Prometheus 6

I do find it odd, though, that she would answer any kind of question from the editorial board of a Pittsburgh area newspaper, the Tribune-Review, that promoted the vile and untrue allegation that she had something to do with the death of Vince Foster, the deputy White House counsel in her husband's administration who committed suicide. The Tribune-Review is owned by Richard Mellon Scaife, who is considered by Clintonistas to have been puppet master and chief financier of the "vast, right-wing conspiracy" that Hillary Clinton famously perceived.

Collateral Damage
By Eugene Robinson
Friday, March 28, 2008; A19

Talk about not being able to catch a break. To pummel a boxing metaphor, it was Barack Obama who got tagged with a roundhouse right, flush on the chin -- but it was Hillary Clinton, from early indications, who ended up nursing a sore jaw and wondering what hit her.

A week of hearing the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's jeremiads more or less continuously on cable news channels seemed certain to hurt Obama politically. Indeed it did -- but only slightly, according to a new NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll. The candidate who really suffered, according to the same poll, was Clinton.

Clinton must look back at dodging bullets in Bosnia and bringing peace to Northern Ireland as mere walks in the park compared with this crazy campaign. Then again, accurate recollection hasn't been her strong suit of late.

The NBC-Journal poll, released Wednesday, found that the percentage of voters with negative views of Obama increased by four points in the past two weeks, from 28 percent to 32 percent. Meanwhile, the percentage with positive views of Obama declined by two points, from 51 percent to 49 percent. It's hard to attribute this slippage to anything other than the controversy over Wright's sermons. All in all, it wasn't what you'd call a great fortnight for Obama.

Surprisingly, though, Clinton's was considerably worse. The percentage of voters holding negative views of her increased by five points, from 43 percent to 48 percent, while the percentage of voters who had positive views of Clinton declined a full eight points, from 45 to 37 percent.