Reply #38: Well, it goes something like this... [View All]

Hillary Clinton certainly has name recognition from the Clinton years in the '90s. The negative ratings come from various factors, whether they are right or wrong. Polls show her negative ratings very high in her own party.

The "unelectable and divisive" judgement is in the most part due to the factors regarding her husband and his legacy. The fact that Republicans would love to have her as the nominee to wake up their base gets into the "unelectable" territory.

Most people outside the politically interested know her and haven't yet started looking at the other candidates, except perhaps Edwards, Biden and Kucinich, who have either been on TV a lot or ran at earlier times.

When Clinton starts attacking Obama and then he defends himself and it makes news, it puts Obama in the "eyeballs" of viewers who haven't really seen him yet. I think he's done well in the recent scuffle (that Clinton started) and it can only help his candidacy that he's now more of a household name.

Joe Lieberman and Dick Gephardt had "name recognition" in 2004 and were up in the polls in the earlier stages. I think that was mostly due to the fact that people didn't really know the others who were running. And the way polls work in such early stages where the first votes are a political infinity away (five months), the name recognition factor means almost nothing until mid-Fall, after the World Series and perhaps after Labor Day.

We'll see how all this pans out. If Clinton keeps trying to hammer at Obama, she is only going to lose more voters.