In the meantime, I’ve cringed at such uninformed remarks by supposedly respected commentators as “Feminist means anti-male.” Since when? Just to set the record straight, the feminist movement has always been about fair and equitable treatment for women, including such mundane issues as equal pay for equal work.
Next on my list have been the pseudo-psychologists throwing around the phrase, “playing victim.” That’s long been a favorite response of conservatives to anyone who dares to complain about blatant discrimination, obvious abusive treatment, or even hate crimes. I fear that Clinton’s critics on both the extreme left and right are now finding the phrase useful.
Incidentally, a friend of mine noted yesterday that of the candidates pressing Clinton about her position on the immigration issue during the debate, not one had the courage to reveal where he stood.
All is not lost, however. Recent polls show the public is a lot wiser than the overeager pundits who predicted that Clinton’s responses during and after the debate jeopardized her frontrunner status.
Data from the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll shows that on the two nights following the debate (Wednesday and Thursday) Clinton held a 45% to 18% lead over Barack Obama. For Clinton, that’s an improvement from Monday and Tuesday nights when her lead over Obama had been 40% to 24%.
And according to staff writers John Cohen and Dan Balz, the latest Washington Post-ABC poll shows Clinton leads the race for the Democratic nomination with 49 percent, followed by Obama at 26 percent. Edwards has 12 percent.”
Cohen and Balz indicate that Clinton's national front-runner status is built on her advantages on several key attributes, all of which may yield dividends in the state-by-state contests. They explain:
Three-quarters of Democrats view Clinton favorably, which is somewhat higher than the results for Obama (67 percent) or Edwards (62 percent). More than twice as many have a "strongly" positive impression of Clinton as have that view of
Edwards. And most of those who would back Clinton in their state's primary or caucus, "strongly" support her.
A majority of Democrats see Clinton as the strongest leader of the three top candidates, and she has the edge over Obama and Edwards as being best on the issues and the closest representative of the party's core values. Notably, given
the increasingly sharp debate among the candidates over foreign policy, Clinton is seen as the best able to handle the situations in Iraq and involving Iran, by margins of better than 2 to 1.
Despite their personal attacks in Philadelphia on Clinton’s character, the poll shows she leads Obama by five points and Edwards by 16 points as the Democratic party’s most honest and trustworthy candidate.
Finally, Cohen and Balz report:
A large and growing lead on "electability" also propels Clinton's candidacy. More than six in 10 Democrats now see her as the candidate who has the best shot at winning next November -- up 19 points from June.
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