Obama: Clearing Out the Second Tier

Maybe I'd be more excited about Barack Obama if I had read The Audacity of Hope, owned a television, or hadn't been excited about Howard Dean in 2004.

But I'm not.

One thing that Obama is doing, however, is killing the long-shot candidacy of John Kerry. He's also making an Al Gore bid a little less likely than it already is.

In the most recent Fox polling, Obama polls at 12% among Democrats, enough to put him alone in the second tier of interested Democratic candidates but not enough to bother Hillary too much. Given that Kerry sinks from 13% to 6% and Gore dives from 15% to 11%, almost of Obama's support is coming from people who still support former candidates.

Not exactly a hip crowd.

And Obama hasn't taken anything from Hillary. Her support increased slightly from 32-33%

Assuming that Gore is not going to run, that means that Obama is the only Democrat other than Hillary with more than 10% support. Eventually, this will make Obama the anti-Hillary in a precedent-setting and high-quality Democratic primary campaign.

The third tier is made up of John Edwards and John Kerry drifting below the Lieberman futility line of 9% while Evan Bayh, Joe Biden, Tom Vilsack, Wesley Clark, and Bill Richardson all barely register.

What often happens is that third tier candidates drift along hoping to become the leading alternative to the favorite and then catch some kind of lightning to the top. For all the guys in the Democratic third tier, this means that they would be hoping to seize any opportunity afforded if Obama either faltered or decided not to run.

You have to wonder why they bother.

Right now, Barack Obama's main contribution to the Democratic presidential nomination process is to make it necessary for the third-tier riff raff to have a lot more audacity if they want to keep hope alive (to borrow a Jesse Jackson line).

I'm all for that.