to try to help out team Clinton. Hillary was hoping that as long as she had one or two major polls showing her close to (or even still leading) Obama in New Hampshire, she'd be able to either slow or reverse the migration of Democrats from her camp to his. CNN's Political Ticker tacitly ends the Clinton Victory Parade this morning by showing that as of yesterday, even CNN's poll (conducted in conjunction with New Hampshire's WMUR) is showing Hillary down by 10 points literally hours before  the New Hampshire Primary.

Mark Penn, Clinton's chief strategist, spent his Saturday looking for the Obama bounce. Yesterday, it found him.

Barack Obama has a 10-point edge over Hillary Clinton among likely Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire in the CNN/WMUR poll released Sunday afternoon, with 39 percent support to Clinton’s 29 percent. John Edwards has slipped to 16 percent. The apparent Obama surge seems to be sapping support from Clinton and Edwards, both down several points from the last CNN poll.

And as for one of the Clinton's major lines of attack against Obama that she's been trying out for a few weeks:

The electability issue is now officially a non-starter for the Clinton campaign: 42 percent of those primary voters now say Obama has the best chance of beating the Republican nominee. Even more troubling for the New York senator, two out of three Democrats – a new high — now say the ability to bring change is more important than experience.

Hillary claim of "experience" was spurious at best, her "electability" attack hewed uncomfortably towards racism, and now she's trying unsuccessfully to refer to herself as a "35 year" agent of change, which is laughable. I wouldn't want to be Bill Clinton these days.

Comments

[Hillary Watcher]

A day before the Iowa Caucus, the CNN/Opinion Research poll published these figures -

Hillary Clinton -
CNN/Opinion Research: 33%
Actual result: 29%

Barack Obama -
CNN/Opinion Research: 31%
Actual result: 38%

John Edwards -
CNN/Opinion Research: 22%
Actual result: 30%

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/31/iowa.poll/index.html