While AS is busy busting Hillary as the-devil-you-know, it occurred to me he may be overlooking Obama's weakness in the polls.
Barack's started out with a lot of "don't knows". That means that the GOP machine can get a hold of his tail and start to wag him, eventually, if he doesn't define himself firmly and strongly, first.
He appears to have brought his whopping CBS News poll number of 61% "don't know" down from January.
This poll, below, from USA Today, shows the progression of "saying hello". It shows people moving from "don't know"or "no opinion" mostly to "unfavorable". Some ad-hoc polls suggest this is occurring among Republicans, rather than so-called independent voters.
E. Barack Obama
| Favorable | Unfavorable | Never heard of | No opinion | |
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| 2007 Oct 12-14 | 53 | 32 | 6 | 9 |
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| 2007 Oct 4-7 | 54 | 27 | 11 | 8 |
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| 2007 Sep 14-16 | 56 | 29 | 8 | 7 |
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| 2007 Sep 7-8 | 48 | 32 | 11 | 10 |
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| 2007 Aug 13-16 | 52 | 29 | 9 | 10 |
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| 2007 Aug 3-5 | 48 | 34 | 9 | 9 |
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| 2007 Jul 12-15 | 49 | 26 | 11 | 14 |
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| 2007 Jul 6-8 | 53 | 27 | 11 | 10 |
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| 2007 Jun 1-3 | 53 | 25 | 10 | 13 |
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| 2007 May 10-13 | 55 | 20 | 16 | 9 |
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| 2007 May 4-6 | 50 | 24 | 13 | 12 |
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| 2007 Apr 13-15 | 52 | 27 | 10 | 10 |
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| 2007 Apr 2-5 | 49 | 24 | 14 | 12 |
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| 2007 Mar 23-25 | 53 | 24 | 14 | 9 |
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| 2007 Mar 2-4 | 58 | 18 | 15 | 9 |
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| 2007 Feb 9-11 | 53 | 19 | 16 | 12 |
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