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The analysis of the political poll by ABC's Kate Snow found that Iowa Democrats are attaching greater value to "new direction and new ideas"--Obama's talking point--than to "strength and experience," Rodham Clinton's attribute. Thus Rodham Clinton has refined her slogan to neutralize Obama's advantage: Only Experience Can Bring Real Change. That does not address a second problem the poll found in Rodham Clinton's image, "her willingness to forthright," as ABC polling director Gary Langer put it.
As for Edwards, NBC's David Gregory updated us on those push polls that ABC's Jake Tapper (subscription required) covered on Friday. Gregory described them as illicit "under the radar attacks" that "sound like they are from independent pollsters" but are instead "an attempt to spread negative information." In Edwards' case, the pushers insinuated that his wife Elizabeth, a cancer patient, was so sick that her husband would not be able to compete properly in the General Election. Gregory quoted her rebuttal in an interview for MSNBC's Morning Joe with Mika Brzezinski: "There is no prognosis for me to suggest that I would be anything except exactly how I am today or better."
When a campaign's major talking point is forced to be that its would-be First Lady is not at death's door, it seems that the push pollsters have succeeded.
ABC's Sunday morning anchor, George Stephanopoulos (at the tail of the Snow videostream) of This Week, found the intensity of the campaigning in Iowa "stunning." The poll found that fully one third of likely caucusgoers had actually "met or spoken with" a candidate. "You do not get that kind of contact in a Congressional race." Stephanopoulos then lapsed into the same fallacy that CBS' Jim Axelrod fell into earlier this month. Both used John Kerry's Iowa victory in 2004 as evidence that "electability…who is going to win in November" is the key attribute in winning the caucus. Please. Kerry was unelectable. He lost in November.
CBS mentioned ABC's Iowa poll in passing but did not assign a reporter to its findings. Instead, Katie Couric, who was anchoring from the road in Miami, previewed the unusually forward Florida primary. The leapfrogging state has scheduled its contest in January, before Super Tuesday but after New Hampshire. That violates Democratic National Committee rules so only Republican candidates are competing there. Couric identified Florida as Rudolph Giuliani's opportunity to catch up after Mitt Romney's expected victories in Iowa and New Hampshire. The former mayor of New York City is "spending much of his winter" in the Sunshine State, which is home to 1.5m former New Yorkers. So far Giuliani has logged 20 visits to Florida as opposed to just 15 to Iowa.
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