Below The Beltway

As the election remains focused on Pennsylvania, the primary immediately following it is looking very good for Barack Obama:

In North Carolina, Barack Obama has opened up a twenty-three percentage point lead over Hillary Clinton. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds that Obama attracts 56% of the vote while Clinton earns 33%. A month ago, Obama’s lead was just seven percentage points.

While the absolute numbers are different, the trend is similar to results from Pennsylvania where Obama gained ten-points on Clinton during the month of March.

Perhaps the only disturbing news for Obama in the survey is that most Clinton voters (56%) say they are not likely to vote for the Illinois Senator in the general election against John McCain. A month ago, 45% of Clinton voters said they were not likely to vote for Obama against McCain.

There remains an enormous racial divide in the North Carolina data. Obama leads 86% to 9% among African-American voters. Clinton holds a 47% to 38% advantage among white voters in the Tar Heel State. A month ago, Obama led by fifty-three points among African-Americans while Clinton led by twenty points among White voters.

Ironically, this polls comes out on the same day that Bill Clinton said that North Carolina is a win-or-die state for Hillary:

Like it did in Texas and Ohio, the Clinton campaign for president has drawn a line in the sand, down the middle of the Tar Heel state.

Bill Clinton said Friday in Charlotte that his wife’s presidential bid hinges in many ways on whether the New York senator wins North Carolina’s Democratic primary.

Speaking to about 4,000 at a rally at UNC Charlotte, the former president said Hillary Clinton would likely have to win the state’s May 6 primary to have any chance at winning the overall popular vote and ultimately overtaking Sen. Barack Obama as the party’s nominee.

“Every state’s vote should be counted,” Bill Clinton said. “You’re going to have an important role in this election.”

I’d comment on the significance of this, but ol` Bill has moved the goalposts so many times in the past three months it’s getting hard to keep track anymore.

Apparently, though, the main reason Clinton is having problems in North Carolina is because the voters don’t trust her:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama leads rival Hillary Clinton among N.C. voters, in part because voters say they value trustworthiness over experience.

And N.C. voters gave Arizona Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, higher marks than either Democrat on both counts, as well as on his credentials to keep the country safe, according to a new Observer/WCNC Poll.

“(It’s) his whole background,” said Democrat Robert Brown, 46, an online trader from Chapel Hill. “He was a prisoner of war. He’s an upfront, straight-talking man.”

The poll found that trust is the top consideration for most voters. Nearly nine in 10 said it would play a big role in determining their vote.

Only 25 percent of voters gave Clinton high marks for trustworthiness, compared with 54 percent for McCain and 48 percent for Obama. Even Democrats ranked Clinton lower.

“I don’t trust her because of the fact that she’s having Bill (Clinton) pretty much run the race for her,” said Sarah McClary, a 33-year-old nurse from High Point. “And all her stories are pretty much coming back to bite her in the butt.”

Finally, it seems, the Clintons’ legacy of deceit is coming back to bite them.