Did you know that Fox News hasn't published a single poll showing a general election matchup between John Edwards and a Republican?

On the other hand, Fox has released 23 matchups featuring Hillary Clinton and a Republican -- and 10 with Barack Obama.

Fox must know what a comprehensive analysis of publicly available polling data shows: John Edwards is the most electable Democrat, leading Republicans by 8 points on average, compared to 5 points for Obama, and 3 points for Hillary.

Over the last few days, I conducted a comprehensive analysis of all the publicly available polls showing general election matchups that I could get my hands on.

I explain the details of my methodology below, but the key point is that the analysis was limited to polls including all three Democrats matched up against the same Republicans. In other words, instead of comparing a Hillary Clinton - Rudy Giuliani matchup taken in March to a John Edwards - Mike Huckabee matchup from December, this analysis only makes apples-to-apples comparisons: Democrats matched up against the same Republicans in the same timeframe by the same polling organization.

As the above chart shows, since July 1, John Edwards consistently receives the highest support and holds the Republican to the lowest support. As a result, John Edwards would enter the 2008 general election with the largest lead of any Democrat.

What makes this especially impressive is that Edwards has actually gone through a national campaign -- he's been on the ballot in all fifty states. Like Hillary, he's already been through the Republican attack machine -- and he's still the strongest Democrat.

Given these numbers, it's not suprising that Fox hasn't been releasing any poll data on John Edwards' electability. On the other hand, they've been dumping a flood of data about Hillary Clinton. 23 of the 33 general election matchups Fox has released this year have included Hillary -- 13 of them featuring Hillary versus Republicans in without any other Democrat tested in the poll.

In those 13 polls, Hillary has an average lead of 7% -- well above her 3% average lead in all other polls. Is it any surprise that Fox would release data making our weakest potential candidate appear the strongest? In the polls where they've also tested Obama, Obama has had a higher average margin than Hillary. Fox's solution to this inconvenient problem? Just pretend that Obama (and Edwards) don't exist and exclude them from most polls!

(Of course when Hillary brags about her electability, she includes these Fox polls in her analysis. Who could blame her? It's probably the only really nice thing Rupert Murdoch has ever done for her, besides contributing to her campaigns.)

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Just for fun, I put most of this data in a YouTube video clip. ***WARNING*** It is really wonky! Only for geeks! (Or Ben Harper fans!)

Link:

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How I conducted this analysis:

First, I developed a database of all polls taken in 2007, drawing from the polls at Real Clear Politics and adding a single Rasmussen poll from mid-October that RCP had neglected to include in its listings. I also included the most recent CNN poll, which RCP had not fully included at the time I pulled their data.

After completing this step, I had 485 poll matchups in my dataset (e.g., Clinton-Romney, Obama-McCain, Edwards-Thompson, etc.).

One of the real challenges in comparing performance in polls is that not all polls test all Democrats. Since any good comparison must be apples-to-apples, I sifted through the polls and identified each one where Clinton, Edwards, and Obama were each matched up against identical Republicans. I expanded this to include Rasmussen Reports polls where each of the three Democrats were matched up against identical Republicans in the same time frame, generally a few days apart.

After doing this, I was left with 228 datapoints -- 76 identical polling questions for each Democrat, matched up against the same exact Republican opponents.

For the charts I presented above, I included all data from July 1 to present -- 90 data points for 30 identical matchups for each Democrat. I'll present the full data below, but the matchups for the entire year don't change the electability story. Indeed, they make Hillary look worse, because she only won 45% of the apples-to-apples polls in the first half of the year.

Why is it so important to do an apples-to-apples analysis?

Beyond the obvious, analyses that don't do apples-to-apples can yield misleading results.

Take the example of Fox News, for example.

This year, Fox has released 33 polling general election polling matchups, 23 featuring Hillary Clinton and 10 featuring Barack Obama.

According to Fox's polling, Hillary Clinton wins 78% of the 23 matchups with an average margin of 6%, compared to 70% for Obama with a 4.7% margin.

However, in the 20 polls that are apples-to-apples, Hillary and Obama both win the same percentage (70%) and Obama actually has a higher victory margin than Hillary (4.7% to 4.1%).

Indeed, while Hillary Clinton has a 7% average margin in the 13 Fox News general election matchups excluding both Obama and Edwards, in all other matchups (198 in all) she has just a 3.1% margin.

Now, returning back to the analysis at hand, let's take a look at all the data, including results from January 1 to present.

As you can see, Edwards has the strongest performance of the Democrats in terms of margin of victory not just for July 1 - present, but for January 1 - present.

Barack Obama also does very well. In fact, he has a slightly higher winning percentage than John Edwards. It's important to understand what that means, however. For example, since July 1, Edwards has had an 80% winning percentage and Obama 83%. What's the difference? A single poll, by Quinnipiac, matching Democrats up against McCain. Edwards trailed that matchup by 1, and Obama led it by 2.

Average margin is actually a more important statistic. It's the same idea as tracking runs scored versus runs allowed in baseball. For years, there was a myth that the teams that win one-run games are the best teams in baseball. It turns out, that idea is total hogwash. A team's total net runs scored is a far more accurate way of predicting a team's future success. If it's the all star break and you're betting on whose going to win the World Series, you want a team capable of blowing its opponents out night after night, even if another team that has gotten lucky in some close games has a slightly higher winning percentage. (I could go on with this comparison, but I won't. If you're interested in learning more, read about Bill James Pythagorean Theorem of baseball.)

What does John Edwards large lead mean for Congressional elections?

If we nominate John Edwards, the presidential election won't be as close as it would be with Obama or Hillary. As a result, the party will be able to devote more of its resources to Congressional elections -- and a huge Democratic majority in Congress is essential to enacting a progressive agenda.

What's the bottom-line?

The bottom line is clear: based on an apples-to-apples comparison of publicly available general election polls, John Edwards is the most electable Democratic candidate. Barack Obama is also a strong candidate, but the difference between him and Edwards is significant: about 3 points in marginal performance since July 1 and 1.5 points for the entire year. (Moreover, Edwards has already been through a national campaign and the GOP attack machine, while Obama hasn't.)

Both John Edwards and Barack Obama are clearly stronger than Hillary Clinton, however, who trails both Obama and Edwards. She averages just a 3% margin since July 1, 2 points below Obama and 5 points below Edwards. For the year, she averages just a 1% margin. Because she is a weaker candidate than Edwards or Obama, the Democratic Party will be forced to spend more of its resources on her election, which will have a negative impact on our ability to win a huge Congressional mandate.

If electability is your number one priority, John Edwards should be your candidate.

(Full disclosure: John Edwards is my first choice in the Democratic primary. Barack Obama is a close second, however.)

For a few days after Hillary's disastrous "Kindergate" moment, she dialed down her attacks on Barack Obama to a slow simmer. She'd crossed an obvious line, and her campaign risked becoming a parody of itself and imploding if she kept at it.

As anyone who has observed her political career should have expected, however, Hillary regrouped and returned to the attack trail, this time with more vigor and with renewed intensity. Most importantly, her campaign is attacking Obama with more savvy -- using surrogates to launch attacks on his character, giving her "plausible deniability" in the media's twisted version of reality.

It's absolutely clear that her latest attacks are part of a coordinated strategy, and they are more savage then ever, but the difference between this week and last is that while Clinton has changed her tactics, Obama hasn't. Just as he did ten days ago, Obama is now saying that Clinton's attacks are desperate, and that they are the sign of a campaign that is fading fast and panicking.

Last week, complaining that Hillary is being negative worked. This week, it isn't working. Last week, it looked like the front-runner (Hillary) was attacking the underdog (Obama). This week, it looks like the underdog (Hillary) is attacking the front-runner (Obama).

Instead of adopting a posture of strength by returning fire, Obama is clinging to the narrative of Hillary as attack dog. In so doing, Obama hopes to claim the high moral ground, but I fear that instead of sounding like a bold statesman, he sounds like a defensive whiner.

Hillary's campaign message is that she is the candidate of strength and experience. By failing to respond to Hillary's attacks with aggressive new attacks of his own, Obama, in a perverse way, is playing right into her hands. It makes him seem weak, and that is the kiss of death for any politician.

The good news for Obama is that we're only a day or two into this most recent phase of the campaign. There's still plenty of time for him to huddle with his team and open up a new front in the battle.

I'd suggest that he use the other meaning of the phrase "Hillary attacks" -- that she attacks countries, like Iraq and Iran. The path to war with Iran is her Achilles' heel. Her campaign momentum suffered its first serious setback after she voted for Kyl-Lieberman. At the height of her inevitability, she exhibited a pattern that progressive Democrats have feared most: her willingness to embrace right-wing policies when she thinks they are politically advantageous.

Today, I posted two web ads which demonstrate one way he could launch this attack. If he released similar videos, it would change the debate from one about Hillary's attacks on Obama to one about Hillary's attacks on the world.

These videos, of course, are but one of many potential approaches to the final weeks of the presidential campaign. Whatever Obama chooses to do, he must go on the offensive. If he continues to respond to Hillary's attacks with demands that she stop attacking him, he will not beat her.

In 1992, Hillary Clinton established the war room in Little Rock, Arkansas. It was the first rapid response centers of its kind in a presidential campaign. It's motto was speed kills, and it's credo was that if you get hit, you better hit back -- harder.

It's time for Obama to hit back.

If Hillary Clinton can't stand up to the Republican war propaganda on Iran, how can we trust her to stand up to their war policies on Iran?

Hillary says she is standing up to Bush and Cheney, but she repeats their rationales for war with stunning precision.

She says that she favors preventing a "rush to war" -- but what is the opposite of a "rush to war"? A "leisurely stroll"? No thanks.

In 2002, Hillary Clinton said she opposed a "rush to war" with Iraq -- but she still supported the war with Iraq.

As Democrats, we have a choice to make this winter: who will represent our party for the next eight years? It would be a terrible mistake to select Hillary Clinton.

We need a candidate with the strength to stand up to Bush, Cheney, and the neocons.

Fortunately, each of the other Democrats has shown some backbone when it comes to Iran -- Hillary Clinton, as evidenced by her support for Kyl-Lieberman, is on the hawkish edge of the primary field.

Most of the other candidates don't have a perfect record on Iraq or Iran -- but all of them have a better record than Hillary.

None of the candidates, however, has had a more consistently pro-peace position than Dennis Kucinich, and his courageous resolve deserves recognition.

Although I am personally supporting John Edwards and Barack Obama as my first and second choices, I will support happily support Dennis in the primary if it comes to that. I will not, however, support Hillary Clinton in the primary. She just hasn't demonstrated the strength we need to unravel the war legacy of Bush and Cheney. (If she wins the nomination, I will of course support her.)

Let's send a loud and clear message to the establishment that we won't take any more of their wars. Please share these videos with friends and family who will vote in the Democratic primary. Here are the YouTube URLs:

"Trust Hillary on Iran?" / (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BoXVLFVCG0)
"Rush to War with Iran?" / (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2StQsXTy19c)

Iran is Hillary Clinton's Achilles' heel, both politically and substantively. It reminds Democratic primary voters of her support for Iraq, and of her tendency to parse words in apparent attempts to mislead the public.

Over the past few days, I've created two short YouTube videos (each about one minute long) that demonstrate this weakness. The videos are currently in draft form, and if you've got a moment, I'd like to ask you for your thoughts and suggestions on them. In addition to your feedback on the videos themselves, I'd like to ask for your ideas on how we can wage an online campaign to distribute them to as many primary and caucus goers as possible.

The first video shows how closely Hillary's rhetoric parallels that of Bush and Cheney, and questions how she can stand up to their war policies at the same time that she echoes their war propaganda. (It's 76 seconds long.) The second video shows that although she opposes RUSHING to war with Iran, her carefully chosen words don't mean she opposes GOING to war with Iran. It shows that she used the same rhetorical framework in 2002 with Iraq. (That video is 52 seconds long.)

I don't know what's dumber: a press secretary who doesn't know what the Cuban Missile Crisis was, or a press secretary who admits it. I pray this country does not confront a crisis in the next year, because this band of jokers currently populating the White House would be lucky to tap a keg.

Still looking for that last-minute Christmas gift for White House press secretary Dana Perino? May we recommend a gift certificate for the forthcoming book on the Cuban Missile Crisis by our colleague Michael Dobbs, "One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War," due out next summer?

Appearing on National Public Radio's light-hearted quiz show "Wait, Wait . . . Don't Tell Me," which aired over the weekend, Perino got into the spirit of things and told a story about herself that she had previously shared only in private: During a White House briefing, a reporter referred to the Cuban Missile Crisis -- and she didn't know what it was.

Watson’s Black D.N.A.: Ultimate Irony?

By Mike Nizza

It turns out that the Nobel-winning geneticist who was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” is inherently 16 percent African, or an amount of “someone who had a great-grandparent who was African,” according to a scientist who made the discovery.

Two months ago, Dr. James Watson, who helped crack the D.N.A. code decades ago, apologized for suggesting black people, over all, are not as intelligent as whites. He also resigned as chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island.

Something tells me the same cannot be said of the the world's dumbest man, Will Saletan.