Bill Clinton is expected to talk about himself at the Democratic National Convention tonight and then leave town before Barack Obama’s acceptance speech. But just over half of Democrats believe there is no animosity between the two men and that the former president wants Obama to win.

Fifty-seven percent (57%) of Democrats say any animosity between Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton is manufactured by the media, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Only 21% believe they really don’t like each other.

Voters overall are a bit more skeptical. Forty percent (40%) describe the animosity as manufactured by the media, but nearly as many (38%) think it’s real.

While 39% of voters think Bill Clinton wants Obama to be elected president, over half of Democrats (52%) feel that way. Nineteen percent (19%) of Democrats – and 29% of voters overall – think Clinton does not want Obama to win the White House.

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The former president is slightly more popular among rank-and-file Democrats than the man who is expected to represent the party in the fall. Eighty percent (84%) of Democrats have at least a somewhat favorable view of Clinton, including 46% who regard him Very Favorably. Obama is viewed at least somewhat favorably by 80% of Democrats, with far more (62%) saying they have a Very Favorable view of him, in the latest Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll.

In addition to Bill Clinton’s speech, the focus at the Denver convention Wednesday is on national security. Voter confidence in the War on Terror is at the highest level ever recorded since Rasmussen Reports began regular tracking in January 2004.

President Clinton has been smarting for several months now from criticism he took from the Obama camp during the primaries, including charges that some of his comments were racist. The general perception is that Obama, soon to be the first African-American nominee of a major political party, has done little to reach out to the ex-president.

This feeling is coupled with Mrs. Clinton’s anger and disappointment at falling just short of getting enough delegates to be the Democrats’ nominee this fall. In part to defuse the anger still felt by many of Mrs. Clinton’s supporters, particularly women voters, Obama agreed to allow Mrs. Clinton’s name to be put in nomination and gave her a prominent speaking role at the convention. When she spoke Tuesday night, she reavowed her support for Obama but did so with little enthusiasm for the candidate himself.

Nearly half of Democratic women (47%) said Obama should have chosen Mrs. Clinton as his running mate instead of Senator Joseph Biden in a survey the night before she addressed the convention.
Many speculate that Mrs. Clinton – and her husband – anticipate that Obama will lose to Republican John McCain primarily because he fails to connect with white blue-collar voters who are more comfortable with the Clintons, so they are already mapping out plans for her to run again in 2012.

Democrats by a more than two-to-one margin believeMrs. Clinton wants Obama to win, but among voters overall, 37% say she wants her former rival to gain the White House while 40% think she does not.

Male voters are nearly evenly divided on whether President Clinton wants Obama to win: 37% think he does, but 34% do not. Women voters, on the other hand, by a 42% to 25% margin think the ex-president wants to see Obama elected. African-American voters agree 56% to 23%.

While 55% of all voters have at least a somewhat favorable opinion of former President Clinton, including 25% who view him Very Favorably, 44% characterize their view of him as unfavorable. Half that number (22%) say their opinion of him is Very Unfavorable.

In spite of the anger generated in the primaries, 75% of black voters still think of the ex-president at least somewhat favorably, and half (51%) view him in a Very Favorable light.

Thirty percent (30%) of voters say Clinton was one of the best U.S. presidents, and 21% regard him as one of the worst. Nearly half (48%) think he falls somewhere in between. Half of Republicans (49%) and one-third of Democrats (35%) place him in the middle.

While 58% of likely McCain voters believe the animosity between the Clintons and Obama is real, 61% of would-be Obama voters think the media has manufactured it.

In a separate survey, Rasmussen Reports found recently that 55% of voters believe media bias is more of a problem for the political process than big campaign contributions. An earlier survey found that most voters believe reporters try to help the candidate they want to win, and 49% believe they are trying to help Obama win the election this year. Only 14% think they are trying to help McCain.

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