I wish there was a way that everybody here could spend a few minutes with my friend George.  George is an African-American male in his mid-70's who speaks with a booming voice and palpable moral authority.  George was raised in the deep south, as such - he was raised in the shadow of Jim Crow.  He was among the first soldiers to serve in an integrated military.  He was among the many who marched with King in Selma.  He eventually helped to blaze a trail as one of the first African American news correspondents for major media outlet. The man has paid his dues.

The two of us got to speaking the other day about the upcoming primary election.  "I think Edwards is our only hope" he said.

I was shocked.  

"What about Obama" I asked?  "You don't like him?"

"Of course I do," said George.  "But America will never accept a black president" he said.

We love our polls around here, don't we?

Dropped by Rasmussen today and noted a few polls that showed some chinks in the Clinton armor.  Given that we have a few diligent posters here always ready to share the inevitability - I thought I'd take it upon myself to share some of the numbers not as likely to be reported.

Here we go:

http://americanresearchgroup.com/pres08/ nhdem8-708.shtml

31% for Clinton, 31% for Obama, 14% for Edwards.

Clinton drops 3% from the previous poll, Obama picks up 6%.

Obama's looking inevitable.

For the last few weeks we've endured dozens of diaries touting national polls and expounding on great length about the Clinton trend upwards and the supposed Obama swan dive.  The narrative we've been force fed is that the current polls are immutable and the race is essentially over.  In particular, it has been argued that Obama is finished and will soon fall to second tier status.

Amazingly given the fetish for national polls these folks clearly have, they have yet to tout today's Rasmussen daily tracking numbers (generally their meat and potato's poll).  Could it be that todays' numbers don't fit the narrative and they are hopeful for a brighter tomorrow?  Or did the ususal suspects simply sleep late today?  

I know the last thing the world needs is another Obama diary, but Slate has a great article on the subject of Obama's willingness to answer hypothetical questions that I thought might be worthy of discussion.  The article, written by John Dickerson, argues that we have been entirely too accepting of the habit our pols have of dodging the kinds of substantive  hypothetical questions that might give us some real insight into how they think.

http://www.slate.com/id/2171610/nav/tap3 /

John Edwards:
"There is no question we must confront terrorists with the full force of our military might. As commander-in-chief, I will never hesitate to do everything in my power to protect Americans and our allies, to root out terrorist cells, and to strike swiftly and strongly against those who would do us harm. And we must stay on the offensive against both terrorism and its root causes."

John Edwards:

When we had Osama bin Laden cornered, they left the job to the Afghan warlords. They then diverted their attention from the very people who attacked us, who were at the center of the war on terror, and so Osama bin Laden is still at large

Big Tent Democrat has written much, both here and previously on Dkos, about his stylistic issues with Barack Obama - most recently in his diary titled "Partisanship."  The substance of his complaint is that Obama's instincts are faulty when he positions himself as being a consensus builder.  Partisanship it is argued, wins elections.  

It appears to me that many in the blogsphere find this argument persuasive.  Without drawing sharp contrast between ourselves and the Republicans, many feel we fail to distinguish the Democratic brand.  For this reason John Edwards has emerged as the candidate of the progressive blogsphere as his rhetoric has become more and more populist in recent months.  National polls however, suggest that this populism is not catching fire with Edwards running a distant third among Democrats - trailing badly behind two moderates.  Even in his much-touted head-to-head matchups against Republican candidates, his advantage is very likely built on southern voters who refuse to vote for a woman or black man - and perhaps concentrated in areas where we cannot win in 2008.  It is also worth noting that the same matchups always come with perception polls showing that the larger electorate still sees John Edwards as the moderate they knew from 2004.

No matter how you slice it, the argument for the electoral superiority of populism would be hard to make with the current data.