Sam, you forgot to mention that Rasmussen ALSO has her trailing Thompson and Guiliani today...

You were saying something about electability????

Obama's favorability rating has dropped six points in two weeks!

And yet he is still beating Guiliani by 6 points...

Rasmussen Reports

The head to head matchups have been in flux for some time now - a point up one day, then down the next.  This diary is a focus on overall favorables vs unfavorables, among Democrats and among all voters.  

It has long been the contention of certain Dems that Hillary cannot win the general due to her high unfavorables.  I wish to submit that this is simply not the case.  Or, if it is, that Obama is in almost the same position as Hillary.  

Fair enough...I hope she does well. I'm an Obama supporter but respect the Clintons a great deal...

Those who are concerned about her unfavorables have every right to be. How do you think she will respond to the barage of attacks reminding those of WJC's term in office? That does have to cause pause for concern, no?

Hillary's going to do just fine when she comes up against Rudy or Fred or Mitt, in the general.  She will be THE most prepared to take on any of them.  Those old Clinton faux-scandals have no traction anymore and the GOP has nothing new on Hillary.  

Over the past two months alone, three new Hillary bios have hit the stands -- all of them were written to hurt Hillary -- and they haven't hurt her in the least, despite all the media attention given to the most negative parts of those books.  

Hillary is far more immune to being smeared than both Obama and Edwards.  And she's a better fighter than either of them.

The question here is depth.

Obama may have had a rough couple of weeks, which in turn kicked his unfavorables up - but it is doubtful that opinion on him has frozen to the point where they cannot lower as easily as they have risen.

Clinton on the other hand has been around a while and much of the electorate is entrenched in their opinions of her.  Her numbers rise and fall largely on the basis of the fluctuations in opinion of a narrow segment of the population that is not absolutely committed to their opinion of her.

Because Clinton is extremely popular within the Democratic party, her chances of winning the nomination are obviously quite good.  The problem is she has very low support among the general electorate, with a huge bloc of voters not even open to voting for her.  She will have to run the table with idependents and other swing voters.  Obama's strength is with those voters - IF he can figure out a way to appeal to enough Democrats to wrest the nomination from Clinton.  

30% of Democrats must be latent racists.

Obama is a product of his environment.  Democrats in Chicago are used to playing hardball in the primaries and coasting in the general election.  His lone statewide race turned out to be a cakewalk as the Republican nominee had to withdraw because of a nasty divorce/ sex scandal.  No general election will be a cakewalk.

Obama is throwing too many sharp elbows too early.Some of his employees and supporters have been worse. Democrats liked Bill Clinton. Obama would be better advised to try to separate Hillary's record from Bill's rather than blasting Bill and sucking up to people like Richard Lugar("Richard Nixon's favorite mayor").

Clinton is the republican choice for who the Democratic nominee should be. Witness the huge amount of publicity give to the national polls which she leads. Also note the absence of attacks on her or her positions from any of the pundocracy, just admiration.

Whereas any time Obama opens his mouth he is lambasted to a fare thee well. For example, Obama's statement that he would speak with the "devils," those leaders of countries villified today without preconditions. Though the polls on that issue showed that most people supported that issue the talking heads (who are definitely not liberal) have been near unanimous in pronouncing that a terrible gaffe of the inexperienced Obama. However the present way of laying out preconditions or refusing to talk has not been doing too well for us!  Also his "lack of experience" is expounded upon. Not a word is said about the stunning amount of meaningful law he got passed in Springfield - at first in a Repub dominated legislature. Edwards is also vilified and demeaned constantly.  But not Hillary -- just admiration and many pronouncements on how sure her lead is and how it is certain she will be the nominee.

In 2004 the repug choice was anyonebutDean and it worked with too many democrats saying "but he's unelectable." I think he was the only one who would have won.

Let's not make the same mistake. Let's not let the Repug choice stand.

Among the personal attacks would be this killer:
Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton, why it's almost like having Royalty.