During one of the NH debates (maybe it was Iowa; they've all blurred together now), Edwards very famously -- and forcefully -- aligned himself with Obama against Hillary as a representative of "the status quo." I have to believe that his supporters took notice of this. Whatever differences he had with Obama were largely about procedure and policy details, but with Hillary, it was about her establishment credentials, which is much more substantive. I don't find it a surprise at all that Obama appears to be outpolling her with Edwards voters.

We've got a few Edwards supporters around here. It would be interesting to hear where they're going from them.

VEry true. And also don't forget that throughout the fall, Edwards unleahsed angry rants against Hillary.

My sister, who voted twice for George W Bush, is leaning towards McCain now, but was going to vote for Edwards (I am still amazed at that one).  Her best friend, a committed Democrat, supported Edwards until Tuesday when she decided to switch to Obama.  I switched from Edwards to Obama on Sunday.  

Those are three Edwards supporters I know of.  Anyone else?

Neil

It's interesting if you do a scatterplot of the results so far. Both candidates have maxed out at 55 percent, Hillary in Michigan when she was the only real name on the ballot, and Obama in South Carolina. Her worst showing was 29 percent in Iowa, whereas Obama's worst was 33 in Florida. Hillary's mean finish has been 34.6 percent; Obama has only finished below that once, in Florida. Obama's mean finish has been 42.5, well above Hillary's.

In contested races, Hillary has won by 2 and 6. Obama has won contested races by 9 and 28.

Anyway, I think it's telling that Hillary has hit 50 and 51 but only broke through in a state where Obama wasn't on the ballot, whereas Obama's 55 came in an actual contested race. Now that Edwards is out, I think the retroactive lesson of Florida is that Hillary couldn't break past 50 percent in a state she effectively had to herself.

Does any of this mean anything for Super Tuesday? Probably not more than charting the results of any 12 regular-season possessions would tell us who is going to win the Superbowl. But Hillary's inability to score a breakthrough in a competitive race suggests that she has a very low ceiling even among Democrats. May not be low enough to deny her the nomination. But it looks close to catastrophic to me when thinking about the general election.

My aunt was for Edwards, but is voting for McCain in the primary because she's got a big crush on McCain. But apart from that freaky monkeywrench, she'd vote for Obama over Hillary, definitely. Also my other Edwards friend, who has no such crush, will be voting for Obama on Tuesday.

Rhubarbs - fascinating, nice work. If HRC has a ceiling among _Dems_, and if she's not poicking up support from the Edwards crowd, then it's pretty obvious that she'll have a very hard time breaking 50% in the general.

I've never been a big Obama supporter but I think the case against Hillary-- to be precise, against Billary-- is getting to be pretty compelling. I have a feeling he'll win decisively on Tuesday.

Well, Tep, I hope so.  I generally find that my support for a candidate is inversely related to their popularity with everyone else.  I would have preferred Biden.  After Biden, Edwards, after Edwards, Obama.  So, having realized around the time of the Iowa caucuses that Edwards hadn't a prayer, I have become an Obama supporter.  Warily, but with an enormous sense of hope.  Hillary is nothing if not depressing.  Her shucking and jiving (kidding there) on Iraq alone should be enough to make any thoughtful person ill.  The truth appears to me to be that she didn't really care one whit about what Bush's policy toward Iraq was and whether it was sound or disastrous.  She only cared about what supporting it or not would do to her presidential ambitions.  That dictated her votes and made reading the NIE irrelevant.  Hence, she didn't bother.  I live in New York; I am a Democratic town party leader. I cannot figure out anything that Hillary has done for my state, for the NYS Democratic party, or for my town (other than show up to raise money there).  Okay, she did get rid of Al D'Amato and my gratitude for that led me to support her for a long time.  But when she became one of the sponsors of the anti-flag burning bill, I decided she is a non-stop panderer whose only guiding principle is her own ambition.

Someone on this thread or a related one commented that they did not want a "leader" as president, just someone who can do the job effectively.  I found this odd.  The job of president is to be the leader, not in some romantic sense or in the "Duce" sense, but to have chief responsibility for shaping and discerning both the public will and the will of the political class and shaping an agenda that can succeed -- for the Democrats, a progressive agenda that can succeed in garnering public support and being enacted and carried out.  That is only incidentally a policy-making job.  Mostly it lies at the intersection of policy and politics.   Bureaucrats can figure out the actuarial and financial problems of a health care plan.  The president's job is to decide what is salable and to sell it so that the political classes have no choice but to fall into line.  Doing the job requires being able to hear people and move people.  It is why Obama has the chance to win and to be a fine president -- not that that is assured -- and Hillary does not, not the chance to win and not the chance to govern effectively if she did.

roi - that's about as clear and eloquent a description of presidential leadership that I've seen. Thank you. I'm cautiously hopeful re Obama for the very reasons you outlined. He needs to step up on foreign policy, though, also give the nation a succinct explanation of our economic ills and What Is To Be Done.

btw , for the life of me I don't understand why CanWest doesn't recognize the gold mine they have in the wit & wisdom of the TalkBackers. Today alone I've seen half a dozen posts that are better-- more insightful, more gracefully written, more enteraining-- than anything you'll find on the NYTimes Op Ed pages.

It's getting pretty clear now. My druthers would be for Obama to get the nomination and Hillary to take Harry Reid's job, which I think she could do splendidly for decades. If she gets the nomination, and the Republicans are smart enough to nominate McCain/Huckabee, I will probably vote Republican for only the second time in my life. But Barak is First Choice for the White House for me, and I believe many others.

That said, I am not a subscriber to the view that Hillary only voted for the AUF on purely political grounds. Her vote, like that of many other responsible Democrats, was consistent with support for our rescue of Bosnia and Kossovo, and for support of the generally-accepted norms of international behavior as defined by the UN Charter. Moreover, it was consistent with the best available consensus intelligence. Those who imagine that her treatment of the 2002 NIE refutes her claim to serious research and due diligence have clearly never participated in the creation of such a document, or in fact read very many of them.

Gee, if they will start sending me the top secret NIE's, I promise to read them cover to cover.

Trust me, roi, you'd fall asleep. It's basically an "executive summary" for dummies, a bland exercise in group-think with all the rough edges filed off._________My understanding is that Hillary, like Colin Powell and a number of other important players, conducted extensive in-depth interviews with the people who WROTE the damned thing, which is a lot better way to get an actual feel for the facts, good, bad, and ugly, than going with the Reader's Digest version. The sad truth is that we NEVER have really solid intelligence on many crucial subjects, at least not what normal people would think of as solid intelligence. Once in a generation you get something like the Enigma machine or the Purple code. Usually it's just guesswork.  No matter who the next President is, they're going to have to make decisions without the benefit of certainty on important details.  Life, as they say, in the Big City.

Just out of curiousity, was it reported anywhere that Powell and Hillary conducted such interviews?  If Powell did so, how on earth could he have given the speech he gave to the UN?

I Was An Edwards supporter and am now backing Obama but I didn't know anyone else who supported him.

So far it's 7 Edwards supporters for Obama, 1 for McCain, and 0 for Hillary. Not scientific, but interesting.__________________________

On the NIE question, I don't have handy links, but I did personally hear both Hillary and Powell state that they did these interviews both on Capitol Hill and at Langley. It seems clear to me that such in-depth fact finding is significantly superior to a 90 page summary, which is what the NIE is. Moreover, most if not all of the caveats were out in the public domain. I don't have any FISA-sanctioned wiretaps, but I was aware in '03 of numerous experts, including retired CIA analysts and members of the UN inspection teams, citing them in print and other places like BBC. It was more-or-less common knowledge that although Saddam was very interested in nukes, his program was almost certainly on the shelf in 2003. Virtually everyone, including Iraqi generals and perhaps Saddam himself, thought there were chem and bio agents available, however. Virtually everyone, including Koffi Annan, Jacques Chirac, and Gerd Schroeder was in favor of the AUF, however, which is the only way we got Blix and Co. back into Iraq in the first place, as Hillary says._______________The real problem here is not that Powell et al lied, but that they went on the best intelligence we had. That's how he could give that speech. The decision to invade was based on the whole history, not just the state of Iraq's wmd stockpiles anyway.