Below The Beltway

It’s official, the meltdown is in full force now.

Back in January, Hillary Clinton had double-digit leads in Ohio, Texas, and Pennsylvania. It’s a much different story now. According to Rasmussen, she now leads in Ohio by only 5 percentage points.

But that’s not the worst of it.

For the first time, Clinton has fallen behind in Texas:

Barack Obama has moved ahead of Hillary Clinton in Texas.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey shows Obama attracting 48% of the vote while Clinton earns 44%. Eight percent (8%) remain undecided and another 12% say it’s possible they could change their mind. That latter figure includes 3% who say there’s a good chance they could change their mind.

Obama leads by sixteen points among men, but trails by nine among women. Clinton’s lead among Hispanic voters is down to seven percentage points.

Among those who are undecided, 73% have a favorable opinion of Clinton and 66% say the same about Obama.

And her lead in Pennsylvania is down to 4 points:

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in Pennsylvania shows Hillary Clinton with a very narrow advantage over Barack Obama in the Democratic Presidential Primary. Clinton earns 46% of the vote while Obama earns 42%. Earlier polling by other firms had shown Clinton with a much larger lead in a state that was once considered favorable to her.

This is consistent with the results of yesterday’s Quinnipiac University poll.

Meanwhile, in the Wall Street Journal, Daniel Henninger tries to explain why Hillary is losing to a guy who has only been a Senator for three years:

It’s often said that she lacks Bill’s political skills, whatever that means. Her retail skills are pretty darned good, though, good enough to defeat John Edwards or virtually any other Democrat one can imagine. So why is she losing to a three-year senator?

Partly because she’s running in the wrong century.

Hillary’s politics is the world of Eleanor Roosevelt, when it was all being born anew. The Washington of LBJ’s Great Society in the mid-1960s was alive with policy debates — among Democrats. By now, the Democratic Party’s ideas are largely generic. Everyone noticed that the Democratic presidential candidates were largely singing from the same script. Health care, public schools, green energy, the eternal shafting of the middle class, the unions, protecting Social Security and Medicare. This common script means that the Democratic primaries are largely an audition. The candidates are reading for a role. The lines are known.

The part, however, is challenging. The Democratic platform may be familiar, but it is also infused with the quality of a dream. Actually, the word “dream” gets used a lot in Democratic rhetoric. What are essentially bureaucratic arrangements, such as health insurance or after-school programs, are promised as “universal.” Meanwhile, “the middle class” is being offered a version of never-never land — total public protection from the traps and betrayals of the private sector, which has been reduced to a kind of Grimm’s Fairy Tale abstraction, the wolves.

If you are selling a dream you need the best possible salesman to make it seem somehow possible. They found him in Barack Obama.

In other words, he’s winning because he’s selling what Democrats want to hear, whether it makes sense or not.

Previous Posts

Hillary Clinton Death Watch
Hillary Clinton Death Watch, Afternoon Update
Hillary Clinton Death Watch Saturday Update
Hillary Clinton Death Watch Sunday Update
Hillary Clinton Death Watch Monday Update
Hillary Clinton Death Watch Tuesday Update
Hillary Clinton Death Watch Wednesday Update