Back in August The Observer wondered whether Oprah Winfrey could convince people to vote for her favorite presidential candidate as effectively as she could get them to read her favorite book. Asked whether the endorsement would have any effect on the election, most commentators told The Observer it would, as it’d give Obama all kinds of crucial votes from the millions of impressionable, middle-aged ladies who watch Oprah’s show.

Now we've got some data.  

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The Obama campaign's "outsider" message seems to be gaining traction. In Geneva.

There seem to be two prevailing but absolutely contradictory attitudes about Hillary Clinton’s ’08 prospects.

One school of thought insists she’s the least electable Democrat, an easy argument to make given that her unfavorable rating has hovered near 50 percent for about 15 years now. But then you take a poll, and Democrats overwhelmingly say that Hillary is their best bet for the fall – and, in fact, that electability is one of the main reasons they support her. (A July poll found Democrats calling her the most electable candidate by a 54-22 percent margin over Barack Obama.)

And yet, as Michael Scherer in Salon points out, Republicans and independents clearly like Obama more than Hillary, or any other Democrat for that matter:

Any political expert will tell you that polls don't mean much five months before the first caucus. But a pattern may be emerging. In part because of Clinton's high negatives among Republicans, it appears Obama is gaining momentum as a fresh candidate with a less divisive approach, by constantly appealing beyond the partisan lines of the last decade. His first television ad buy in Iowa included testimony from a Republican state lawmaker from Illinois talking up Obama and his ability to reach across party lines. As Obama reiterated in an appearance in Iowa last week, "The country is hungry for change. It wants something new. We want to chart a new direction for our nation."

For the record, I don’t subscribe to the notion that Hillary Clinton can not win in the fall of ’08. In fact, I’d probably make her the favorite against any Republican at this point. It’s not that I think her favorable numbers will improve radically – or at all – but the climate is so bad for the G.O.P. that I think Hillary can get 271 electoral votes. (In a sense, she’s like the despised Chuck Robb running for re-election in Virginia in 1994 against the even more despised Oliver North. Under no other circumstances could Robb have won, but the G.O.P. was so weak that he eked out a win.)

But if you’re a Democrat, why even take a chance on Hillary if there are such clear signs that Obama has the kind of cross-over appeal on which landslides are built?

The situation is beginning to remind me of the G.O.P. race in 2000, with George W. Bush running – like Hillary now – as the candidate of the establishment and inevitability. And yet polls were even clearer back then that independents and Democrats loved John McCain. I recall a poll in March that showed Bush essentially running even with Al Gore, while McCain enjoyed a lead of more than 20 points.  Nominating McCain would have produced a landslide for the Republicans, and yet they rallied around Bush, who needed a Supreme Court ruling to beat Gore.

In 2000, the G.O.P. shunned McCain for conspiratorial reasons: Bush told them that McCain’s support was from “mischievous” Democrats trying to install a weak G.O.P. nominee. (Indeed, despite the poll numbers, among Republicans Bush was still regarded as the stronger autumn candidate.) Add to this the love McCain got from the “liberal” media and his campaign finance reform apostasy, and it was all enough for the G.O.P. to turn its back on him.

But why are Democrats resisting the evidence that Obama is the most electable candidate? Are they confusing familiarity – Hillary’s been on the national stage since 1992, while no one had heard of Obama before 2004 – with electability?  read more »

Maybe you've seen this already -- it's been making the rounds on the web all day -- but a heavily-armed Ted Nugent had some tart words for Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and (if I'm hearing it right) Barbara Boxer during a recent performance. (No word if this was part of the "Sean Hannity Freedom Concert" series.)

Barack Obama is in town today – look for him on The Daily Show later tonight – and the non-vacationing Azi was on hand at a rally near Times Square that the Illinois senator held to show off some endorsements from New York pols.

You can get a summary of the event here, but Azi took note of the presence of one particular elected official:

Given that one of Obama’s themes is “turning the page” on the past, it seems ironic that he’s touting the endorsement of City Councilman Al Vann. Vann is a product of the Civil Rights generation who got his political start during the Ocean Hill-Brownsville fight over school control. But he’s dabbled in the kind of racially polarizing politics that Obama talks about overcoming. For instance, he rallied opposition to David Yassky’s Brooklyn last year – in part, by pointing out that Yassky was “a white individual.”

 

A friend passed along a link to an interesting New York Times Select column from literary theorist Stanley Fish which handicaps the poll of potential running-mates for Hillary Clinton.

This prompted two immediate reactions: (1) How much money has the Times lost on this silly “pay-for-access” thing; and (2) What does Stanley Fish know about politics?

Anyway, chances are you don’t have access to Times Select (unless, like me, you’ve taken advantage of their “free to .edu” policy), so let me recap: Fish cedes the Democratic nomination to Hillary on the grounds that the other candidates “are either running for vice president or just having a good time.” For her Number Two, he says, Hillary can’t pick a woman, a Jew, a Senator (or member of the House), or anyone from the Northeast.

So who does that leave? Fish’s finalists are former Virginia Governor Mark Warner, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh (who passes muster because he was once a Governor), North Carolina Governor Mike Easley, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle.

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Every time the Democratic eight gather for yet another debate, it is Mr. Biden who turns in the most consistently presidential performance of any candidate from either party.  read more »

I just got off a media conference call with Barack Obama in which he addressed the subject of his burgeoning foreign policy debate with Hillary Clinton.

Asked whether his personal life experience gives him an advantage over Hillary Clinton and John Edwards when it comes to formulating foreign policy, he said, “At this point it is not just about life experience, though that informs my perspective.” The important thing, he said, is how that perspective informs “how the United States should present its interests and ideals around the world.”

Obama also went back to the original argument which started during this week’s YouTube/CNN debate, in which he was criticized by Hillary Clinton for saying that he would be willing to talk to international dictators.

“I think it is a debate over the same conventional thinking that led people to authorize the vote over Iraq without asking questions,” he said. He compared this with a different line of thinking that “asks questions and is not informed by a lot of received wisdom.”

(Shades of Howard Dean's argument in 2004 about John Kerry's vast Senate experience and Kerry's vote, later lamented, to authorize the war.)

Obama did say that he agreed with Clinton’s position on whether America should commit ground troops to Darfur.  “It is absolutely true that given what is going on in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is difficult for us to mount the kind of troop strength that would be necessary,” he said. “But more important, it would be disastrous for even our policy in Darfur to send U.S. troops unilaterally into another Muslim country. It’s very important for the sake of our success there that it’s done as part of an international effort.”  read more »

Poring over the latest FEC reports, Ben predicts: “It's going to be a good year to be in ad sales in Des Moines.” This morning, the Nielsen Company put out a report that breaks down exactly who’s advertised so far, where they’ve done it, and—perhaps most interestingly, in this day and age—what medium they’ve chosen to get the message out.

According to the report (pdf here) Mitt Romney has advertised far more than all the other candidates, running 4,549 ads, through June 10, “mostly on local broadcast television” in seven markets, including Iowa and New Hampshire. He’s placed “more local TV advertisements than all other candidates combined,” the report says.

(Read the rest of my breakdown after the jump...)

UPDATE: The Nielsen people send along the following correction to the report that I linked above:

There was an labeling error in the chart "2008 Presidential Campaign Television & Radio Spots" on page 2 of the news release. The first column should read TV Total and not TV & Radio Total. The data for that chart is correct.

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The rules made it difficult for them to capitalize, but Mike Gravel handed his seven fellow Democrats a golden opportunity for a “Rudy moment” midway through tonight’s presidential forum.

The topic was the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in the African-American community, but Mr. Gravel, the scattershot Alaska senator from a generation or two ago, used his time to plead for the legalization of drugs, arguing that those targeted by the federal government’s war on drugs are not criminals.  read more »