Obama takes ten point lead over Hillary.

As Hillary and Barack Obama prepare to face each other in what promises to be a heated debate after a fractious week, a new poll amongst Democrats reveals that Obama has a ten point lead with supporters of the party.

And there is every indication that, the dirtier Clinton fights, the more support she loses amongst the base of her own party.

The fierce battle, however, appears to have taken a toll on the image of Clinton, who was once seen as the favorite. And Obama has widened his lead since early February on several key qualities that voters are looking for in a candidate and has narrowed sizable advantages for Clinton on others.

He now has a 2-to-1 edge on who is considered more electable in a general contest -- a major reversal from the last poll -- and has dramatically reduced a large Clinton lead on which of the two is the "stronger leader."

While Clinton retains a big edge over Obama on experience, public impressions of her have taken a sharply negative turn. Today, more Americans have an unfavorable view of her than at any time since The Post and ABC began asking the question, in 1992. Impressions of her husband, former president Bill Clinton, also have grown negative by a small margin.

In the new poll, 54 percent said they have an unfavorable view of Sen. Clinton, up from 40 percent a few days after she won the New Hampshire primary in early January. Her favorability rating has dropped among both Democrats and independents over the past three months, although her overall such rating among Democrats remains high. Nearly six in 10 independents now view her unfavorably.

Obama's favorability rating also has declined over the same period but remains, on balance, more positive than negative.

It can hardly be surprising that her figures in the polls have started plummeting as the campaign she has been waging has been a largely Republican one, where one finds wedge issues - such as whether or not Obama is "elitist" - and hammer away at those "value" issues, rather than the policy differences between the two candidates. The Republicans have been using this tactic for decades, emphasising John Kerry's "flip flopping" and whether or not Al Gore claimed that he invented the "internets" as away of getting blue collar workers to vote against their own economic interests. Ironically, this was the very point which Obama was making in the latest spat which has ended with Hillary insisting that Obama is "elitist".

No doubt the issue of what Obama said in San Francisco will come up again tonight, but I fully expect Obama to nail her when he, at last, has her face to face.

For what Obama actually said is undeniably true. People who have been made unemployed can hardly be expected to be happy about the situation. They have every right to feel bitter and angry about what has happened, and only on planet Hillary do such emotions not exist. Indeed, Hillary has gone as far as to call Obama's remarks “demeaning”, probably thinking that such emotions are un-American and that the unemployed should roll up their sleeves and find themselves something productive to do.

It's part of the old style politics which Obama rejects, this utterly unrealistic view of America and Americans as unremittingly sunny and happy with their lot.

Overall, 51 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said they would prefer to see Obama win the nomination and face Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, in the November general election; 41 percent would rather have Clinton atop the Democratic ticket. Post-ABC polling just before Clinton won the Ohio primary and the popular vote in the Texas primary on March 4 showed nearly the same results. In hypothetical general-election matchups, Obama holds a slim, five-point lead over McCain, while McCain is three points ahead of Clinton, which is within poll's margin of error. But in the past six weeks, McCain has gained ground on each of his potential rivals.

Such numbers, and the fact that support for Hillary is dropping like a stone amongst Democrats, can hardly be expected to make her change her tactics as poll numbers and facts have long ago stopped having any bearing on the Hillary campaign.

There isn't even a plan anymore. She simply thinks if she keeps battering Obama that eventually he will fall and the party will have no option other than to rally around her.

And the way she currently plans to pull this off is by hammering the bitter comments to death and attempting to portray Obama - a devoted Christian - as someone who believes that people "cling" to their religion because they are "bitter", when his point was that people who feel cut off from Washington can often be persuaded to vote against their own economic interests by concentrating on other issues such as gay marriage. His comments were unartful and clumsy, but it takes real dishonesty to read from them what Hillary claims to see.

And, I suspect, it is that dishonesty which is causing Hillary's numbers amongst Democrats to plummet.

UPDATE:

Obama's new ad makes the point that Hillary is engaging in old style politics.



Click title for full article.

Tags: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, US election 2008, Democratic presidential nominee, bitter