A couple more points on Hillary's decline

In yesterday's post, I didn't mention a couple other items that have perhaps contributed to Hillary's fall in the polls in the last 30 days.

First was the blunder of less than a week ago, of criticizing Obama's record as a Kindergartner.

Second was the Clinton hostage crisis on November 30, when a mentally disturbed man claimed to have a bomb and took several hostages in Clinton's Rochester office. The press coverage of this event was very positive on Hillary's response, so it seemingly should not be included as a reason her polls have declined.

There were contrarians in the blogosphere, of course, and two examples were Steve Benen and Ann Althourse. The key here is backlash to the media coverage, and the best word to describe it the negative reaction is "overdoing it."

The media of course needs a sensational story, and of course needs to report the political aspect. But it's overdoing it. This is of course not Hillary's fault. But when people hear a political analysis of a serious situation like this, it plays into the image of Hillary as the ultimate politico. And that's a negative, not a positive.