WASHINGTON -- Although Democrats are tangled in a fractious primary contest, both Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama probably would win the White House against presumptive GOP nominee John McCain if the election were held now, according to a new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll.
Arizona Sen. McCain remains competitive, but the poll identified one important vulnerability: Voters ranked him lowest among the three candidates on who could best handle the nation's economy -- by far the most pressing concern for the public irrespective of party, gender or income. Of the three main candidates, New York Sen. Clinton inspired the most confidence on the economy.
In a hypothetical matchup, the poll gave Illinois Sen. Obama 46% to McCain's 40%, with 9% undecided.
Clinton led McCain 47% to 38%, with 11% undecided. The nationwide poll, conducted May 1 through Thursday and released Friday, had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
The results represent a shift from a Times/Bloomberg poll in February, when McCain led Clinton by 6 percentage points and Obama by 2, within the poll's margin of error.
"Although there is such infighting now between the two Democratic candidates, we are finding that both Democrats are beating McCain, and this could be attributed to the weakening of the economy," said Times Polling Director Susan Pinkus, who supervised the survey.
For example, among the 78% of voters who said they believe the economy has slid into a recession, 52% would vote for Obama, compared with 32% for McCain. A Clinton-McCain matchup showed nearly identical results.
The poll was based on telephone interviews with 2,208 adults nationwide -- 1,986 of them registered voters -- several days before and after Tuesday's primaries in Indiana and North Carolina, which Clinton and Obama split.
The slowing U.S. economy has become the big election year issue, supplanting even the U.S. war in Iraq. The LA Times poll reports that 56 percent of voters said the economy should be the top priority for the presidential candidates to address, over that of the 34 percent who said that the Iraq war should be the top priority. This is not a good situation for John McCain to be in, considering how McCain has already admitted that he doesn't know much about economic issues. McCain's economic plan is really another rehash of the Bush economic plan--more tax cuts, deregulation, cuts in domestic spending, and his ridiculous gas tax holiday. McCain has even admitted that "there’s been great progress economically" since the Bush administration took office and that "the fundamentals of America’s economy are strong." So that is a round-up of the McCain economy.
And the American people are not buying John McCain's economic happy talk.
The fact here is that John McCain is completely clueless as to the workings of the U.S. economy, or even how to address the serious challenges U.S. faces with this latest slowing economy, the housing crisis, the financial institutions mortgage meltdown, the huge U.S. debt, the cost of the U.S. war in Iraq, the job losses, the eroded U.S. infrastructure, and so many other problems this country faces. It is no wonder that John McCain is losing ground to both Clinton and Obama on the economy.
Of course, John McCain's entire presidential campaign was never based on the economy, but rather about the U.S. war in Iraq. McCain staked his presidential claim to the Bush administration's war in Iraq, calling it "necessary and just." McCain has advocated to sending even more U.S. troops to Iraq over the current Bush White House troop surge. Of course, back in 2007, the U.S. war in Iraq was generating most of the political headlines with the presidential wannabes aligning themselves over the war. The McCain campaign felt that they had a strong position in supporting the war as a means to both generate terrorism fears within Americans and to blame the Democrats not just losing the war in Iraq, but also surrendering to al Qaeda terrorists. It is still the standard talking point that the GOP used against the Democrats in 2004, 2006, and even now in the 2008 elections.
But the political dynamics have changed since 2007. The U.S. economy, and not the war, has taken center stage in the presidential elections. Pocketbook issues are now the big fear among American voters. And they are looking to the presidential candidates for the answers to the U.S. economic, and their pocketbook, problems. John McCain's presidential campaign was centered around McCain's "strength" as a Commander-in-Chief in fighting the evil al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq for another 100 years. The McCain campaign was never expected to deal with economic issues during this election.
Clueless McCain.
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