Polls don't reflect Obama's star power

[DeepModem Mom]

LAT: Polls don't reflect Obama's star power
The Democrat creates a stir wherever he goes, but runs far behind Clinton nationally. Some observers are puzzled; others say he's too gentle.
By Robin Abcarian, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 29, 2007

....Crowds coo, strain to shake his hand, get his autograph, take his picture. In town meetings, supporters testify with religious fervor. At a Des Moines forum on global climate change, high school physics teacher Bill Cox lobbed the ultimate love bomb: "You remind me of John Kennedy," Cox said....So why isn't Obama doing better in the polls? No candidate in recent memory has swept onto the national political scene with greater fanfare. Obama has been on magazine covers and talk shows. Oprah Winfrey endorsed him, and Obama Girl's unrequited urges turned him into a YouTube sensation. He has raised nearly as much money as Clinton, and in Iowa, at least, has advertised twice as much (4,244 TV spots versus 2,192, according to the Nielsen Co.)

Yet he has been unable to translate the relentless, often fawning attention into anything approaching a surge....Could the man have misplaced his mojo?...

***

The mantra of change makes its way into every Obama speech. On a chilly evening outside a United Auto Workers hall in Marshalltown, Iowa, he told the crowd that people "want to feel we can still rally together as Americans around a common purpose, a common destiny; that we can solve big problems here in America; . . . that we can put an end to the gridlock and go about the business of changing America. But what we realize is we can't do that just by changing political parties in the White House; we've got to change our politics."

But the "change" message may be problematic, said Dick Bennett, president of the nonpartisan polling firm American Research Group. "When he talks about representing change, women who are considering Hillary look at him and say, If this is about change, she represents greater change than you do, simply by being a woman," Bennett said. "That has kept her up in the polls, and all the men -- basically husbands of the women who have supported her from the beginning -- are coming around and saying, 'Yes, I'd vote for her.'" The husbands, Bennett said, are comforted knowing that Bill Clinton will be in the White House with her, "and times were good when he was president."

Some political observers think that Obama has put himself in a box by promising to stay positive. His harshest specific criticism of Clinton is that she lacked good judgment by voting in 2002 for the resolution that authorized President Bush to invade Iraq. Obama, who was running for the U.S. Senate at the time, opposed it. Bill Carrick, a California political consultant, is puzzled by Obama's failure to catch fire, calling it "one of the great enigmas of presidential politics." Partly, he said, that's because Clinton is a formidable opponent who has yet to make a major gaffe -- but partly, it's Obama's gentle style....

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-obama29oct29,0,6297250.story?coll=la-home-center

[tekisui]

1. Obama doesn't reflect Obama's star power.--nt