OBAMARAMA

The Political Wire reports that Mark Penn, chief pollster to Sen. Clinton, is challenging the results of the TIME Magazine poll we touted here yesterday. The poll showed Sen. Obama closing in on Sen. Clinton, particularly among independents and in the south.

It’s that whole independent thing that irks Penn. According to the New York Sun, he thinks that “the proportion of independent voters in the Time poll, 25%, was too high and skewed the results against Mrs. Clinton, who does best with registered Democrats.”

It’s all well and good to dispute the accuracy of the poll’s sampling of independents — a recent Washington Post article put the actual number of independents at 19 percent — but at the end of the day, do you really want to be underscoring the extent to which your candidate does not appeal to moderate voters? Is her established polarizing nature really the kind of thing you want to highlight?

Sen. Obama’s ability to appeal to Democratic primary voters (who identify with his policy priorities) as well as to the general electorate (which is drawn to his post-partisanship — and not alienated by perceptions about his character or burnout over his past) is precisely what makes him such a compelling candidate.

Sen. Clinton may find strong support among primary voters, but whoever wins the nomination is going to have to appeal to the entire country. And anyone who thinks primary voters don’t take that into consideration should ask Howard Dean how he feels about the word “electability.”