State poll shows huge gains by Obama, McCain

A startling surge of support for Barack Obama has catapulted the Illinois senator into a virtual tie with Hillary Rodham Clinton in California’s Democratic presidential primary, a Field Poll released Saturday shows.
San Francisco Chronicle - 02/03/08

A startling surge of support for Barack Obama has catapulted the Illinois senator into a virtual tie with Hillary Rodham Clinton in California’s Democratic presidential primary, a Field Poll released Saturday shows.

Arizona Sen. John McCain lengthened his lead in the state Republican primary, grabbing a 32 to 24 percent edge among likely voters over former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee was at 13 percent and Texas Rep. Ron Paul at 10 percent.

But the Democratic numbers are the shocker. Clinton, a longtime California favorite, saw her once-commanding lead slip to two percentage points, 36 to 34 percent, in the new survey. That’s down from the New York senator’s 12 percentage point lead in mid-January and a 25 percentage point margin over Obama in October.

But with 18 percent of Democratic voters still undecided just days before Tuesday’s primary, the election is still up for grabs, said Mark DiCamillo, the poll’s director.

“It’s an unusually volatile election, with a very high number of undecided voters and so many moving parts,” he said. “It could be a very, very close election.”

The head-to-head matchups between the Republican and Democratic candidates highlight both Clinton’s loosening hold on California voters and McCain’s growing strength in the state.

Clinton now clings to a bare 45 to 43 percent lead over McCain in a projected California presidential vote, down dramatically from her 17 percentage point margin just two weeks ago. Obama now holds a stronger 47 to 40 percent margin over the Arizona senator, but that’s only half the 14 percentage point advantage he had in mid-January.

Both Democrats still run well ahead of Romney, collecting more than 50 percent of the vote in those matchups.

Obama’s California campaign team said the latest polls reflect a hard-charging effort to track down potential voters in every precinct - undeterred by polls that showed the Illinois senator behind by double digits here for most of the race.

“If we hadn’t laid the groundwork for the last year, we couldn’t be delivering now,” Debbie Mesloh, spokeswoman for the Obama campaign, said Saturday.

Averell “Ace” Smith, Clinton’s California campaign manager, said the last-minute dead heat is to be expected in the nation’s most populous state, which is “critical” to Clinton’s effort to win the nomination.

“We always knew it would tighten,” he said. “But we’re incredibly confident in the organization we have to get out the vote.”

The new poll shows why Obama’s campaign has been targeting decline-to-state voters, who can cast ballots in the Democratic primary. While Clinton has a 37 to 31 percent lead over Obama among Democrats, Obama leads by an overwhelming 54 to 32 percent among nonpartisans, who will make up an estimated 13 percent of the primary voters.

The poll also highlights the dramatic split the Clinton-Obama battle has caused in the state’s Democratic Party. Rich versus poor, young versus old, liberal versus conservative, men versus women: Each of those groups has lined up on different sides of the primary divide.

While people aged 18 to 29 back Obama by a margin of 11 percentage points, voters 65 and older support Clinton, 40 to 18 percent. Voters with household incomes of $40,000 or less back Clinton by an advantage of 11 percentage points, while those making $80,000 or more are strong Obama supporters.

Obama attracts voters who call themselves liberal, who have gone to graduate school and who are from the Bay Area, which backs him 41 to 31 percent. Clinton’s strength is among conservatives and moderates, those with a high school education and residents of sprawling Los Angeles County, where she holds a 42 to 34 percent lead.

There’s also a broad ethnic and gender gap between the campaigns. While white voters are split evenly between Clinton and Obama, the Illinois senator, whose late father was a black African, has a 55 to 19 percent lead among black voters, while Latinos back Clinton 52 to 19 percent.

Among men, Obama holds a 13 percentage point lead, the same advantage Clinton holds among women.

But for Clinton, even her good numbers show some ominous changes. In mid-January, the Field Poll showed her with a 19 percentage point lead among women and a huge 59 to 19 percent advantage with Latino voters. In two weeks, much of that backing has melted away.

While part of the reason for the huge number of undecided voters is last week’s departure of John Edwards from the race, most of it seems to be honest angst among Democrats pressed to make a choice between two favored candidates, DiCamillo said.

“This is the Democratic rank and file having a hard time making a choice, because they like them both,” he said.

On the Republican side, McCain continues to make an astounding comeback in a state where he was virtually given up for dead just months ago. He’s moved from 12 percent in December to 22 percent in mid-January to 32 percent and the lead in the most recent poll.

“McCain’s had a very good month,” DiCamillo said. “He also benefits from Huckabee, who peels off some votes from Romney.”

McCain’s lead comes courtesy of a strong showing among moderate and moderately conservative Republicans, where he holds a 39 to 16 percent advantage over Romney.

Steve Schmidt, a senior strategist for McCain, said the new poll numbers reflect a national surge for the Arizona senator.

“From California to Massachusetts, Sen. McCain is on the move and getting ready for a big night on Tuesday,” said Schmidt.

But Romney spokeswoman Sarah Pompeii said the latest figures will not stop them from pushing hard in California.

So much of the election still depends on who turns out to vote on Tuesday, which DiCamillo admitted is the hardest thing to project.

“There are cautionary notes,” he said. “With those big differences among (Democratic) subgroups, an unexpectedly large turnout by any one of them can shift the final result. We don’t know if Obama’s surge will continue or if something will arrest it in the days before the election.”

Both Democratic campaigns were working hard in the Bay Area on Saturday. Chelsea Clinton, the 27-year-old daughter of Sen. Clinton, spoke Saturday to hundreds of students at Oakland’s Mills College, while Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry was in San Francisco to boost Obama’s campaign.

Kerry was pleased Obama was closing the gap in California, but warned that “we’ve got to try even harder over the next few days because there are all of these absentee ballots out there - people who voted a few weeks ago when they thought the race was a foregone conclusion (for Clinton). It’s proven not to be.”

The poll was based on a telephone survey of 511 likely voters in the Democratic primary and 481 likely voters in the Republican primary and was conducted between Jan. 25 and Feb. 1. The margin of error is plus or minus 4.5 percentage points among Democrats, plus or minus 4.6 percentage points among Republicans and plus or minus 4.2 percentage points among general election voters.

Chronicle staff writer Joe Garofoli contributed to this report. E-mail the writers at jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com and cmarinucci@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Why This Edwards Voter Is Now Backing Obama

by Paul Loeb
02.01.08

I gave John Edwards more money than I’ve given to any candidate in my life, and I’m glad I did. He raised critical issues about America’s economic divides, and got them on the Democratic agenda. He was the first major candidate to stake out strong comprehensive platforms on global warming and health care. He hammered away on the Iraq war, even using scarce campaign resources to run ads during recent key Senate votes. He’d have made a powerful nominee—and president.

I’ve been going through my mourning for a while for his campaign not getting more traction, so his withdrawal announcement didn’t shock me. But sad as I am about his departure, I feel good about being able to switch my support to Barack Obama, and will do all I can to help him win.

I’ve actually been giving small donations to both since Iowa, while hoping that the Edwards campaign would belatedly catch fire, and exploring ways the two campaigns could work together. With Edwards gone, I think Obama is the natural choice for his supporters, and that Edwards should step up and endorse him as his preferred nominee. All three major Democratic candidates have their flaws and strengths—they all have excellent global warming plans, for instance. But Edwards wasn’t just being rhetorical when he said that both he and Obama represent voices for change, versus Clinton’s embodiment of a Washington status quo joining money and power.

Here are a dozen reasons why I feel proud to have my energy, dollars and vote now go to Obama:

1. The Iraq war: Obviously, invading Iraq remains the most damaging single action of the Bush era. Obama spoke out against it at a public rally while Clinton was echoing Bush’s talking points and voting for it. Obama’s current advisors also consistently opposed the war, while Clinton’s consistently supported it. It’s appropriate that Clinton jumped to her feet to clap when Bush said in his recent State of the Union address that there was “no doubt” that “the surge is working.”

2. Clinton’s Iran vote: The Kyl-Lieberman bill gave the Bush administration so wide an opening for war that Jim Webb called it “Dick Cheney’s fondest pipe dream.” Hillary voted for it. Obama and Edwards opposed it.

3. The youth vote: If a Party attracts new voters for their first few elections, they tend to stick for the rest of their lives. Obama is doing this on a level unseen in decades. By tearing down the candidate who inspires them, Clinton will so embitter many young voters they’ll stay home.

4. Hope matters: When people join movements to realize raised hopes, our nation has a chance of changing. When they damp their hopes, as Clinton suggests, it doesn’t. Like Edwards, Obama has helped people feel they can participate in a powerful transformative narrative. That’s something to embrace, not mock.

5. Follow the money: All the candidates have some problematic donors—it’s the system--but Hillary’s the only one with money from Rupert Murdoch. Edwards and Obama refused money from lobbyists. Clinton claimed they were just citizens speaking out, and held a massive fundraising dinner with homeland security lobbyists. Obama spearheaded a public financing bill in the Illinois legislature, while Clinton had to be shamed by a full-page Common Cause ad in the Des Moines Register to join Obama and Edwards in taking that stand.

6. John McCain: If McCain is indeed the Republican nominee, than as Frank Rich brilliantly points out, he’s perfectly primed to run as the war hero with independence, maturity and integrity, against the reckless, corrupt and utterly polarizing Clintons. Never mind that McCain’s integrity and independence is largely a media myth (think the Charles Keating scandal and his craven embrace of Bush in 2004), but Bill and Hillary heralding their two-for-one White House return will energize and unite an otherwise ambivalent and fractured Republican base.

7. Mark Penn: Clinton’s chief strategist, Mark Penn, runs a PR firm that prepped the Blackwater CEO for his recent congressional testimony, is aggressively involved in anti-union efforts, and has represented villains from the Argentine military junta and Philip Morris to Union Carbide after the 1984 Bhopal disaster.

8. Sleazy campaigning: Hillary stayed on the ballot in Michigan after Edwards and Obama pulled their names, then audaciously said the delegates she won unopposed should count retroactively. She, Bill and their surrogates have conducted a politics of personal attack that begins to echo Karl Rove, from distorting Obama’s position on Iraq and abortion choice, to dancing out surrogates to imply that the Republicans will tar him as a drug user.

9. NAFTA: Hillary can’t have it both ways in stoking nostalgia for Bill. NAFTA damaged lives and communities and widened America’s economic divides. Edwards spoke out powerfully against it. Clinton now claims the agreement needs to be modified, but her husband staked all his political capital in ramming it through, helping to hollow out America’s economy and split the Democratic Party for the 1994 Gingrich sweep.

10. Widening the circle: Obviously Obama spurs massive enthusiasm in the young and in the African-American community. I’m also impressed at the range of people turning out to support his campaign. At a Seattle rally I attended, the volunteer state campaign chair had started as Perot activist. The founding coordinator in the state’s second-largest county, a white female Iraq war vet, voted for Bush in 2000 and written in Colin Powell in 2004 before becoming outraged about Iraq “I’ve always leaned conservative,” she said, “but Obama’s announcement speech moved me to tears. The Audacity of Hope made me rethink my beliefs. He inspires me with his honesty and integrity.” As well as inspiring plenty of progressive activists, Obama is engaging people who haven’t come near progressive electoral politics in years.

11. The story we tell: Obama captures people with a narrative about where he wants to take America. His personal story is powerful, but he keeps the emphasis on the ordinary citizens who need to take action to make change. Clinton, in contrast, focuses largely on her personal story, her presumed strengths and travails. Except for the symbolism of having a woman president, it’s a recipe that downplays the possibility of common action for change.

12. Citizen movements matter: Edwards not only ran for president, but worked to build a citizen movement capable of working for change whatever his candidacy’s outcome. Obama has taken a similar approach, beginning when he first organized low-income Chicago communities and coordinated a still-legendary voter registration drive. His speeches consciously encourage his supporters to join together and constitute a force equivalent to the abolitionist, union, suffrage, and civil rights movements. Like Edwards, he’s working to build a movement capable of pushing his policies through the political resistance he will face (and probably of pushing him too if he fails to lead with enough courage). In this context, Clinton’s LBJ/Martin Luther King comparison, and her dismissal of the power of words to inspire people, is all too revealing. She really does believe change comes from knowing how to work the insider levers of power. Edwards and Obama know it takes more.

That’s why this Edwards supporter is proud to do all I can to make Barack Obama the Democratic nominee and president.

Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, named the #3 political book of 2004 by the History Channel and the American Book Association. His previous books include Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time. See http://www.paulloeb.org To receive his articles directly email sympa@lists.onenw.org with the subject line: subscribe paulloeb-articles

It’s Not About Hillary’s Judgment, Or Even About Hillary

pmcarpenter.blogs.com
February 01, 2008

If an alien somewhere out there is tuning in just to the presidential debates, and paying no attention to the tactical reasons behind the candidates’ shifting demeanors, he might suspect the poor devils are suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, or, at the very least, a serious case of bipolar disorder.

One week they’re all smiles, the next they’re pulling knives, then they’re back to honoring National Brotherhood Week. Should the alien ever decide to visit and stay a while, he will no doubt come loaded with otherworldly Thorazine and Lithium. These Earthlings are a strange and moody breed.

But, as we know, there’s a calculated method behind the candidates’ madcap moodiness. And last night, both had calculated—or gambled—that for now they’re sitting pretty. Mrs. Clinton feels assured of widely scattered leads in the run-up to next week, and Mr. Obama is banking on a timely Big Mo. Best not stir the seemingly favorable waters.

But last night still leaves the question: Who won?

Answer: Wolf Blitzer.

I’d love to see his email inbox this morning, although Wolf will need to approach it wearing asbestos. For I have no doubt it’s overflowing with Molotov-cocktail constructions from the Clinton crowd, burning with rage over what they’ll claim was Wolf’s singularly rude, mean-spirited, subjective interjection last night in the form of a rude, mean-spirited and subjective interrogatory.

But it was none of those descriptions. It was, rather, a simple, straightforward and immensely fair question.

Following another tortured, evasive exegesis from Mrs. Clinton about her 2002 war vote—it was all an innocent misunderstanding, you see; she passionately favored diplomacy and inspection, but gosh darn it, “no one could have fully appreciated ... how obsessed this president was with this particular mission”—Wolf came back with the granddaddy of all logically permissible, wholesale-humbug-stopping body slams: “So, what I hear you saying—and correct me if I’m wrong—is that you were naive in trusting President Bush?”

Riddle me this: Is that not what she just said?—that she got snowed while 300 million other Americans understood perfectly well what the 2002 vote was about and where it would lead?

Her follow-up response merely compounded the humbuggery: “I believe that it is abundantly clear that the case that was outlined on behalf of going to the resolution—not going to war, but going to the resolution—was a credible case.” Why of course. How ever could a United States senator have known that military force might proceed from a joint resolution explicitly authorizing “military force”?

Having breached her flank, Wolf’s question then opened Obama’s well-worn path to raising the issue of judgment: “The question is, can we make an argument that this was a conceptually flawed mission from the start, and that we need better judgment when we decide to send our young men and women into war?”

Yet I take exception to the matter’s transmogrification into one of mere judgment. I understand that Mr. Obama cannot say for political reasons what progressive concerns are really about, but I can. And they are twofold.

One, it’s about lying. There’s not a man or woman alive who believes the real “fairy tale” in this campaign; that Mrs. Clinton, that is, somehow got snowed. She knew exactly what she was doing—bolstering her national-security credentials with others’ lives—and now brusquely refuses to come clean. I can take a little lying here and there from any politician. It’s what they do. But not on a matter of these life-and-death proportions.

Second, it’s about Mrs. Clinton’s less than subtle request to progressives that they momentarily cancel their long-stated—and what I and many others thought were their deeply heartfelt—convictions. Which are fundamentally reasoned, pacific ones—you don’t go to war except as a last resort, you don’t go to war in the utter absence of provocation, and you sure as hell don’t go to war as a neoconning, “preventive” measure.

No, at it’s core it is not about judgment. It’s not even about Hillary Clinton, really. It is, rather, about progressives and their self-averred values.

Should they reward any progressive politician in open and brazen violation of a chief and organic tenet within those values, they will have sold their souls. They will have foolishly dispossessed themselves of political nobility—of any right to tutor anyone, about anything, ever again.

http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2008/02/its-not-about-h.html

John Kerry in Sacramento at Sacramento State Saturday, February 2!

Dear Obama supporter,

I don’t have to tell you how important California is to our Democratic Party – from Robert Kennedy’s 1968 campaign of courage and conviction through the present, California has always been a state that sends a message about progressive politics. 2008 is no different. Barack Obama started this race far far behind, but has gained ground as voters have heard more about the hope he offers for a country tired of being divided.

You can make a difference in the final tally on February 5th.

I’ll be in California at a few events tomorrow (Saturday) to talk about Barack Obama.

The energy has been sky high at our events today here in Washington State, so I hope you can come out and join us. Here are the details:

Town Hall Meeting in Sacramento
California State University - Sacramento
Alumni Center
6000 J Street
Sacramento, CA
Doors Open: 4:30 pm
Program Beings: 5:00 pm

Senator John Kerry!

Sacramento for Edwards Endorses Obama!

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Dear Fellow Edwards Supporters,

On Wednesday Sen. John Edwards ended his Presidential bid the same way he began it—with class, dignity and compassion, building homes for the homeless survivors of Hurricane Katrina. As he had done throughout the campaign, John Edwards used his last act as a Presidential candidate to bring the focus of the nation to the victims of racial and economic injustice and to highlight the devastation that the Bush Administration has wreaked upon not only the people of New Orleans, but upon the American people and the people of the world.

Sen. Edwards provided an inspirational example of speaking truth to power while providing compassionate service to our most disenfranchised sisters and brothers. His campaign gave hope to the hopeless and a voice to the voiceless. As Dr. King had done forty years earlier, Sen. Edwards reminded us that there comes a time when silence is betrayal, and it was John Edwards who broke through the deafening silence by speaking out with passion and conviction for peace and social justice.  All of John Edwards supporters will continue to support him in his cause of standing up for working families, universal health care, his fight against poverty, lobbyists and corporations, and in his efforts to bring this war to an end. We know that this is in no way the end of the road for John Edwards and we look forward to John Edwards playing a vital role in the Obama administration.

When John Edwards declared that it was time for Americans to become patriotic about something other than war, it wasn’t a campaign slogan. Rather, it was a call to action. As the members of Sacramento for Edwards, we answered that call and are so incredibly proud to have joined John and Elizabeth Edwards on their road to One America. From the bottom of our hearts, we thank John and Elizabeth, their lovely children, and the entire Edwards campaign family for running such a principled and courageous campaign.  We thank them for taking up the struggle to end the scourge of poverty as the “great cause of their lives.” We thank them for developing a detailed plan to provide quality, affordable health care to every American. We thank them for taking the most aggressive stance against the war on Iraq of any major candidate in either party.

We are so very proud to have played a role in this historic campaign. Although we are saddened by the fact that this phase of our journey has come to a premature end, we will continue to march forward together, hand-in-hand, knowing that one day we shall reach that elusive promised land.

Towards the end of his life Dr. King asked Americans the prophetic question, “Where do we go from here?” Yesterday as we grappled with the disappointing news that our campaign had reached its conclusion, the members of Sacramento for Edwards were forced to grapple with this same question. Where do we go from here? Do we abandon our struggle to eradicate the evils of war, poverty and injustice? Or, recognizing that our initial path has been blocked, do we seek out an alternative path, do we make a way out of “no way”, or to continue down our road to One America? Overwhelmingly our members responded with the same tenacity and resolve that our inspirational leaders, Elizabeth and John Edwards, have demonstrated throughout their lives. We have decided to build on the solid foundation that Sen. Edwards created and to continue our struggle, through Super Tuesday and beyond, for transformational change—for change we can believe in.

While a small handful of our members preferred not to endorse any candidate at this point, nearly 90% of us have chosen one person as the candidate most qualified to pick up the torch from John Edwards and to carry it all the way to the White House. We have decided that one candidate, and only one candidate, is most qualified to assume the leadership of our movement for progressive social change. This is the candidate who empowered the powerless by working as a community organizer on the mean streets of Chicago. This is the candidate who challenged racial injustice by passing up a lucrative career in corporate law to work as a civil rights attorney. This is the candidate who worked as a tireless champion for peace and social justice while serving in the Illinois state legislature. This is the candidate who now serves as the most progressive member of the United States Senate. This is the candidate who we will nominate as the standard-bearer of our party and who we will elect as the next President of the United States. This is the candidate who will bring us change we can believe in. THIS CANDIDATE IS SENATOR BARACK OBAMA, AND THE MEMBERS OF SACRAMENTO FOR JOHN EDWARDS ARE PROUD TO ENDORSE HIS CAMPAIGN FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

Tomorrow Begins Today!

Cathlyn Daly & Paul Burke, Co-Chairs

Sacramento for John Edwards