No, Couldn't Go the Long Weekend Without the Dems...

To update the situation- what with Alaska's state convention going 75-25 Obama and giving him an extra delegate (and taking it from Clinton), and with Hawaii's state convention picking two Obama supporters for its chair and vice-chair, plus add-on superdelegates in four states... Obama's magic number, as of 9:30 PM CDT today, is five.

FIVE.

5.

Of course, that presumes Michigan and Florida either stay out or end up a wash. The Clintons would like you to think that those states will inevitably come in at full strength- an option which nobody outside the Clinton camp, and not all of them within, thinks will happen.

However, one Clinton insider, donor and unofficial advisor Lanny Davis, actually goes farther. Not only does he claim that having the Florida delegates sit as they were voted, with no changes, constitutes a "compromise," but he proposes that Clinton get all 73 pledged delegates she "won" in Michigan, plus half of the remaining 50 "uncommitted" and 7 also-ran delegates.

What about the 50 remaining uncommitted delegates, and 7 collectively cast for Sen. Chris Dodd and Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich, who were also on the ballot?

Some of those 50 delegates might have been for Clinton as a second choice to candidates other than Obama, so it would be totally unfair to award all 50 delegates to Obama.

. . . Or perhaps one Solomonic compromise, more generous to Obama than to Clinton, would be to divide the remaining delegates approximately 50-50 between the two of them, 29-28 (giving Clinton the extra delegate since she led in all the latest statewide polls prior to Jan. 15).

Let's have that again. Despite the fact that they chose to vote for nobody rather than vote for a woman who was on the ballot, available for the choosing... the Clinton camp believes that fully half of the people who did NOT vote for Hillary would still prefer her to Obama.

And, by the most tortured logic possible, seating Michigan at full strength- with Clinton getting a total of 102 out of 130 delegates from Michigan.

This is the Clinton definition of "fair." Never mind that polls going into the January vote showed the two dead even in that state, and polls during the discussion of a re-vote in March and April showed Obama with a slight lead. "Fair" for Bill and Hillary means, "I keep all of mine, and you give me some of yours because I deserve it and you don't."

To quote the incomparable Andrew Sullivan:

So Michigan isn't penalized for breaking the rules (can you imagine what that precedent will do for future primary schedules?). Clinton isn't punished. She is rewarded with a number of delegates she would never have won in a normal primary. Obama is punished. And Clinton gets almost 78 percent of the delegates from Michigan in a state where she was running neck and neck with Obama before the illegitimate primary.

. . .

This is what they are aiming for: stealing this nomination by the Rules Committe and then corralling the super-delegates to back them. If the supers do not go their way, they have already warned that Florida and Michigan Democrats may not back Obama in the fall.

The thought that these creeps could find their way back into the White House is terrifying.

Myself, I don't think Andrew goes far enough. The Clintons aren't just acting like crooks, liars, and cretins. They're beginning to act downright psychotic.

And Andrew also had a link to this article about Bill Clinton claiming there was a conspiracy to deny his wife the nomination, but he doesn't put the two together, quite.

Clinton also suggested some were trying to "cover up" Sen. Clinton's chances of winning in key states that Democrats will have to win in the general election.

" 'Oh, this is so terrible: The people they want her. Oh, this is so terrible: She is winning the general election, and he is not. Oh my goodness, we have to cover this up.' "

Clinton did not expound on who he was accusing.

The Clintons, husband and wife, are going round the bend. They're not just lying to try to steal the Democratic nomination at this point: they've lost track of the truth and believe their own lies.

Any In Nomine RPG players in the house? 'Cause the Clintons are acting like balseraphs with dissonance, and are ringing up the Paranoia discord.

(And as much as I'd like to go out on that line, I must explain for the 99% of you who don't play tabletop RPGs that In Nomine is an angels v. demons game, and balseraphs are demons whose superpower is to make people believe their lies... by believing the lies themselves first... and they start going psycho when they're presented with evidence that what they believe isn't true. Of course the Clintons aren't demonic- they have much more imagination than demons- but they are cracking up, now that sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR ABOUT OBAMA'S 180 DELEGATE LEAD isn't working anymore.)