A new Bloomberg/L.A. Times California poll reflects what I’ve been saying all along — John Edwards can only help Barack Oabama.

Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards, 54, trails well behind Obama and Clinton, pulling in 11 percent support. If Edwards were to drop out, more of his backers may head to Clinton than Obama, the poll shows.

I expect Edwards to do much better in South Carolina and stay in the race at least through Super Duper Tuesday, which is good news. The other good news is what was a 24-percent lead for Hillary Clinton a month ago is now down to nine points. That number will continue to shrink if Obama has a strong showing in South Carolina.

From Reuters:

COLUMBIA, South Carolina (Reuters) - Democrat Barack Obama holds a double-digit lead on rival Hillary Clinton three days before South Carolina’s presidential primary, aided by a huge edge among black voters, according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.

Obama leads Clinton 43 percent to 25 percent in the rolling tracking poll, with John Edwards a distant third at 15 percent heading into Saturday’s contest. The poll has a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points.

He was up by 16 percent yesterday, so his lead seems to be growing daily. Let’s not relent, though — this needs to be a behind-the-woodshed beatdown heading into Super Duper Tuesday.

Barack Obama now leads Hillary Clinton by 16 percent in South Carolina, and is just as dominate among women as he is men. In fact, John Edwards is closer to HRC than she is to Obama. Obama wins black voters (70 percent!), every age group under 65, Independents and Republicans as well. Go see the brand spankin’ new Public Policy Polling poll for yourself.

(By the way, this poll proves that John Edwards can help Obama win in the South and Midwest on Super Tuesday, where Edwards does very well with white voters. And I don’t think he’ll steal many anti-Clinton votes elsewhere. As we saw in Nevada and New Hampshire, Edwards doesn’t do very well outside of the two above-mentioned regions.)

I have a ton of stuff for everybody before I call it quits for the night, so I figured I’d just lump it all together in a link dump with my brief thoughts on each topic…

• The first link is one to FactCheck.org. This is a long piece that puts to rest a lot of the malicious and completely false rumors that are flying around about Barack Obama, mostly through e-mails. By the way, do people actually believe all the shit that gets e-mailed to them? Do these people also lose thousands of dollars to e-mail scams? Or are they just itching for an excuse to be bigots? C’mon, America, you’re better than this. Monday is Martin Luther King Day, and I’d like to at least think we’ve made some progress since his death.

• This link from C-Span is proof that Obama indeed recites the Pledge of Allegiance. Watch it for yourself if you must.

• Here’s yet another story which proves Obama is a Christian, not a Muslim. People just need to get online and do some research. Yeah, sometimes I forget that this is the same country where people see an explosion and a famous face in a movie trailer and are already halfway to the theater.

• I absolutely love this smart ass response to the question about these very rumors that was asked at the Nevada debate.

• And, yes, that indeed is a photo of Obama getting sworn in OVER THE BIBLE by the one and only Dick Cheney.

• Here’s a link to a Mason-Dixon poll courtesy of MSNBC. Obama leads Hillary Clinton 40 percent to 31, with John Edwards a very distant third. Yes, even in his birth state. I think it’s just about time for Johnny to gracefully bow out. The good news is that Obama looks very strong among black voters and women, the two voter types who are likely to decide the outcome. Obama also leads in the categories of “change,” the economy and health care, but surprisingly Hillary leads on Iraq. Do people not know that she VOTED FOR the Iraq war? It just boggles my ‘effin mind.

• A fantastic piece about Edith Childs, the 59-year-old South Carolina black woman who started the “Fired up! Ready to go!” Obama chant.

• There’s been a “judicial decision upholding Nevada caucus locations on the Las Vegas strip to aid casino workers” in voting. This is a huge win for the Obama camp, and could be enough to provide a Nevada victory. Yes, that was what all that bitching from Slick Willy was about.

• Obama “skewers” his presidential opponents over their lame responses to the “biggest weakness” question from the debate earlier this week. Hilarious. From The New York Times.
  

• After nabbing an endorsement from the state’s biggest newspaper, Obama now has an endorsement from the state’s second biggest paper as well — the Reno Gazzette-Journal. A glowing endorsement at that. I’ll leave you with this quote on Hillary, which nearly had me standing up and cheering:

Clinton, however, continues to struggle under the cloud of her husband, the former President Bill Clinton. She is challenged to escape the perception that she represents the status quo and that the advisers, the bureaucracy and the baggage from the former president’s administration would follow her into the White House — if she were to make it through the November election.

Wow. I was never skeptical — I’ve been a rampant Barack Obama supporter since the DNC in ‘04 — but October was the lowest of the lows for Obamaites. Rock effin’ bottom. At that point Hillary Clinton led Barack Obama nationally by 21 points, and the pundits were all but handing her the Democratic nomination. I chalk that up to him being an unknown commodity to most Americans prior to the last few months, as well as to her being so well known.

Now that Americans have got to know Barack, they’ve decided that they don’t like the old Bill and Hill show as much as they thought they did. A brand new Reuters/Zogby poll shows that the two Democratic frontrunners are now tied:

Clinton, a former first lady who would be the first woman U.S. president, held a 21-point edge over Obama in October. He cut that to 8 points by last month, and the new survey gave her a 39 percent to 38 percent edge.

Her 1-point lead was well within the poll’s margin of error of 4.7 percentage points.

Obama, who would be the first black U.S. president, and Clinton were essentially deadlocked among a variety of groups, including men, women, Democrats and independents. Obama led substantially, 65 percent to 15 percent, among black voters.

Obama barely led among voters under age 24, a substantial drop in support from last month, but led Clinton among voters aged 55 to 69, normally one of her strengths.

While the young voters drop is a tad bit discouraging, I think that will rise when Obama hits more states and young people get the chance to see him up close. What is very encouraging is not only Obama’s staggering lead among black voters, but also that he won the 55-69 demographic.

A just-released poll by the Reno Gazette-Journal shows Barack Obama leading Hillary Clinton and John Edwards by two and five points, respectively. From Reuters:

RENO, Nevada, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama took a small lead over rival Hillary Clinton in Nevada ahead of Saturday’s caucus, the party’s next contest, according to a poll released on Monday.

A Reno Gazette-Journal poll of 500 likely caucus goers found 32 percent favoring Obama, the junior senator from Illinois, 30 percent for Clinton, a senator from New York, and 27 percent for former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina.

Along with all the Nevada endorsements Obama has, this state is looking good. I especially think the caucuses — not to mention the caucuses falling on a Saturday — are good for Obama. Obamaites are the most rapid supporters out there, well, along with Ron Paul’s tiny army. They’ll show.