Mo Mo

Momentum is a scary thing: it is powerful but it can turn. Still, the more it builds and the longer it goes on, the harder it is to stop.

Tuesday's USA TODAY will show results of the first national Gallup Poll to show Obama ahead of Hillary. It's 47% to 44%--just 3%, within the 5% margin of error. But the poll was conducted before Obama's weekend sweep of contests. And the poll is the third national poll this week to show Obama besting McCain (50%-46%), but it shows McCain over Clinton by one point.

One thing that momentum does is makes room for negative stories about the candidate who doesn't have it at the moment. It's not quite a week after Clinton got some significant states on Super Tuesday, but Obama's string of victories--and the margin of victory(including an error fixed Monday that now means Obama won every county in Washington state)--is having a major impact, after he came out of Super Tuesday with more delegates and states. So Clinton's problems are bigger news, and bad impressions are moving forward.

The New York Times story quoted in the post below is one example. Another is the slowly building questions about the Clintons' finances--a chilling flashback, at best. This piece reviews what's known and ends with this ominous suggestion concerning the mixing of Billary's money (after it was revealed that her $5 million loan to her campaign came not from her own account but their joint funds) : "In other words, money from Yucaipa and the interests it deals with - running the gamut from public employee pension funds to supermarket chains to the Dubai Investment Group - is directly benefiting Hillary Clinton, an incumbent politician charged with voting on issues crucially important to the profits of Yucaipa, its clients, partners and investors."

All this when Obama, who releases his tax returns as a matter of course, has gently asked Clinton to release hers, but she says she's not ready.

While the candidate without momentum becomes an easier target, what the critics say can also be instructive. On Sunday Frank Rich went after how the Clintons are conducting this campaign with charges of cynicism and racism (also quoted in a previous post.) This Paul Jenkins piece catalogues some of the more outrageous spin coming out of Hillary's mouth and the Clinton campaign. For example:

The spinning absurdity reached a paroxysm (at least so far) as Super Tuesday results started pouring in. Georgia, which Obama won by 36%, was irrelevant, the Clinton operation told us, because she hadn't campaigned there and Obama had a "consistently [...] wide poll lead" in the state. Left unsaid was the fact that both Clintons were in Georgia days before the primary and that Clinton was well ahead in the state just weeks before the February 5 contest.

It seemed like it couldn't get any worse, but then her campaign claimed that Clinton's Oklahoma win (the first of the evening for her) was important because it was the only state so far where both candidates had "competed fiercely." Oklahoma, as it happened, was the one state in which Obama had not campaigned (he was last there in March 2007, it seems), and one in which polling had showed he was consistently behind by 20 or 30%.

If Hillary was winning, these might just be quoted, instead of collected for disdain. But part of the point is that they do exist. Contrast this with what critics can possibly say about the Obama campaign. They can't accuse it of cynical manipulation or egregious distortions. Every campaign engages in some degree of spin, but the Obama campaign has been remarkably forthright and accurate, as reporters admit. Maybe this tells you something.