From a longtime TPM reader …

There are really only three polls out this morning (Susquehana released yesterday and was in the field only until April 10, before we got all “bitter”). The key measure here isn’t the size of the lead, it’s how they stack up to the previous polls taken by the same organizations last week. Of the three, one shows a slight tightening, one shows a widening by the same margin, and the third shows no change. None of these changes are
statistically significant.

Survey USA:
Clinton 54 (-2), Obama 40 (+2)
Rasmussen:
Clinton 50 (+2), Obama 41 (-2)
Quinnipiac:
Clinton 50 (+0), Obama 44 (+0)

You wrote that “what each shows is Clinton halting Obama’s advance and taking back some of her lead.” In fact, I think that the data show the race remaining unchanged. Despite a media maelstorm, we’re exactly where we were a week ago. Given the ferocity of the attacks and rebuttals, that’s well worth noting.

Following up on TPM Reader AY’s note below, we seem to have a pretty good read now, which WaPo’s Chris Cillizza says he was waiting for, on the effect of “bitter”. We have three polls out today — one shows a 2 point gain for Hillary, one shows a 2 point gain for Barack, and one shows no change at all.

So after four days of the story nonstop it appears to have had zero effect on public opinion.

Now, there is one possible counter-argument. Obama had been gaining ground up until this last run of polls, though SUSA had him falling. So it’s plausible to speculate that he would have continued gaining if not for the latest controversy. That would suggest a parallel to Texas and Ohio, where Obama appeared to be making headway until the Nafta controversy and (possibly) the 3 AM ad blunted his momentum.

But based on what we know today it appears that all the sound and fury has signified nothing.

(ed.note: You’ll note that two polls came out yesterday. ARG has a huge Clinton lead and huge Clinton gain and Susquehanna had a very small Clinton lead — 3 points. ARG’s record this year has been very poor however; and the Susquehanna sounding was a small sample, which in any case stopped sampling on the 10th, before controversy erupted. Here’s the full list of all recent polls.)

M.J. Rosenberg, on the new liberal rival to AIPAC.

Obama has his biggest national lead over Hillary to date in the latest Gallup tracking poll: 11 points.

TPM Reader EF …

Given the clear and longstanding cleavages in the Obama and Clinton primary coalitions, the fact that polls haven’t moved much in response to the furor over Obama’s “Bitter” comments is perhaps not terribly surprising. Most of the working class whites who might have been offended (that word is overused, perhaps “irritated” is better) by the comments are already Hillary backers. The more interesting/relevant metric for how much damage the flare-up has caused Obama’s candidacy is the percent of Clinton supporters who say they will back McCain in November if Obama is the nominee.

That is the first way this could hurt Obama. The second way is by planting a seed of doubt in some superdelegates’ minds and thus holding them back from coming out for him in June. If the flood of superdelegates fails to materialize, Hillary will have a much easier time taking the campaign all the way to Denver, which has the potential to hurt Obama badly in advance of a dramatically truncated general election campaign (he’ll be fighting one-against-two all summer, won’t have a clear shot to define McCain, will be asked constantly about “party unity”, etc.). This second mechanism is harder to measure but the first will be in the next poll that asks the question about general election support.

I don’t see this denying him the nomination, but it’s making Obama’s path the presidency much more perilous.

Another reader notes that the Clinton camp’s aim in pushing the “bitter” stuff is not so much to stoke resentment which, if it actually exists, shows little sign of moving the numbers but rather to keep ginning it up in the rolling pundit conversation to create a negative drumbeat of news for Obama. That could well show up in the polls by next week or simply hold Obama in place and prevent him for making any more gains.

According to the right-wing Human Events online: Barack Obama’s “complicity with rappers dates back to at least 2006.”

TPM Reader RS’s strong opinion …

Here’s my problem: If Hillary were currently contending in the general election, Obama’s “bitter” remark would (unfornunately) be fair game and hammering him for it, par for the course. But she’s not in a general election, she’s in a primary, and everything she uses against Obama now, will be dredged up and used by Republicans. The ruse that Republicans will use his comments against him anyway begs the point because if McCain uses Obama’s comments against him, that’s “politics.” If McCain uses Hillary’s comments against Obama, that lends credence to his criticisms … “See, even Hillary Clinton said…” That, quite simply, is the Jim Jones’ school of politics: she is doling out the “kool aid” to her constituancy, to Obama and his supporters and ultimately, to herself. Who wins if everyone’s dead? That would be John McCain. No matter how you slice it, that’s just plain stupid!

So which is it? ‘Bitter’ is going to take a toll on Obama over time? Or, the whole thing is just another pundits’ tempest, a week of yakking back and forth that ends up making no difference in the real world of public opinion?

As noted earlier, the first big crop of polls seems to show literally no movement whatsoever, when each is added together. Maybe it hasn’t had time to show up yet — a speculation there is no way to disprove. I’ve heard endless arguments on both sides dissecting the few sentences in question. And the vast proportion of the analyses come from rich people from New York and DC, people who really have little entre or insight into how blue-collar people in rural and small-town America think.

Meanwhile, the two national tracking polls (Gallup and Rasmussen) show Obama’s lead either remaining steady or slightly expanding.

I’m not quite sure what to say to this reasoning from TPM Reader PB but I think it nicely captures the thinking of those who think Obama’s downfall is nigh …

I agree, the Wright issue did not have individual effect that I thought it would. But there is beginning to be the appearance of a pattern now, of Obama’s remarks and behaviors, that is truly disturbing. Is it anti-white? Or at least not sufficiently “white-sensitive”? I don’t know. But, man, if there’s a third thing at some point – something else he says, or fails to say, or something that is dredged up from his past that Hillary gets to before McCain gets to it… then everything that came before it — including “bitter,” including Wright – gets re-examined in that new light. If it becomes part of a pattern, the Wright issue may come back with a vengeance.

If you needed more reasons to worry about McCain-onomics, Jared Bernstein has some.