About six months ago, many people who supported Edwards and Obama started telling me that Edwards and Obama were much stronger general election candidates than Hillary. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been hearing from Hillary supporters that they think Hillary is a stronger general election candidate than Obama. The reasons cited in all cases were a combination of qualitative reasons — Candidate X has a stronger appeal to Group Y than Candidate Z — and polling data. What’s interesting with polling data is that Hillary and Obama have both done pretty much the same in trial heats over the past six months. There have been times at which Obama polled four points higher (on average) than Hillary in trial general election heats and other times when Hillary polled as much as 3 points higher than Obama (again on average) in trial election heats. Right now, Hillary is polling 2.7 points higher than Obama in trial election heats. You can see all the data here for Hillary and here for Obama. Of course, four months ago, Hillary had been coming of a string of, oh, 15 years of negative treatment from the media, while right now Obama has been getting smeared (maybe “flag pinned” would be more accurate) for the past two months. And when the flag pinning fades into memory, Obama’s poll numbers will probably go right back up relative to Hillary’s (assuming they’re both still in the race).

The bottom line is that there isn’t that much difference between Hillary and Obama in terms of political potential. And it’s a mistake to focus on the personal attributes of candidates at a time when there are larger forces — much larger — working in favor of progressives. John Harris and Jim VandeHei of the Politico have a good piece about this fact in the Politico today:

Things are so bad that many people don’t even want to call themselves Republicans. The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press has found the lowest percentage of self-described Republicans in 16 years of polling.

[...]

For now, Republicans are heartened by how well McCain sometimes does in head-to-head polling with Barack Obama, the likely Democratic nominee. But it’s silly to watch those numbers: They fluctuate and reflect nothing more than momentary feelings about the candidates, and they come at a time when public attention is fixed on the final rounds of the Democratic slugfest.

[...]

It’s so toxic, some Republicans are pointing to 1976 as a favorable historical comparison. That was the year Gerald Ford ran in the dark shadows of Watergate and lost to Jimmy Carter. Says Dick Wadhams, the chairman of the Colorado Republican Party: “When voters really homed in on the choice between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and what each stood for, Gerald Ford almost won the election despite this horrible environment.”

Almost.

There is a natural tendency to focus on the personal in politics. And it’s often tempting to look at a local race and to think it’s smart to make the race about the fact that one candidate is, say, I don’t know, a recovering alcoholic with a history of spousal abuse, while the other is a squeaky clean family man. But it’s better to make all races about the issues, about spending another several trillion in Iraq versus getting out now, about letting our health care system languish versus finding a solution that saves money and brings quality health care to millions of Americans, about running up another several trillion in deficits versus restoring fiscal sanity to Washington.

Races built on personality are simply castles made of sand, and, as we all know, castles made of sand fall into the sea, eventually.

Local Congressional candidates seem to grasp this issue — Eric Massa’s substantive plans for health care and redeployment from Iraq are great examples. Let’s hope this kind of thinking takes hold nationally as well.