Below The Beltway

There’s a nice big banner headline over at Drudge today:

Controlled excitement is building inside of Clinton’s inner circle as closely guarded internal polling shows the former first lady with an 11-point lead in Pennsylvania!

Clinton is polling near to nearly 2 to 1 over Obama in many regions of the state, a top insider explained to the DRUDGE REPORT.

A strong coalition of middle-class and religious voters has all but secured a Clinton victory Tuesday, with headline-making margins, the campaign believes.

“It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of how much,” a senior campaign source said Monday morning.

When pressed if the dramatic internal polling numbers could somehow be flawed in a state as demographically complex as Pennsylvania, and with new voter registration surging to unseen levels, the campaign insider held firm.

“Senator Obama would be wise not to unpack his bags quite yet.”

This is interesting on several levels. First, it reminds me of this story from back in October about how cozy the Clinton campaign had become with the man who broke the Monica Lewinsky story. Second, though, it just seems like a strange story for the Clinton campaign to release on the day before a make-or-break primary, which is why Josh Marshall is skeptical:

[T]his strikes me as suspicious for two reasons, the first of which isn’t particularly determinative. First, this margin is high for the range of the polls out today. But it’s not that far off. So it’s certainly possible that it’s what the Clinton internals are showing. And it could well be true. The second reason is where the problem is. Even if you assume that the Clinton campaign is getting numbers that are making them confident of a good night tomorrow night, it simply makes no sense for them to broadcast the numbers like this.

Here’s why.

The game is heavily about expectations at this point. And the public polls are showing a fairly close race. Far better for the Clinton camp to keep expectations right there and surprise people with a low double-digit win. Switching expectations to 10 points, only to meet those expectations makes no sense, especially since Clinton started 6 weeks ago with a 15 or 20 point margin.

And the Clinton campaign is denying that they leaked anything to Drudge. Frankly, I’m with Marshall on this one, there’s no reason for the campaign to raise expectations at this point. Of course, that doesn’t preclude the possibility that someone outside the campaign had access to the internals and released them on their own.