Sunday, July 01, 2007

Clinton and Obama consolidate financial support in second quarter

The Hilary Clinton political juggernaut continues to move along powerfully, making it increasingly unlikely that a serious challenge to her candidacy will emerge. Obama's exceptional results raising money, outpacing Clinton in the second quarter of this year, have not translated into competitive poll numbers, though the race is still in very early stages.

One take is that Obama's enthusiastic early support seems to be transitioning from mainstream voters to a sort of "Obama fan club" that in some ways may even diminish his candidacy. The recent video "I've Got a Crush on Obama" is probably not the kind of online social networking that ultimately will favor Obama.

McCain Cash Flow troubles

The McCain campaign is clearly languishing, probably due to McCain's unpopular war stance but I also think because he has failed to capture the imagination of voters the way he did in past campaigns.

Given the low level of poll support (under 10% support among Republicans) it will be increasingly difficult to get donations and keep fueling the effort. I'm not even convinced he's really in this "to win" anymore.

Romney's Dog and Romney blog

An absurd story about Mitt Romney and "animal abuse" has remarkable news traction as it appears to be hopelessly misreported, especially the time frame (I thought this happened last week until I read the details!). The Romney family *over twenty years ago* had a dog that enjoyed riding in a kennel strapped to the roof of the family car. "Forcing" the dog to ride on the roof has been implied where it seems a lot more likely that the dog, Seamus, liked to ride on the roof during family trips.

This is probably an example of some sort of odd "hit job" by opponents.

Anne Romney addresses this over at the Romney blog, though probably too weakly given the attention this continues to get on TV, Time Magazine, and elsewhere. Stories like this are things people can emotionally latch onto and it's important that the campaign at least does more to point out the absurdity of the allegations of animal abuse. Even Tucker Carlson said that Romney's probably "lost his vote"!