A Tipping Point for Obama - or Just a Dip?

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By Dan Balz

INDIANAPOLIS -- Is the tide turning?

That has been the main talking point from Hillary Clinton's campaign since her victory in Pennsylvania last week. By almost any measure, she met expectations in the Keystone State, after exceeding them in Ohio and in the popular vote in Texas. Her campaign grabbed hold of those results to push back talk that she should quit the race.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama has faced more bad news over his relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The controversy over Wright's views and whether Obama did enough soon enough to break with his pastor has added enormously to the pressure on him to use next Tuesday's primaries in Indiana and North Carolina to demonstrate that he has fought his way through the troubles.

There are signs that the multiple controversies that have hit Obama over the past weeks are hurting his candidacy, both for the nomination and for the general election. A CBS-New York Times poll shows an erosion of confidence in his ability to prevail in the nomination battle, despite the clear advantages he enjoys against Clinton. Doubts about his values and his patriotism have grown in the past two months, adding to potential concerns about how he would fare in the general election.

Nor has the full weight of the Rev. Wright controversy played itself out. Obama's effort Tuesday to denounce his former pastor still leaves unanswered questions about the impact Rev. Wright had on him and his judgment in not doing more to step away from the pastor's influence. Obama decided Wright was enough of a problem that he did not want him delivering the invocation at his announcement in February 2007. Did he hope to avoid the whole question by pushing his pastor to the side? How seriously did he regard his pastor's transgressions at that time?

The Clinton campaign seized Thursday on a round of new polls to drive their argument that the tide is turning. During a conference call with reporters, the Clinton officials cited new Quinnipiac University surveys from Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida to argue that Clinton is now stronger than Obama in a race against McCain in those three critical swing states.

The surveys show Obama and McCain essentially tied in Florida and Ohio, while Clinton leads the presumptive Republican nominee in both. In Pennsylvania, both Clinton and Obama run ahead of McCain but Clinton's lead is in the double digits, while Obama's is not.

The Clinton campaign team was rightly challenged on the reliability of general election polls this far in advance of the November election. Strategist Geoff Garin responded that he believes there are two important shifts in the landscape that favor Clinton over Obama as the stronger nominee in the fall.

The first, he said, is that the economy now is the most important issue in the election, a shift since the campaign began. The second is that Clinton consistently does better than Obama among voters who cite the economy as the most important issue.

"Yes, polls change," he said, "but what we are seeing in the polls reflects some fundamental things that I think will be crucial to the outcome of the election in November."

If he is right, those are considerations that could be reflected in Tuesday's vote here in Indiana and North Carolina, and also are likely to influence uncommitted superdelegates as they decide whether to endorse Obama or Clinton before the convention.

But superdelegates apparently are weighing a variety of factors, leading Obama to do well in the continuing competition for their support. He picked up a key endorsement from Indiana Rep. Baron Hill on Wednesday and another Thursday, when Joe Andrew, who was chairman of the Democratic National Committee under former president Bill Clinton, switched his allegiance from Clinton to Obama.

Andrew cited the potential damage to the party's hopes of winning in November, should the nomination battle rage all the way to the convention. In a lengthy letter that was released by the Obama campaign, Andrew urged voters in his home state of Indiana -- and other superdelegates -- to bring the contest to a quick conclusion.

The other reality is that, whatever the Clinton campaign has found in recent polling to support their argument that she is the stronger nominee in November, the evidence remains mixed.

A new NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll shows that she continues to carry baggage that could hurt her in the general election. By a 2-1 margins, Democratic voters see Obama as more honest and trustworthy and as more optimistic. By margins almost that great, they believe he is more likely to be able to unite the country.

Just as telling, given the attention on Obama's controversies, when Democrats were asked if they had heard anything about Clinton or Obama over the past month that gave them a more or less favorable impression of either, the reviews on both were harsh. Almost four in 10 said that, on the basis of what they've heard recently, they had a less favorable impression of Obama and of Clinton, while only a quarter said they had a more favorable impression.

What this says is that Obama has been weakened by Rev. Wright and perhaps by other reevaluations of his candidacy over the past two months. How much more damage he may sustain is not knowable now. But Clinton still has work to do to overcome her own weaknesses.

The battle for the hearts and minds of superdelegates will be rage on, with Obama pushing hard for early endorsements and Clinton pleading for time to let the process play out until June. Clearly the tide has turned in one important way -- for the first time since he won South Carolina, Obama is on the defensive far more than his rival. But so too is she, given the lead Obama has in pledged delegates and, more narrowly, in the popular vote.

That's why Tuesday's are so critical to both candidates.

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Edited May 1, 2008 by illumine