"Sound and Fury?"

Josh Marshall:

Following up on TPM Reader AY's note below, we seem to have a pretty good read now, which WaPo's Chris Cillizza says he was waiting for, on the effect of "bitter". We have three polls out today -- one shows a 2 point gain for Hillary, one shows a 2 point gain for Barack, and one shows no change at all.

So after four days of the story nonstop it appears to have had zero effect on public opinion.

Now, there is one possible counter-argument. Obama had been gaining ground up until this last run of polls, though SUSA had him falling. So it's plausible to speculate that he would have continued gaining if not for the latest controversy. That would suggest a parallel to Texas and Ohio, where Obama appeared to be making headway until the Nafta controversy and (possibly) the 3 AM ad blunted his momentum.

But based on what we know today it appears that all the sound and fury has signified nothing.

(ed.note: You'll note that two polls came out yesterday. ARG has a huge Clinton lead and huge Clinton gain and Susquehanna had a very small Clinton lead -- 3 points. ARG's record this year has been very poor however; and the Susquehanna sounding was a small sample, which in any case stopped sampling on the 10th, before controversy erupted. Here's the full list of all recent polls.)

Howie P.S.: I was reminded by a caller to The Ed Schultz Show today that the most serious damage ever done to the Democratic brand in the last 100 years was inflicted by Bill Clinton's libido. I'm still bitter about that. And Schultz says Hillary is the real "bitter" one: bitter that her "inevitability" isn't.
Barack Obama