Today's trends continuing; Superdelegate potential mass defections & poll trends

Today this nugget fell out of the news blogs on the heals of the North Carolina scoop, (8 NC superdelegates reported to be planning on endorsing Obama before the NC Primary), is now being reported by a TV News that New Jersey superdelegates who are on record supporting Clinton now are suggesting they just could end up supporting Sen. Obama.

The lawmakers suggested they might be willing to change Monday at an event in which New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg announced his intention to run for another term in the U.S. Senate.Among those superdelegates in attendance were Rep. Donald Payne, Rep. Steve Rothman and Rep. Rush Holt. Payne supports Clinton, Rothman supports Obama, and Holt is uncommitted...

Gov. Jon Corzine, another superdelegate who has strongly supported Clinton, also said those factors were the most significant -- suggesting he could switch sides after the end of the primary season."The ones that are the most important, in my view, are the popular vote and delegate count," Corzine said.Another Clinton superdelegate, New Jersey Democratic Party Chair Joe Cryan, said he could see himself switching to Obama...

If the sampling of New Jersey superdelegates is representative of Democrats elsewhere, the party could be closer to settling on a nominee than many pundits think.

As details begin to emerge how Clinton would wage a Convention Fight the biggest battle will be over the Credentials Committee. Politico.com has a great article about this area behind the scenes.

If the fight over whether to count the results in Florida and Michigan makes it to the Democratic National Convention, Hillary Clinton will not have enough pledged votes on the 169-member Credentials Committee to deliver a majority decision in her favor, according to an analysis conducted for Politico.

Her only hope of getting the key committee to vote out a “majority report” supporting her position rests on her ability to persuade an as-yet-undetermined number of the 25 members appointed to the committee by party Chairman Howard Dean to cast votes for her position.

The DNC’s Credentials Committee consists of 144 pledged members (Florida and Michigan are not included) plus the 25 party leaders and elected officials appointed by Dean. The 25 Dean appointees include a mix of Dean loyalists, Obama supporters and at least several individuals who have endorsed Clinton...

The analysis was conducted by Matt Seyfang, an attorney and a former delegate counter for past Democratic presidential candidates including Bill Clinton in 1992 to Bill Bradley in 2000. According to his projections and a calculation of the number of committee seats that each candidate is entitled to based on their proportion to the statewide vote or the relevant caucus rules, Obama holds roughly 65 seats and Clinton 56. There are slightly more than 23 seats still to be decided in the remaining contests.

Seyfang’s findings reveal that Clinton faces an uphill battle if, as she signaled on Saturday, her campaign decides to take her fight to seat the Florida and Michigan delegations to the Credentials Committee.

Today the Rasmussen Poll stated that Obama has come within 5 points of Clinton in Pennsylvania. The numbers, compared to last week:

• Clinton 47% (-2)
• Obama 42% (+3)

The poll also illustrates that 47% of respondents have followed Hillary's Bosnia-Misstatement story very closely, and another 27% have followed it somewhat closely. That said, according to Survey USA's pollster report card, Rasmussen has an average error of 7.61% over 31 polls.

Unmistakable is the trending line that Obama is gaining, no different than in Ohio or Texas and possibly in 15 days might catch Clinton in Pennsylvania, then it will be a doneybrook in the press the final 7 days.

Lastly there is an extended article in Slate Magazine called the Tale of Tuzla which says that Clinton's lie about Bosnia possibly disqualified her.

I am recalling these two things for a reason. First, and even though I admit that I did once later misidentify a building in Sarajevo from a set of photographs, I can tell you for an absolute certainty that it would be quite impossible to imagine that one had undergone that experience at the airport if one actually had not. Yet Sen. Clinton, given repeated chances to modify her absurd claim to have operated under fire while in the company of her then-16-year-old daughter and a USO entertainment troupe, kept up a stone-faced and self-loving insistence that, yes, she had exposed herself to sniper fire in the cause of gaining moral credit and, perhaps to be banked for the future, national-security "experience." This must mean either a) that she lies without conscience or reflection; or b) that she is subject to fantasies of an illusory past; or c) both of the above. Any of the foregoing would constitute a disqualification for the presidency of the United States.