Clinton beats McCain, confidence in her economy

2:00 PM PDT, May 9, 2008

Washington — Although Democrats are still tangled in a fractious presidential primary, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama would probably beat presumptive GOP nominee John McCain in the popular vote if the election were held now, according to a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll released today. McCain remains competitive, but the poll identified one important vulnerability: Voters ranked him lowest among the three candidates on who could best handle the nation’s economic problems, by far the most pressing concern for the public irrespective of party, gender or income.

Of the three main candidates, Clinton inspired the most confidence on the economy, even though she appears unlikely to win the Democratic nomination. In a hypothetical matchup between Clinton and McCain, the New York senator led the Arizonan by 47% to 38%, with 11% saying they were undecided. And in a contest between Obama and McCain, the poll gave the Illinois senator a 46% to 40% lead over the Republican, with 9% undecided. The nationwide poll had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. The results represent a slight shift from a Times/Bloomberg poll in February, in which McCain led Clinton by 6 points, and Obama by 2 points, within the poll’s margin of error. The direction has now changed in favor of the Democrats.

“Although there is such infighting now between the two Democratic candidates, we are finding that both Democrats are beating McCain, and this could be attributed to the weakening of the economy,” said Times polling director Susan Pinkus, who supervised the survey. For example, among the 78% of voters who said they believe the economy has slid into a recession, 52% would vote for Obama, compared with 32% for McCain. A matchup between Clinton and McCain showed nearly identical results.

The poll was based on telephone interviews with 2,208 adults nationwide — 1,986 of them registered voters — from May 1 to 8. That time period included several days before and after the recent Democratic primaries in Indiana and North Carolina, which Clinton and Obama split. The poll offered fresh insights for Democrats trying to discern whether Obama or Clinton would best represent their party in the fall against McCain.
For example, Clinton and McCain were essentially tied among voters ages 65 or older. But if the race were between Obama and McCain, the Republican would lead, 47% to 41%. Among people ages 18 to 44, Obama led McCain by 55% to 35%. Clinton generated less enthusiasm with this age group, leading McCain by 48% to 35%. African Americans would vote overwhelmingly for Obama, the first black candidate with a realistic chance of becoming president. In the poll, he carried 79% of African Americans, with 3% supporting McCain.

If Clinton were the Democratic nominee, however, McCain’s share of the African American vote would rise to 9%, roughly in line with the performance of past GOP presidential candidates. Clinton had 60% of the African American vote, with 23% of respondents in this cornerstone Democratic constituency saying they would be undecided. Among baby boomers, the giant post World War II generation that will begin to reach retirement age in the next president’s term, both Democrats edged McCain, with Clinton leading, 47% to 39%, and Obama by 45% to 37%. Whoever is elected will have to deal with the serious financial shortfalls facing Medicare and Social Security.

McCain remains competitive, however, because of his showing among older voters and independents, constituencies that both parties are vying to win. McCain leads Clinton among independents and is essentially tied with Obama. Beyond divisions of race, gender, politics or income, the poll found that voters’ dominant concern is the precarious state of the nation’s economy. Although recent government data showed that the economy continued grow from January through March, many experts believe it was running on fumes and may well be shrinking in the current calendar quarter.

A clear majority of voters, 56%, said the economy should be the top priority for the presidential candidates to address. That was far larger than the 34% who cited the war in Iraq as the top priority. Healthcare and illegal immigration were the only other issues to break double digits, with 11% apiece. Nearly 8 out of 10 voters said they believed the economy is in a recession, defined as two consecutive quarters of economic contraction, and only about one-fourth said they thought the downturn would be mild. Nearly a quarter said the recession would be serious. The gloom was evident in answers to one of the basic questions that pollsters ask: whether the country is headed in the right direction or has gotten on the wrong track.

Seventy-seven percent of voters agreed that things are “seriously off on the wrong track.” Liberals were most likely to agree with this assessment — 90% did so — but so did 62% of conservatives. Among independents, 82% said the country was off course. Republicans were the least likely to hold a pessimistic view. But even among that group, 50% said the country is going in the wrong direction.

Overall, only 15% of voters believe things are going well. “The right direction/wrong track question sets the stage for the pessimistic and gloomy view about the economy,” Pinkus said. “The last time we had ‘wrong track’ in the 70% range was back in 1992.” That was the year when then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton won the Democratic presidential nomination and went on to defeat the incumbent president, George H.W. Bush, on the heels of a recession that lasted from 1990 to 1991.

Regardless of their choice for president, voters judged Hillary Clinton to be the most capable of the three candidates when it comes to dealing with economic problems. She garnered 32%, compared with 26% for Obama and 23% for McCain. “This is an issue that McCain really has to work on to turn people’s attitudes around,” Pinkus said. “This is an issue that is a positive for Democrats, and that may explain why they are doing better — even though they are still fighting each other and McCain is getting a free ride.” ricardo.alonso-zaldivar@latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-poll10-2008may10,0,6816866.story

great awakening

Notable in the Indiana and North Carolina primary results and in many recent polls are signs of a change in the gender weather: white men are warming to Hillary Clinton — at least enough to vote for her. It’s no small shift. These men have historically been her fiercest antagonists. Their conversion may point less to a new kind of male voter than to a new kind of female vote-getter.

Pundits have been quick to attribute the erosion in Barack Obama’s white male support to a newfound racism. What they have failed to consider is the degree to which white male voters witnessing Senator Clinton’s metamorphosis are being forced to rethink precepts they’ve long held about women in American politics.

For years, the prevailing theory has been that white men are often uneasy with female politicians because they can’t abide strong women. But if that’s so, why haven’t they deserted Senator Clinton? More particularly, why haven’t they deserted her as she has become ever more pugnacious in her campaign?

Maybe the white male electorate just can’t abide strong women whom they suspect of being of a certain sort. To adopt a particularly lamentable white male construct, the sports metaphor, political strength comes in two varieties: the power of the umpire, who controls the game by application of the rules but who never gets hit; and the power of the participant, who has no rules except to hit hard, not complain, bounce back and endeavor to prevail in the end.

For virtually all of American political history, the strong female contestant has been cast not as the player but the rules keeper, the purse-lipped killjoy who passes strait-laced judgment on feral boy fun. The animosity toward the rules keeper is fueled by the suspicion that she (and in American life, the regulator is inevitably coded feminine, whatever his or her sex) is the agent of people so privileged that they don’t need to fight, people who can dominate more decisively when the rules are decorous. American political misogyny is inflamed by anger at this clucking overclass: who are they to do battle by imposing rectitude instead of by actually doing battle?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/09/opinion/09faludi.html

as if it were a dream

During the April 16 debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, moderator George Stephanopoulos brought up “a gentleman named William Ayers,” who “was part of the Weather Underground in the 1970s. They bombed the Pentagon, the Capitol and other buildings. He’s never apologized for that.” Stephanopoulos then asked Obama to explain his relationship with Ayers.

Obama’s answer: “The notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn’t make much sense, George.” Obama was indeed only 8 in early 1970. I was only 9 then, the year Ayers’ Weathermen tried to murder me.

In February 1970, my father, a New York State Supreme Court justice, was presiding over the trial of the so-called “Panther 21,” members of the Black Panther Party indicted in a plot to bomb New York landmarks and department stores. Early on the morning of Feb. 21, as my family slept, three gasoline-filled firebombs exploded at our home on the northern tip of Manhattan, two at the front door and the third tucked neatly under the gas tank of the family car. I still recall, as though it were a dream, thinking that someone was lifting and dropping my bed as the explosions jolted me awake, and I remember my mother pulling me from the tangle of sheets and running to the kitchen where my father stood. Through the large windows overlooking the yard, all we could see was the bright glow of flames below.

http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/05/02/when-this-man-was-9-ayers-bombed-his-home/#more-2365

quinnipiac

This is Sen. Clinton’s strongest overall performance since the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University began special surveys two years ago in the three largest and most important swing states in the Electoral College. This latest survey finds:

Florida: Clinton tops McCain 49 – 41 percent; McCain gets 44 percent to Obama’s 43 percent; Ohio: Clinton beats McCain 48 – 38 percent; McCain gets 43 percent to Obama’s 42 percent; Pennsylvania: Clinton tops McCain 51 – 37 percent; Obama leads McCain 47 – 38 percent.

Among white working-class voters, Clinton ties McCain 45 – 45 percent in Florida, leads 46 – 40 percent in Ohio and 48 – 40 percent in Pennsylvania. These same voters back McCain over Obama 51 – 34 percent in Florida, 49 – 34 percent in Ohio and 45 – 38 percent in Pennsylvania.

“If the super delegates are looking at electability, these results could be a shot in the arm for Sen. Clinton. No one has won the White House since 1960 without carrying two of these three swing states, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. And she clearly is running much better against Sen. McCain than is Sen. Obama, at least for now,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x2882.xml?ReleaseID=1173

surge

Hispanics now account for more than 15% of the U.S. population, and their surge is largely the result of births among people already in the country, according to new Census Bureau data. In an annual report, the Census said there are 45.5 million Hispanics in the U.S., up from 35.7 million in 2000, when they made up 12.6% of the population. It said growth among Hispanics was responsible for half of the U.S. population gains between 2000 and 2007.   …

Growth in spending by Hispanics is likely to outstrip that of the general population in coming years. Hispanics control more disposable income than any other minority group. The figure stands at $860 billion a year and is expected to hit $1.3 trillion by 2012, according to Jeffrey Humphreys, who monitors Hispanic demographic and economic trends at the University of Georgia’s Selig Center. In recent years, consumer-goods companies such as Procter & Gamble and other businesses have invested significantly more advertising dollars to reach Hispanics, both in Spanish and English.

Between 2000 and 2007, 16 states — among them West Virginia, Illinois and New Jersey — saw their white population decline, according to the new Census data. Over the same period, whites accounted for a majority of population growth in only 11 states. …  The center projects that the share of Hispanics in the working-age population will rise to 31% from 14%.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120959501599257567.html?mod=hpp_us_whats_news

a different standard

“Clinton is being held to a different standard than virtually any other candidate in history,” wrote Steven Stark in the Boston Phoenix. “When Clinton is simply doing what everyone else has always done, she’s constantly attacked as an obsessed and crazed egomaniac, bent on self-aggrandizement at the expense of her party.”

Indeed, even after Clinton won the Pennsylvania primary convincingly last week, she awoke the next morning to read an angry New York Times editorial, “beseeching her to get the hell out of the race,” as Howard Kurtz put it at washingtonpost.com. On the Times opinion page that day same, Maureen Dowd actually turned to Dr. Seuss rhymes to make her point: “The time is now. Just go. … I don’t care how. And across town at the New York Daily News, a bitter Mike Lupica was steamed over the fact that Clinton “won’t quit” the race.

Weeks earlier, New York magazine fretted about which senior Democrats would be able to “step in” and “usher Clinton from the race.” Or if Clinton, obsessed with her own “long-range self-aggrandizement,” would finally figure it out herself. Meanwhile, Slate.com’s snarky Hillary Deathwatch was created to document, day-by-day, the demise of her campaign, complete with a damsel-in-distress cartoon drawing of Clinton atop a sinking ship. That represented just a fraction of the often offensive get-out-now proclamations that have become a staple of this campaign.

No longer content to be observers of the campaign, journalists now see themselves as active players in the unfolding drama, and they show no hesitation trying to dictate the basics of the contest, like who should run and who should quit. It’s as if journalists are auditioning for the role of the old party bosses. It’s a new brand of political commentary that leaves some veteran journalists perplexed.

“The idea that it’s your job to tell candidates when to get out, and really trying to control the whole process — putting it in the hands of the journalists or the reporters or the columnists — I find that to be new and different,” Haynes Johnson told me last week. A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Johnson has covered more than a dozen presidential campaigns and is currently working on a book about the unfolding 2008 contest. Johnson says he was astonished to read some early calls in March from the media for Clinton to get out of the race. He was stunned by “the pomposity and the arrogance of it.”

http://mediamatters.org/columns/200804300001

working for Walmart

The issue in Hickory, like elsewhere in North Carolina, is not lack of access to higher education but the quality of jobs that should ensue from such an education. As Kenneth and Gwenn (“be sure to mention our chihuahua Petey”) told me, “people are finding that the college educations they gave their kids aren’t worth much, and both generations here in Hickory are working at Wal-Mart.” Realistically, that’s the problem with a degree from a third-tier school in a part of the country where good jobs are scarce. Likely there aren’t too many graduates of Duke and UNC Chapel Hill finding only Wal-Mart work.

Getting the nuances and particularities of a community just right is a problem, perhaps an inevitable one, for a candidate whose necessary life is in the campaign bubble. Not only do Senator Obama and his press entourage never really see towns like Hickory but they don’t see the opposition first-hand, as well.

Therefore, Senator Obama has no idea that, despite whatever her campaign may be up to, Senator Clinton hardly ever mentions him anymore. Despite his remark to Hickory that he’s told his staff the campaign needs to get away from going negative, Senator Obama laid into Senator Clinton, usually in conjunction with Senator McCain, several times during the afternoon. At one point he said, “Lately the other candidates aren’t talking about their ideas–they’re talking about me.” As far as Senator Clinton is concerned, nothing could be further from the truth. She presents more ideas on the stump than she has time for. This misrepresentation incensed a group of women friends in Hickory. They had seen Hillary Clinton several times in North Carolina and had come to hear Barack Obama before finally making up their minds. Scratch twelve votes for him.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mayhill-fowler/a-recharged-obama-alights_b_99347.html

Nuestra Sra de la Providencia, Puerta de Tierra

En el hogar de ancianos La Providencia, en San Juan, Chelsea Clinton ofreció un mensaje de cinco minutos para elogiar la propuesta de salud de su madre.

the compulsive need

Whoever on Team Obama keeps feeding into Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s seeming compulsive need to speak out on the Reverend Jeremiah Wright should get the swift boot. When Wright went on his latest public and media tear, Obama should have simply issued a statement saying this: Wright is no longer my pastor. And as I have said repeatedly, his views do not reflect mine, and then move on. But no, Obama’s Wright compulsion drove him to deliver a defensive and apologetic so-called race speech in which Wright was the centerpiece. Next, he denounced Wright’s views in an interview. Now he holds a halting, stumbling, anguished voice press conference to denounce Wright again.

Here’s the effect of all this. He’s given a slew of gossipy, media talking heads more salacious grist for the gossip and rumor mill about Wright, the church and Obama’s long term relationship with both. He’s elevated Wright from a relatively obscure, local preacher to a nationally known polarizing figure. He’s deepened the suspicions of those who all along felt that he was a closet radical and race panderer. This hurt him with white voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and almost certainly it will hurt him in Indiana. It has pecked away at the razor thin lead he had over Clinton among Democrats, and dropped him behind McCain in the general election. (Hillary beats McCain by ten points).
He created clouds of doubt among some of his non-rabid, and non-true believer supporters that maybe it’s time to take a second look at him and his candidacy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/earl-ofari-hutchinson/obama-not-wright-is-obama_b_99294.html

recession

“It hasn’t gotten to human food mixed with pet food yet,” he said, “but it is certainly headed in that direction.” ….

Retail sales figures and consumer surveys confirm that Americans are strategically cutting corners, whether it is at the coffee house or the airport. (In: brewing coffee at home and flying coach. Out: Starbucks and first class.) In March, Americans spent less on women’s clothing (down 4.9 percent), furniture (3.1 percent), luxury goods (1.3 percent) and airline tickets (1.1 percent) compared with a year ago, according to MasterCard SpendingPulse, a service of the credit card company that measures spending on 300 million of its cards and estimates purchases with other cards, cash and checks.

Wal-Mart Stores reports stronger-than-usual sales of peanut butter and spaghetti, while restaurants like Domino’s Pizza and Ruby Tuesday have suffered a falloff in orders, suggesting that many Americans are sticking to low-cost home-cooked meals. Over the last year, purchases of brand name cookies and crackers have fallen, according to Information Resources, which tracks retail sales. Sales of Nabisco graham crackers have dropped 7.5 percent, and Keebler Fudge Shoppe cookies have slipped by 12.3 percent. Not even beer is immune. Sales of inexpensive domestic beers, like Keystone Light, are up; sales of higher-price imports, like Corona Extra, are down, the firm said. Some are skipping drinks altogether. The number of people ordering an alcoholic drink fell to 31 percent last month from 42 percent last summer, according to a survey of 2,500 people conducted by Technomic, a restaurant industry consulting firm.

“People have started to shift spending as if we were in a recession,” said Michael McNamara, vice president for research and analysis at MasterCard. ……

By no means has the economic downturn been bad for all product categories. For instance, sales of big-ticket electronics, like $1,000 flat-panel televisions and $300 video game systems, are on the rise, according to retailers and research firms. Falling prices for such devices and a looming government deadline to convert to digital television have helped. So has the view, sensible or not, that the technology is a good investment. At a Best Buy in Southfield, Mich., James Szekely, 28, a mechanical engineer, was shopping for a big high-definition TV that he expected would cost at least $2,000, an expense he rationalized because “at least we can watch movies at home.” (In a survey conducted this month by the NPD Group, a research firm, consumers suggested that they would sooner cut spending on clothing, furniture and eating out than on video games.)

At Home Depot, sinks and faucets are selling briskly. Managers at the chain suspect that consumers, loath to spend money on a splashy kitchen renovation or new roof, are settling for a cheaper bathroom “refresh.” Another top seller at home improvement stores: programmable thermostats and insulation, which can cut fuel bills. Many retailers are struggling to adjust to the new needs. Clothing sales have started to sink at department stores like Macy’s, Kohl’s and J. C. Penney. So have furniture sales at companies like Bombay and Domain, both of which have filed for bankruptcy protection.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/business/27spend.html