Well, welcome to the fight, Salon.

I kept waiting for the part about how this spells doom for Barack Obama because he can't win and it's his fault for being too vulnerable in these terms and shouldn't have been chosen as a nominee or we should be concerned that he was the nominee or.... and then I realized that it wasn't there, that this was actually just debubunking the anti-Obama smears.

Good stuff. A lot of the Obama haters here are going to be annoyed at you now if you keep this up but they really are a tiny fraction of the actual Democratic population. They just seemed larger because so many of them post here.

In any case, thank you. The entire smear machine is geared up and already well into the battle, it's nice to see another voice being used to start fighting it.

Polls are utterly, completely, meainingless at this point. If you want proof, take a look at this:

From Pew Research:

A review of polls conducted in the first quarter of the year preceding the election found many of them forecasting the wrong winner -- often by substantial margins. In February 1995, several early readings showed Sen. Bob Dole leading President Bill Clinton by as many as 6 percentage points. Twenty-one months later, Clinton won by 8 percentage points. In March 1991, President Bush had the support of 78% of the electorate against Democrat Mario Cuomo, the New York governor then perceived as the Democratic frontrunner. Bush lost to Clinton by 6 percentage points in 1992.

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/410/how-reliable-are-the-early-presidential-polls

Yes, March is earlier but guess what, it's still early. It's early until the conventions. At least.

Polls as predictors of who will win are as close to meaningless as anything can be, especially polls taken in the summer. What that means is that if you placed bets on who would win based on polls anywhere before the last month or so of the election cycle, you'd lose your money as often as you'd win. (You'd only do that well because it's a 50/50 binary choice after the nominees are decided)

Further proof of this point? Okay, if polls were a real indicator of who would win, then a month ago they all predicted that McCain would lose. How could he possibly be "winning" or even tied, now? If he is, then those polls were "wrong".

You can chase your own tail, or shadow, or any other illusions you want but it will get you about as mixed up as these kind of pronouncements about "winning" and "losing" at this point. Even more arcane is the alchemic art of identifying why, once you've decided someone's winning. It's the ads! It's the lack of punching back! So again, why wasn't this the case a month ago? Obama was punching back then, then what, stopped?

Who knows, it's all guesswork, starting with a false assumption and then working backwards to find reasons for it that seem to fit.

It's just hurry up and wait, unfortunately. But that doesn't sell ads, I realize.

Our party cannibalizes itself every election"

Amen to that. There is absolutely no unity within the Democratic party. 8 years ago it was Gore v. Nader. 4 years

Yeah and before that Clinton became President. So did Carter, and Johnson, and Kennedy, and on and on. Oh and the Democrats won a majority of house and senate seats more often than the Republicans for years and years to the point where it seemed like the state of things.

This "Democrats always lose" meme is ridiculously selective and short-sighted. It's been frustrating as hell during the last decade and in 1994 when they got control of Congress, but one of the reasons that was such a big thing is because they hadn't had it for ages. And Clinton was President for eight years.

I think for the first time I would advocate Obama adding Clinton to the ticket. She does well in Ohio, Penn, and Florida. This is not an election this country can afford the

Anywhere in the Democratic/progressive world outside of Salon everyone is relieved to see Hillary Clinton not a factor anymore, with great gratitude for her finally dropping the incredibly viscious attacks and only some remaining anger for her having fed so many to the GOP, as seen by the fact that McCain is using some of them verbatim. The last thing in the world that this race needs from the Democratic side is all the baggage and attacks that would come from the right if she were the VP, nothing would fire up the Republican right wing base more.

The fabled PUMAs are a very loud presence at Salon, but elsewhere, except for a very few devoted sites, they're almost non-existant. As they are in reality, as Olbermann reported they couldn't get 250 as a minimum for a meeting at last count.

I wasn't singling you out, I was responding directly to things you wrote, quoting you as I did so. I mean I don't know why that would be called "singling someone out" which sounds more like making a general critique of all letter writers but zeroing in on you, I was in fact responding directly to you.

Anyway sorry if that hurt your feelings, I just disagree. I can actually understand about the age and perspective issue, I just get annoyed with the "always" terms thrown around. It's natural if that's all you've seen as an adult, but that's sort of an endless slope, I mean someone who's 23 could say "Presidential elections are always between Obama and McCain!", and well, okay yeah but...

Re Hillary I don't mean only DailyKos, though it certainly does apply there. Lots of other places. Salon way overrepresents Clinton die-hards, is my point, and I defintely stand by that. There are reasons it's the case, which have been gone over and over so I won't rehash.