Hillary Takes Ohio, Leads Texas

OHIO! It's 11:40 right now and Ohio has been called for Hillary Clinton. That's not a big surprise. Ohio has been trending toward Hillary over the last couple of days. The big surprise is that she's leading by 14 at 56-42. The biggest lead I saw for Hillary in the polls was 10 points which means that she was at the edge of the margin of error for the most Hillary optimistic polls.

She also has a 2 point lead in Texas with 65% of the vote in. Of course, that's subject to a lot of change.

BUT WHY? Last week, Ohio looked even. So the question then is why did Hillary move anywhere from 10-14 points over the last week. One of the anonymous critics of this blog (and their criticisms really hurt my feelings) believes that the Drudge item from a Hillary campaign e-mail on Obama's Muslim dress and the Hillary "3am" ad were the things that tilted things toward Hillary.

But I don't buy that.

If anything the Obama Muslim story and the "3am" ad were damaging to Hillary herself. She certainly got a lot of negative press over the Drudge item. Likewise, I heard the ad while listening to Laura Ingraham and Ingraham wasn't far off the mark when she said it was the "worst ad" she ever heard. It was so bad that I almost switched my support from Hillary to Obama right then.

I thought it was a combination of things that pushed Hillary out to a big lead in Ohio. The most important damage came from the report on an Obama representative telling a Canadian official that Obama wasn't serious about his criticisms of NAFTA. That not only made Obama look like a "typical politician," but it made him look like a hypocrite on an issues that's particularly important in Ohio.

Obama was also getting a barrage of media criticism on the patriotism issue of a flag lapel pin, a lot of scrutiny over his connections with Tony Rezko, and attacks by McCain for his opposition to a 100 year occupation of Iraq.

Finally, Democrats like Mrs. RSI were tired of seeing the media dance on Hillary Clinton's grave. Hillary may not prove to be as popular as Barack Obama, but she is a popular politician and a lot of Democrats don't want to see her humiliated even if they are willing to see her lose.

Hillary herself doesn't have a lot to do with any of these factors. The most that can be said for her is that she didn't make any egregious mistakes. That put her in position to take advantage of the fact that Barack Obama is the leading candidate means that the media focus is shifting toward him and the search for warts, failures, and contradictions is really beginning. Facing the white-hot heat for the first time, Obama looks less attractive. Having been pushed out of the glare, Hillary looks better--about 14 points better.