Clinton: Did We All Watch the Same Speech?

That was my reaction. What I heard when I watched her speech wasn't the overwhelmingly gracious and eloquent speech everyone, but everyone, in the media says she gave. What I heard was a deliberate play to feminism, a very subtle twist of the knife in Obama, and the bare minimum endorsement required by the pressure her Congressional supporters were putting on her.

But I'm biased. I loathe both the Clintons. I believe they are driven by absolutely nothing more than a lust for power, and are willing to say and do anything if it will get them power. I have not forgotten, as the talking heads already have, that the Clintons wanted to take the fight on to the convention, and are only conceding now because their superdelegates are deserting them now that the primary season is over. I have not forgotten that the Clintons have done everything they could to destroy Obama's general election chances so that they could make the argument that Hillary is "more electable." I'm biased and angry, and thus liable to put the worst reading on a speech- especially when my listening comprehension is much lower than my reading comprehension.

What follows is the full transcript of the speech, by the New York Times and copied in full here for those who can't get past the NYT's "pay us now" system whenever it kicks in. Applause and other audience reaction edited out. I'm going to re-read and see if what I thought I heard still applies. My comments interspersed.

Thank you very, very much. Well, this isn't exactly the party I'd planned, but I sure like the company.

And I want to start today by saying how grateful I am to all of you, to everyone who poured your hearts and your hopes into this campaign, who drove for miles and lined the streets waving homemade signs, who scrimped and saved to raise money, who knocked on doors and made calls, who talked, sometimes argued with your friends and neighbors, who e-mailed and contributed online, who invested so much in our common enterprise, to the moms and dads who came to our events, who lifted their little girls and little boys on their shoulders and whispered in their ears, "See, you can be anything you want to be."

To the young people like 13-year-old Anne Riddell (ph) from Mayfield, Ohio, who had been saving for two years to go to Disney World and decided to use her savings instead to travel to Pennsylvania with her mom and volunteer there, as well.

To the veterans, to the childhood friends, to New Yorkers and Arkansans who traveled across the country, telling anyone who would listen why you supported me.

And to all of those women in their 80s and their 90s born before women could vote, who cast their votes for our campaign.

I've told you before about Florence Stein (ph) of South Dakota who was 88 years old and insisted that her daughter bring an absentee ballot to her hospice bedside. Her daughter and a friend put an American flag behind her bed and helped her fill out the ballot. She passed away soon after and, under state law, her ballot didn't count, but her daughter later told a reporter, "My dad's an ornery, old cowboy, and he didn't like it when he heard Mom's vote wouldn't be counted. I don't think he had voted in 20 years, but he voted in place of my mom."

So to all those who voted for me and to whom I pledged my utmost, my commitment to you and to the progress we seek is unyielding. You have inspired and touched me with the stories of the joys and sorrows that make up the fabric of our lives. And you have humbled me with your commitment to our country. Eighteen million of you, from all walks of life, women and men, young and old, Latino and Asian, African- American and Caucasian, rich, poor, and middle-class, gay and straight, you have stood with me.

And I will continue to stand strong with you every time, every place, in every way that I can. The dreams we share are worth fighting for.

Remember, we fought for the single mom with the young daughter, juggling work and school, who told me, "I'm doing it all to better myself for her."

We fought for the woman who grabbed my hand and asked me, "What are you going to do to make sure I have health care?" and began to cry, because even though she works three jobs, she can't afford insurance.

We fought for the young man in the Marine Corps t-shirt who waited months for medical care and said, "Take care of my buddies over there, and then will you please take care of me?"

We fought for all those who've lost jobs and health care, who can't afford gas or groceries or college, who have felt invisible to their president these last seven years.

At this point, listening to the speech, I was well and truly steaming. Why on Earth was she giving all these anecdotes in a concession speech? This was wholly unnecessary to pass the baton... but wholly necessary to put pressure on Obama for some purpose or other. At this point I think it's less about the VP slot (may it never happen) than about getting her agenda added to, or in the place of, Obama's.

I entered this race because I have an old-fashioned conviction that public service is about helping people solve their problems and live their dreams.

By making all our decisions for us, yes, Hillary, we know.

I've had every opportunity and blessing in my own life, and I want the same for all Americans. And until that day comes, you'll always find me on the front lines of democracy, fighting for the future.

The way to continue our fight now, to accomplish the goals for which we stand is to take our energy, our passion, our strength, and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama, the next president of the United States. Today, as I suspend my campaign, I congratulate him on the victory he has won and the extraordinary race he has run. I endorse him and throw my full support behind him.

Note, if you will, that she doesn't actually admit she was defeated, or that the "victory he has won" includes the nomination.

And I ask all of you to join me in working as hard for Barack Obama as you have for me. I have served in the Senate with him for four years. I have been in this campaign with him for 16 months. I have stood on the stage and gone toe-to-toe with him in 22 debates. I've had a front-row seat to his candidacy, and I have seen his strength and determination, his grace and his grit.

In his own life, Barack Obama has lived the American dream, as a community organizer, in the State Senate, as a United States senator. He has dedicated himself to ensuring the dream is realized. And in this campaign, he has inspired so many to become involved in the democratic process and invested in our common future.

Now, when I started this race, I intended to win back the White House and make sure we have a president who puts our country back on the path to peace, prosperity and progress. And that's exactly what we're going to do, by ensuring that Barack Obama walks through the doors of the Oval Office on January 20, 2009.

Now, I understand -- I understand that we all know this has been a tough fight, but the Democratic Party is a family. And now it's time to restore the ties that bind us together and to come together around the ideals we share, the values we cherish, and the country we love.

We may have started on separate journeys, but today our paths have merged. And we're all heading toward the same destination, united and more ready than ever to win in November and to turn our country around, because so much is at stake.

We all want an economy that sustains the American dream, the opportunity to work hard and have that work rewarded, to save for college, a home and retirement, to afford that gas and those groceries, and still have a little left over at the end of the month, an economy that lifts all of our people and ensures that our prosperity is broadly distributed and shared.

Those last ten words or so send a shiver of fear down my spine, incidentally. "From each according to his ability, and no less; to each according to his need, and nothing more." At least Obama gives lip service to the concept of being free to better oneself.

We all want a health care system that is universal, high-quality and affordable, so that parents don't have to choose between care for themselves or their children or be stuck in dead-end jobs simply to keep their insurance. This isn't just an issue for me. It is a passion and a cause, and it is a fight I will continue until every single American is insured, no exceptions and no excuses.

Translated: "Obama, you damn well better put individual mandates into your plan, or else- because if you don't force people to buy corporate health insurance, it won't really be universal, now will it?"

We all want an America defined by deep and meaningful equality, from civil rights to labor rights, from women's rights to gay rights, from ending discrimination to promoting unionization, to providing help for the most important job there is: caring for our families.

And we all want to restore America's standing in the world, to end the war in Iraq, and once again lead by the power of our values, and to join with our allies to confront our shared challenges, from poverty and genocide to terrorism and global warming.

You know, I've been involved in politics and public life in one way or another for four decades. And during those 40 years, our country has voted 10 times for president. Democrats won only three of those times, and the man who won two of those elections is with us today. We made tremendous progress during the '90s under a Democratic president, with a flourishing economy and our leadership for peace and security respected around the world.

Translated: "And remember, I was his wife- I had a part in all that. I'm STILL the better qualified candidate for President."

Just think how much more progress we could have made over the past 40 years if we'd had a Democratic president. Think about the lost opportunities of these past seven years on the environment and the economy, on health care and civil rights, on education, foreign policy and the Supreme Court. Imagine how far we could have come, how much we could have achieved if we had just had a Democrat in the White House. We cannot let this moment slip away. We have come too far and accomplished too much.

Now, the journey ahead will not be easy. Some will say we can't do it, that it's too hard, we're just not up to the task. But for as long as America has existed, it has been the American way to reject can't-do claims and to choose instead to stretch the boundaries of the possible through hard work, determination, and a pioneering spirit.

It is this belief, this optimism that Senator Obama and I share and that has inspired so many millions of our supporters to make their voices heard. So today I am standing with Senator Obama to say: Yes, we can!

I remember this part, but I don't remember this that follows:

And that together we will work -- we'll have to work hard to achieve universal health care. But on the day we live in an America where no child, no man, and no woman is without health insurance, we will live in a stronger America. That's why we need to help elect Barack Obama our president.

We'll have to work hard to get back to fiscal responsibility and a strong middle class. But on the day we live in an America whose middle class is thriving and growing again, where all Americans, no matter where they live or where their ancestors came from, can earn a decent living, we will live in a stronger America. And that is why we must help elect Barack Obama our president.

We'll have to work hard to foster the innovation that will make us energy independent and lift the threat of global warming from our children's future. But on the day we live in an America fueled by renewable energy, we will live in a stronger America. And that is why we have to help elect Barack Obama our president.

We'll have to work hard to bring our troops home from Iraq and get them the support they've earned by their service. But on the day we live in an America that's as loyal to our troops as they have been to us, we will live in a stronger America. And that is why we must help elect Barack Obama our president.

I zoned out on all that- so that's some material that goes to Hillary's credit.

This election is a turning-point election. And it is critical that we all understand what our choice really is. Will we go forward together, or will we stall and slip backwards?

Now, think how much progress we've already made. When we first started, people everywhere asked the same questions. Could a woman really serve as commander-in-chief? Well, I think we answered that one.

Right- and the answer was "no", Mrs. Bosnia Snipers, Mrs. Voted-to-Declare-Iranian-Army-Terrorists. If the answer had been "yes," Hillary, you would be receiving the concession speech, not giving it.

Could an African-American really be our president? And Senator Obama has answered that one. Together, Senator Obama and I achieved milestones essential to our progress as a nation, part of our perpetual duty to form a more perfect union.

Now, on a personal note, when I was asked what it means to be a woman running for president, I always gave the same answer, that I was proud to be running as a woman, but I was running because I thought I'd be the best president.

"And I still do, hosers. See you in 2012 if not sooner."

But I am a woman and, like millions of women, I know there are still barriers and biases out there, often unconscious, and I want to build an America that respects and embraces the potential of every last one of us.

I ran as a daughter who benefited from opportunities my mother never dreamed of. I ran as a mother who worries about my daughter's future and a mother who wants to leave all children brighter tomorrows. To build that future I see, we must make sure that women and men alike understand the struggles of their grandmothers and their mothers, and that women enjoy equal opportunities, equal pay, and equal respect. Let us resolve and work toward achieving very simple propositions: There are no acceptable limits, and there are no acceptable prejudices in the 21st century in our country.

You can be so proud that, from now on, it will be unremarkable for a woman to win primary state victories, unremarkable to have a woman in a close race to be our nominee, unremarkable to think that a woman can be the president of the United States. And that is truly remarkable, my friends.

"A woman" didn't win all those victories. Mrs. William Jefferson Clinton won them. Hillary, you wouldn't even be in the Senate today except for the fact that your husband was a president. You've won no victories for feminism, but plenty for nepotism.

To those who are disappointed that we couldn't go all of the way, especially the young people who put so much into this campaign, it would break my heart if, in falling short of my goal, I in any way discouraged any of you from pursuing yours. Always aim high, work hard, and care deeply about what you believe in. And, when you stumble, keep faith. And, when you're knocked down, get right back up and never listen to anyone who says you can't or shouldn't go on.

Remember kids, everyone likes a sore loser.

As we gather here today in this historic, magnificent building, the 50th woman to leave this Earth is orbiting overhead. If we can blast 50 women into space, we will someday launch a woman into the White House. Although we weren't able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it's got about 18 million cracks in it, and the light is shining through like never before, filling us all with the hope and the sure knowledge that the path will be a little easier next time.

"18 million cracks- and that's more than the man I'm endorsing. Remember that in 2012."

That has always been the history of progress in America. Think of the suffragists who gathered at Seneca Falls in 1848 and those who kept fighting until women could cast their votes. Think of the abolitionists who struggled and died to see the end of slavery. Think of the civil rights heroes and foot soldiers who marched, protested, and risked their lives to bring about the end of segregation and Jim Crow. Because of them, I grew up taking for granted that women could vote and, because of them, my daughter grew up taking for granted that children of all colors could go to school together. Because of them, Barack Obama and I could wage a hard-fought campaign for the Democratic nomination. Because of them and because of you, children today will grow up taking for granted that an African-American or a woman can, yes, become the president of the United States. And so when that day arrives, and a woman takes the oath of office as our president, we will all stand taller, proud of the values of our nation, proud that every little girl can dream big and that her dreams can come true in America.

And all of you will know that, because of your passion and hard work, you helped pave the way for that day. So I want to say to my supporters: When you hear people saying or think to yourself, "If only, or, "What if," I say, please, don't go there. Every moment wasted looking back keeps us from moving forward.

"So, let's all forget how I accused Obama of being a stuffed shirt, how my husband accused him of playing the race card after patronizing him in South Carolina, how we claimed he admired Ronald Reagan, how we utterly failed to come to his defense during the Reverend Wright thing, and all the other nastiness we pulled in the past fifteen months. Water under the bridge. We didn't really mean it. And if the Republicans use our own words against Obama, it's not our fault. Really."

Life is too short, time is too precious, and the stakes are too high to dwell on what might have been. We have to work together for what still can be. And that is why I will work my heart out to make sure that Senator Obama is our next president. And I hope and pray that all of you will join me in that effort.

To my supporters and colleagues in Congress, to the governors and mayors, elected officials who stood with me in good times and bad, thank you for your strength and leadership.

To my friends in our labor unions who stood strong every step of the way, I thank you and pledge my support to you.

To my friends from every stage of my life, your love and ongoing commitment sustained me every single day.

To my family, especially Bill and Chelsea and my mother, you mean the world to me, and I thank you for all you have done.

And to my extraordinary staff, volunteers and supporters thank you for working those long, hard hours. Thank you for dropping everything, leaving work or school, traveling to places that you've never been, sometimes for months on end. And thanks to your families, as well, because your sacrifice was theirs, too. All of you were there for me every step of the way.

Now, being human, we are imperfect. That's why we need each other, to catch each other when we falter, to encourage each other when we lose heart. Some may lead, some may follow, but none of us can go it alone. The changes we're working for are changes that we can only accomplish together. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are rights that belong to us as individuals. But our lives, our freedom, our happiness are best enjoyed, best protected, and best advanced when we do work together.

That is what we will do now, as we join forces with Senator Obama and his campaign. We will make history together, as we write the next chapter in America's story. We will stand united for the values we hold dear, for the vision of progress we share, and for the country we love. There is nothing more American than that. And looking out at you today, I have never felt so blessed. The challenges that I have faced in this campaign are nothing compared to those that millions of Americans face every day in their own lives.

So today I'm going to count my blessings and keep on going. I'm going to keep doing what I was doing long before the cameras ever showed up and what I'll be doing long after they're gone: working to give every American the same opportunities I had and working to ensure that every child has the chance to grow up and achieve his or her God- given potential. I will do it with a heart filled with gratitude, with a deep and abiding love for our country, and with nothing but optimism and confidence for the days ahead.

This is now our time to do all that we can to make sure that, in this election, we add another Democratic president to that very small list of the last 40 years and that we take back our country and once again move with progress and commitment to the future.

Thank you all. And God bless you, and God bless America.

OK. There was a lot more about Obama than I remembered, and the bulk of the speech is, indeed, about getting her supporters behind Obama. There were a lot of elements in the speech, though, which were either ill-advised or outright antagonistic to party unity. Given the circumstances, I'm going to override my hatred of the Clintons and say that this is a sign of competing speechwriters in the Clinton camp- one last sign of the schizoid organization which played such a large role in costing Clinton the nomination.

I still say: Obama, don't put her on the ticket, no matter the pressure. You will regret it. It might even cost you the election- and it will certainly cost the Democratic Party the election in 2012, because giving Clinton the VP slot keeps her alive for 2012 or 2016. Keep her off the ticket, and she's done- and I still say, despite the admittedly strong effort for Obama in this speech, good riddance.

Obama Wins... What Now, Clinton?

Well, last night Barack Obama got the endorsement of nearly 70 superdelegates, bringing him a net gain in excess of fifty votes at the Democratic convention in Denver... leaving aside the delegates he won in South Dakota and Montana.

Now not only is Obama over the halfway point under the current rules (which, as of Saturday, sat Michigan's proposed 69-59 Clinton-Obama delegate split with half a vote each, and Florida's delegates as voted ditto), but he's only about fifty delegates shy of taking a majority of delegates even by Clinton math- the 2,208 delegates which Bill Clinton has been preaching the past month or so.

More to the point, even if every single superdelegate still not endorsing went to Clinton, she cannot surpass Obama. Hillary Clinton has, once and for all, lost the nomination fight.

Unfortunately, judging by her speech last night and by her actions earlier in the day, Hillary has not given up the fight.

Now, let's bear in mind that Hillary Clinton, by all odds and expectations prior to January, should have won this election. This process- especially with Obama's relative weakness over the past two months as he tried to switch to a general election campaign- was not so much won by him as thrown away by the Clintons. Both the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News have given reasons for this which I agree with in part. My personal summation of the Clinton failures:

1. Mark Penn. This election has demonstrated that having Mark Penn as your political campaign's senior advisor is like having Barney Fife as head of security at your company. Penn abused his fellow workers, bounced the campaign from one message to another like a four-handed man playing ping-pong solitaire, and made grievous strategic errors (like believing the Democratic delegate race was winner-take-all). Once the Clintons fired Penn their campaign finally straightened out and ran well... but by that time it was entirely too late, because...

2. Failure to contest states. Obama was able to win Super Tuesday's delegate count because he actively contested every one of those states except Oklahoma (where he came in third behind a man who had dropped out of the race). The Clintons, however, focused their attentions on the big states- New York, New Jersey, California- and generally ignored the smaller states. They went on to challenge only Virginia and Wisconsin out of the eleven contests between Super Tuesday and Ohio-Texas-Rhode Island-Vermont Tuesday, allowing Obama to run up the pledged delegate lead. After that point all Obama had to do was split the remaining delegates 50/50, and that's just about all he did. Obama won because the Clintons yielded ground to him they shouldn't have.

3. Race-baiting. Yes, Bill Clinton, that notable loose cannon, started it, but Hillary Clinton continued it, always appealing to "hard-working white voters." The decision was made early on- possibly even before Bill Clinton started belittling Obama as being just another ethnic candidate with limited appeal- to abandon the black vote to Obama in exchange for a boost in support from racist whites. Not only did this decision cost them entire states, but it gave Obama a much more unified bloc of voters than Clinton could claim in any other demographic- which, in turn, gave Obama more delegates.

4. The message. Hillary Clinton campaigned as the experienced candidate, the long-time Washington insider, and the inevitable nominee- essentially, as Bloomberg and other sources point out, the 2000 George W. Bush strategy. Only with the departure of Mark Penn did these messages get chucked out the window in favor of the populism and, let's be honest, naked demagoguery that the Clintons do best.

Which leads to the final, and most fundamental, reason Hillary lost the nomination:

5. Bill Clinton. Bill brought Mark Penn into the race. Bill took charge of the South Carolina fight. Bill Clinton, on the campaign stump, spoke as if he was running for his own third term. Most important, by claiming experience as First Lady during Bill's Presidency, Hillary also perforce took the blame for the many errors and scandals of that era. In the end Bill was relegated to rural speaking, where he could appeal to the only demographic that still approved of him: white, rural, poor, uneducated people over 50. Bill Clinton was little short of a disaster for his wife's campaign; the best thing she could have done was keep him out speaking in other nations for his foundation, well away from politics.

More to the point, although many Democratic voters have fond memories of the Clinton years, most Democratic officials do not. Bill Clinton presided over a long-term crippling of his own party- in no small part due to his insistence on abandoning states entirely if they could not be won for the Democratic presidential ticket. The term "Clintonism" brings to mind lying, corruption, irresponsibility, slash-and-burn politics, and betrayal- nothing positive. As Chuck Todd points out:

Think about this fact. Since February 5, [Hillary] secured fewer than 40 superdelegate endorsements... 40! No matter what the polls said or what her margins of victory were in Ohio or Pennsylvania or West Virginia, the party leaders would not allow themselves to be swayed away from Obama. Perhaps the Clinton hold on the party was gone a lot sooner than some of us in the media realized. These folks were simply looking for an excuse to dump the Clintons. The inability to prevent Howard Dean from taking over the DNC or the Dems taking back Congress without the leadership of the Clintons may have been more significant in telling the story of how the Democrats kicked their Clinton habit. This may be Barack Obama's party now. But this ceased being the Clintons' party a long time ago. However, we only noticed this now.

So now we know why Hillary lost.

But now the question is: why hasn't Hillary admitted she has lost?

Let's look at the speech she gave last night, just after South Dakota was called for her. She claimed she got the most popular votes; she made repeated accusations, veiled but present, that Obama would be an illegitimate nominee; she left her fate up to her supporters, who at the time were chanting, "Denver! Denver! Denver!" She deliberately does not recognize Obama as having won the nomination; she explicitly does not concede the nomination fight.

Yet, before and after the speech, she has made it plain that she would accept the vice-presidential spot under Obama, should it be offered.

This is an obvious setup for an extortion ploy: give me what I want, or I will ensure that you lose in November.

And what does Hillary want?

First and foremost, the VP slot. She wants to be next in line should something happen to Obama, and she wants to be the apparent successor in 2012 or 2016.

This alone, however, will not be sufficient. I foresee she will make other demands in private and public:

* The lead role in the Denver convention. She wants to be the star of the convention- over and above Obama. The least she'll accept here is the presentation of a co-presidency, with she and Obama holding equal power.

* Her healthcare plan, with individual mandates, to become part of Obama's platform.

* Clinton supporters to dominate Obama's cabinet.

* Use of the Obama donor network to pay off Clinton's campaign debts and to repay the money she's loaned herself.

And, she will argue, if she does not get all of these things, she'll continue the fight to Denver or possibly beyond, sabotaging Democratic chances in November and throwing the Presidency to McCain.

If Obama gives in, the result will be worse than Cheney; Hillary Clinton will, in all respects but title, be the President. This is, of course, unacceptable, not merely because it's a Clinton asking it, but because no presidential candidate can give in to such naked extortion and appear strong at the same time. If Obama gives Clinton what she wants- indeed, in my opinion if he gives her ANYTHING- he will indeed appear to be appeasing her, as his Republican opponents claim he seeks to appease terrorist regimes.

Hillary has apparently made a decision to get everything she can for herself, and to hell with the Democratic Party. Now, in the next few days, we get to see who blinks first- does Obama give in to Clinton blackmail, or does the Democratic Party finally, at long, long last, tell its two problem children to take a hike?

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.)

Is It Over?

I waited until MSNBC called Indiana for Clinton to begin writing this.

Hillary Clinton won Indiana by a margin of slightly more than 20,000 votes. Hillary will get 37 delegates to Obama's 35- a net gain to the Clintons of two delegates.

Predictions on North Carolina are still iffy, but Obama won by fourteen percentiles statewide. Estimates range from the Green Pages' low-end of a net 11 delegates to Obama (63-52) to MSNBC's high-end estimate of a net of 17 (66-49). I'm using the more conservative of those two for my own calculations.

My current estimates:

PLEDGED DELEGATES: Obama 1,595, Clinton 1,423. (Obama + 172)
SUPERDELEGATES: Obama 254, Clinton 270. (Obama -16)
TOTAL DELEGATES: Obama 1,849, Clinton 1,693. (Obama +156)

And remember the Magic Superdelegate Number I made for Obama- how many more superdelegates he needs to snag to stop Clinton from swinging the nomination that way? The Magic Superdelegate Number, going into the vote today, was 67.

Sixty. Seven.

Presuming Clinton and Obama split the remaining pledged delegates evenly- actually, throwing a few extra to Clinton- Clinton would now need over 85% of all currently undeclared (and, in some cases, currently unknown) superdelegates to win the nomination.

Obama only needs 25%.

What's more, let's stick to pledged delegates. Obama, by my math, currently has 1,595. In order to get a majority of pledged, decided-by-voters delegates, he needs 1,627- thirty-two pledged delegates to go. Even if Obama only got 16% of the vote through the rest of the elections- the minimum level to get any delegates at all in a Democratic primary or caucus- he'd get 5 in West Virginia; 9 in Kentucky; 8 in Oregon; 11 in Puerto Rico; and 2 each in Montana and South Dakota, for a grand total of 37- five more delegates than he would need to secure a clear majority of pledged delegates.

And that's if he fell flat on his face tomorrow morning. Obama's predicted to win Oregon, Montana and South Dakota, and he'll get 30% in Kentucky and West Virginia no matter how white and bigoted voters there may or may not end up being. I'm currently predicting Obama to get 106 pledged delegates (to Clinton's 119) in the remaining contests.

In other words- the race for pledged delegates is now over. Obama has won, barring a massive coronary. That victory will become official in two weeks, when Obama wins Oregon.

These are not merely bad numbers. These are not merely impossible numbers to overcome. These are numbers which might- mind you I say MIGHT- be giving the Clintons cause to reconsider the pledge she made in tonight's speech- to continue on to the convention, and thence to the White House.

Because, according to MSNBC, the Clintons have cancelled all their media and campaign events for tomorrow. (Except, that is, for a fundraiser- which might be necessary to get the Clinton campaign out of debt.)

The last time a candidate did this, Mitt Romney dropped out of the race.

Stay tuned, sports fans, we might actually get news on something besides a doomed-from-birth gas tax holiday or Reverend Fucking Wright.

Like, say, the current battle between the Maliki government and al-Sadr's forces for control of Baghdad...

The Next Day

Well, the exit polls didn't hold up after all.

Clinton ended up winning not with a 4% margin, but a 9% margin. She managed to hold most of the Philadelphia suburbs- I'd expected her to win Burks County handily, but other results were a little surprising.

More to the point, she won 75-25 in most of the rural counties around the state- numbers almost identical to her results in predominantly white areas of Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee. Anyone who wants to complain about James Carville's much-repeated quote about Pennsylvania being Pittsburgh in the west, Philadelphia in the east, and Alabama in the middle can just shut up right now, thank you.

No matter how much Obama likes having his "50-state contest" talking point, these results should be more than enough for him to write West Virginia off completely, and Kentucky nearly so. Clinton is going to win those by landslide margins- Kentucky by 60-40, West Virginia by almost 70-30.

Another point that bears noticing: beyond getting out the basic message, money does not matter in elections. Obama spent nearly three times as much as Clinton in Pennsylvania. Some people claim that this forced the Clintons to put more money than they wanted in there, but I doubt it; they had to win Pennsylvania, and really had to win by much more than the 9% they got. Obama's first strategy- to downplay Pennsylvania as Clinton country and a state where they would be happy with a good showing- was the right way to go. Dumping money in as he did over the past three weeks was a strategic blunder; it made him look weak for apparently trying and failing to score a knockout blow, and it means he has that much less money to spend on Indiana, a state with a legitimate chance for a knockout.

That said, although Obama underperformed in the state, Clinton only reached her expectations- she didn't surpass them. My prediction six weeks ago was for a delegate breakdown of Clinton 83, Obama 75; early projections at the Daily Kos suggest the final breakdown will be Clinton 84, Obama 74. That's a ten delegate net to Clinton... which Obama can make up by a simple 10% margin of victory in North Carolina in two weeks. Polls currently show him leading there by as much as TWENTY percentiles- which could lead to as much as a 69-46 margin there, or a net delegate pickup of 23.

So, what are my predictions for two weeks? Looking at poll trends, I'm going to call Indiana for Obama by only about 3% statewide- say 51% to 48%. I'm going to be a little conservative and call North Carolina at 57-43 for Obama as well, with Clinton winning most of her vote in the western mountain area. Breaking that down into actual delegate projections (thanks to the Green Papers for the details):

INDIANA

Statewide at-large: Obama 8, Clinton 8
Pledged PLEOs: Obama 5, Clinton 4
CD-1: Obama 4, Clinton 2
CD-2: Obama 3, Clinton 3
CD-3: Obama 2, Clinton 2
CD-4: Obama 1, Clinton 3
CD-5: Obama 2, Clinton 2
CD-6: Obama 2, Clinton 3
CD-7: Obama 4, Clinton 2
CD-8: Obama 3, Clinton 3
CD-9: Obama 2, Clinton 4
TOTAL: Obama 36, Clinton 36

So- a null result in Indiana.

NORTH CAROLINA

Statewide at-large: Obama 15, Clinton 11
Pledged PLEOs: Obama 7, Clinton 5
CD-1: Obama 4, Clinton 2
CD-2: Obama 4, Clinton 2
CD-3: Obama 2, Clinton 2
CD-4: Obama 6, Clinton 3
CD-5: Obama 1, Clinton 4
CD-6: Obama 2, Clinton 3
CD-7: Obama 4, Clinton 2
CD-8: Obama 2, Clinton 3
CD-9: Obama 2, Clinton 4
CD-10: Obama 1, Clinton 4
CD-11: Obama 2, Clinton 4
CD-12: Obama 5, Clinton 2
CD-13: Obama 4, Clinton 3
TOTAL: Obama 61, Clinton 54

That's a net of seven delegates for Obama- and that's planning for a disastrous loss to Clinton in the mountainous west of the state, plus a couple of borderline districts.

So, in two weeks Obama makes up most of the ground he lost today. Not to worry. (Much.)

And finally... remember my Magic Superdelegate Number? As of today's endorsement of Obama by Oklahoma governor Brad Henry, Obama's magic number is 89 superdelegates. 89 more superdelegates, and he slams the door on Hillary's ability to overturn his lead in the pledged delegate count- presuming, of course, that the remaining contests, plus Pennsylvania, come out with both candidates splitting the pledged delegates.

Oh, Clinton has her own magic superdelegate number: 238.

There are only 304 superdelegates total who are still apparently neutral or undeclared. 67 of those are either empty seats (state add-on delegates) or superdelegates whose terms of office expire before the convention in Denver (Hawaii's DNC positions and state chairman). That means Clinton needs every single remaining superdelegate that currently holds the position... plus one.

Or, in percentage terms: Obama needs 29% of the remaining superdelegates. Clinton needs 78%. (The difference is John Edwards' 18 remaining pledged delegates.)

Unless Obama's superdelegates begin to defect, Clinton really can't win... and it's Clinton, not Obama, who has had problems with superdelegate defections.

Clinton will still win Kentucky, West Virginia, and more than likely Puerto Rico. She has an even shot in Indiana- but that's all, and it's not enough.

But until she realizes and accepts that- and I doubt she ever will- she'll continue the contest, which is doing nothing but hurting both candidates for the November race.

(You notice, of course, that all the people who say the continuing contest is good for Democrats are conservative/Republican activists?)

(Almost) Official: Obama Wins Texas

First, a quick note: Clinton compared herself yesterday, in a speech in Philadelphia, to Rocky Balboa. Perhaps she's forgotten that, in the original movie, Rocky lost...

Anyway, the results from the second round of Texas caucusing/conventions are in. Obama's percentage has shifted a little in his favor. Burnt Orange Report predicts a 37-30 split in favor of Obama; MSNBC calculates a 38-29 split. I favor MSNBC, for the moment, and I've made some adjustments in my totals.

(And happier for me- remember, I didn't get to be a delegate to the second level because my voting box went 2-0 Clinton... but my county, overall, only favored Clinton 9-7.)

What's more, Mississippi has reported its final vote totals for its primary. In that report, Obama gets one more delegate (and Clinton one less) than previously estimated.

A slew of new polls are out for Pennsylvania:

Rasmussen: Clinton 47%, Obama 42% (Clinton down 5% in past week)
Survey USA: Clinton 53%, Obama 41% (Clinton down 2%, Obama up 5% in past three weeks)
Quinnipiac: Clinton 50%, Obama 41% (Clinton down 3% in past three weeks)
PPP: Obama 45%, Clinton 43% (28-point swing from two weeks ago)

Ignoring the actual results (especially that last one, which is downright impossible to believe), we get a definite trend not so much for Obama as against Clinton.

I still don't think Obama will win Pennsylvania- unless Clinton's "Bosnian Sniper" lie continues to roll against her- but my prediction that Clinton only nets eight delegates out of that state looks to be firming up quite a bit.

Other polls out show Clinton slamming Obama in Kentucky (no surprise) and Obama slamming Clinton in North Carolina (also no surprise). No change in my personal predictions there. Survey USA, on the other hand, shows Clinton up by nine points in Indiana, which is surprising- since the only prior reputable poll showed Obama up nearly 2-1 in that state. That, of course, was during Obama's 12-contest winning streak.

I still predict that Clinton wins Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky; that Puerto Rico is unpredictable; and Obama wins all other contests, including Indiana. The net result will still be close to an even split of remaining pledged delegates. After adjusting the Texas delegate count, I show the magic superdelegate number (the number of superdelegates Obama needs to end Clinton's ability to use them to overturn his delegate lead) at 106.

Slate only gives Hillary a 10% chance to get the nomination at this point. Rasmussen's political markets show Hillary with 15.4% probability of the nomination. More and more people are beginning to realize that Pennsylvania is not the winner-take-all contest of this primary season; they're seeing, instead, that nothing short of a catastrophic Obama collapse or a truly corrupt Democratic national convention will get Clinton the nomination. They're also seeing that Clinton will do anything- lie, cheat, and steal- to win that nomination, even if it means the destruction of her own party.

(Oh, Obama: retail politics is good, but stick to basketball. Stop bowling. Please. Even I can break 100 as often as not; I'd be truly upset at bowling a 37, especially with world media filming every single gutterball.)

P. S. this was originally intended to be posted yesterday. I've made some edits and adjustments to bring it up to date... and just as I'm doing a final fact check, MSNBC announces the Democratic governor of Wyoming is coming out for Obama. Magic number now 105.

Conspiracy Theorists Hate Hillary Clinton

I'm all for things that make Hillary Clinton look bad... provided that they're factual and relevant.

This Nation article by Barbara Ehrenreich is almost certainly not relevant, and I'm doubtful that it's factual.

The Family's most visible activity is its blandly innocuous National Prayer Breakfast, held every February in Washington. But almost all its real work goes on behind the scenes--knitting together international networks of right-wing leaders, most of them ostensibly Christian. In the 1940s, The Family reached out to former and not-so-former Nazis, and its fascination with that exemplary leader, Adolf Hitler, has continued, along with ties to a whole bestiary of murderous thugs.

. . .

Clinton fell in with The Family in 1993, when she joined a Bible study group composed of wives of conservative leaders like Jack Kemp and James Baker. When she ascended to the Senate, she was promoted to what Sharlet calls the Family's "most elite cell," the weekly Senate Prayer Breakfast, which included, until his downfall, Virginia's notoriously racist Senator George Allen. This has not been a casual connection for Clinton. She has written of Doug Coe, The Family's publicity-averse leader, that he is "a unique presence in Washington: a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God."

And these are the relevant quotes.

Most- hell, pretty much all of Ehrenreich's information comes from a single source- writer Jeffrey Sharlet, who "went undercover" into The Family for a Harper's Magazine article in 2003. The result reads like a conspiracy theorist's wet dream: a group of far-right fundamentalist Christians attempting to bring about theocracy first at home, then globally.

Ivanwald, which sits at the end of Twenty-fourth Street North in Arlington, Virginia, is known only to its residents and to the members and friends of the organization that sponsors it, a group of believers who refer to themselves as “the Family.” The Family is, in its own words, an “invisible” association, though its membership has always consisted mostly of public men. Senators Don Nickles (R., Okla.), Charles Grassley (R., Iowa), Pete Domenici (R., N.Mex.), John Ensign (R., Nev.), James Inhofe (R., Okla.), Bill Nelson (D., Fla.), and Conrad Burns (R., Mont.) are referred to as “members,” as are Representatives Jim DeMint (R., S.C.), Frank Wolf (R., Va.), Joseph Pitts (R., Pa.), Zach Wamp (R., Tenn.), and Bart Stupak (D., Mich.). Regular prayer groups have met in the Pentagon and at the Department of Defense, and the Family has traditionally fostered strong ties with businessmen in the oil and aerospace industries. The Family maintains a closely guarded database of its associates, but it issues no cards, collects no official dues. Members are asked not to speak about the group or its activities.

. . .

In the process of introducing powerful men to Jesus, the Family has managed to effect a number of behind-the-scenes acts of diplomacy. In 1978 it secretly helped the Carter Administration organize a worldwide call to prayer with Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat, and more recently, in 2001, it brought together the warring leaders of Congo and Rwanda for a clandestine meeting, leading to the two sides' eventual peace accord last July. Such benign acts appear to be the exception to the rule. During the 1960s the Family forged relationships between the U.S. government and some of the most anti-Communist (and dictatorial) elements within Africa's postcolonial leadership. The Brazilian dictator General Costa e Silva, with Family support, was overseeing regular fellowship groups for Latin American leaders, while, in Indonesia, General Suharto (whose tally of several hundred thousand “Communists” killed marks him as one of the century's most murderous dictators) was presiding over a group of fifty Indonesian legislators. During the Reagan Administration the Family helped build friendships between the U.S. government and men such as Salvadoran general Carlos Eugenios Vides Casanova, convicted by a Florida jury of the torture of thousands, and Honduran general Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, himself an evangelical minister, who was linked to both the CIA and death squads before his own demise. “We work with power where we can,” the Family's leader, Doug Coe, says, “build new power where we can't.”

. . .

“A covenant,” Doug answered. The congressman half-smiled, as if caught between confessing his ignorance and pretending he knew what Doug was talking about. “Like the Mafia,” Doug clarified. “Look at the strength of their bonds.” He made a fist and held it before Tiahrt's face. Tiahrt nodded, squinting. “See, for them it's honor,” Doug said. “For us, it's Jesus.”

Coe listed other men who had changed the world through the strength of the covenants they had forged with their “brothers”: “Look at Hitler,” he said. “Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Bin Laden.” The Family, of course, possessed a weapon those leaders lacked: the “total Jesus” of a brotherhood in Christ.

“That's what you get with a covenant,” said Coe. “Jesus plus nothing.”

. . .

The regimen was so precise it was relaxing: no swearing, no drinking, no sex, no self. Watch out for magazines and don't waste time on newspapers and never watch TV. Eat meat, study the Gospels, play basketball: God loves a man who can sink a three-pointer. Pray to be broken. O Heavenly Father. Dear Jesus. Help me be humble. Let me do Your will. Every morning began with a prayer, some days with outsiders—Wednesdays led by a former Ivanwald brother, now a businessman; Thursdays led by another executive who used tales of high finance to illuminate our lessons from scripture, which he supplemented with xeroxed midrash from Fortune or Fast Company; Fridays with the women of Potomac Point. But most days it was just us boys, bleary-eyed, gulping coffee and sugared cereal as Bengt and Jeff Connolly, Bengt's childhood friend and our other house leader, laid out lines of Holy Word across the table like strategy.

. . .

We prayed to be “nothing.” We were there to “soften our hearts to authority.” We instituted a rule that every man must wipe the toilet bowl after he pisses, not for cleanliness but to crush his “inner rebel.”

. . .

“Remember that story Cal Thomas told?” he asked. Thomas, a syndicated columnist, had recently stopped by Ivanwald for a mixer with young congressional staffers. He had regaled his audience with stories about tweaking his liberal colleagues, in particular about when he had addressed a conference of nonbelievers by asking if anyone knew where to buy a good “negro.” Jeff C. thought it was hilarious but also profound. What Thomas had meant, he told me, was that absent the teachings of Jesus there was no reason for the strong not to enslave the weak.

. . .

Two weeks into my stay, David Coe, Doug's son and the presumptive heir to leadership of the Family, dropped by the house. My brothers and I assembled in the living room, where David had draped his tall frame over a burgundy leather recliner like a frat boy, one leg hanging over a padded arm.

“You guys,” David said, “are here to learn how to rule the world.”

. . .

He walked to the National Geographic map of the world mounted on the wall. “You guys know about Genghis Khan?” he asked. “Genghis was a man with a vision. He conquered”—David stood on the couch under the map, tracing, with his hand, half the northern hemisphere—“nearly everything. He devastated nearly everything. His enemies? He beheaded them.” David swiped a finger across his throat. “Dop, dop, dop, dop.”

David explained that when Genghis entered a defeated city he would call in the local headman and have him stuffed into a crate. Over the crate would be spread a tablecloth, and on the tablecloth would be spread a wonderful meal. “And then, while the man suffocated, Genghis ate, and he didn't even hear the man's screams.” David still stood on the couch, a finger in the air. “Do you know what that means?” He was thinking of Christ's parable of the wineskins. “You can't pour new into old,” David said, returning to his chair. “We elect our leaders. Jesus elects his.”

He reached over and squeezed the arm of a brother. “Isn't that great?” David said. “That's the way everything in life happens. If you're a person known to be around Jesus, you can go and do anything. And that's who you guys are. When you leave here, you're not only going to know the value of Jesus, you're going to know the people who rule the world. It's about vision. 'Get your vision straight, then relate.' Talk to the people who rule the world, and help them obey. Obey Him. If I obey Him myself, I help others do the same. You know why? Because I become a warning. We become a warning. We warn everybody that the future king is coming. Not just of this country or that, but of the world.” Then he pointed at the map, toward the Khan's vast, reclaimable empire.

. . .

Another document—“Regional Reports, January 3, 2002”—lists some of the nations where Youth Corps programs are already in operation: Russia, Ukraine, Romania, India, Pakistan, Uganda, Nepal, Bhutan, Ecuador, Honduras, Peru. Youth Corps is, in many respects, a more aggressive version of Young Life, a better-known network of Christian youth groups that entice teenagers with parties and sports, and only later work Jesus into the equation. Most of my American brothers at Ivanwald had been among Young Life's elite, and many had returned to Young Life during their college summers to work as counselors. Youth Corps, whose programs are often centered around Ivanwald-style houses, prepares the best of its recruits for positions of power in business and government abroad. The goal: “Two hundred national and international world leaders bound together relationally by a mutual love for God and the family.”

. . .

The Family was founded in April 1935 by Abraham Vereide, a Norwegian immigrant who made his living as a traveling preacher. One night, while lying in bed fretting about socialists, Wobblies, and a Swedish Communist who, he was sure, planned to bring Seattle under the control of Moscow, Vereide received a visitation: a voice, and a light in the dark, bright and blinding. The next day he met a friend, a wealthy businessman and former major, and the two men agreed upon a spiritual plan. They enlisted nineteen business executives in a weekly breakfast meeting and together they prayed, convinced that Jesus alone could redeem Seattle and crush the radical unions.

. . .

Vereide met with Jewish survivors and listened to their stories, but he nevertheless considered ex-Nazis well suited for the demands of “strong” government, so long as they were willing to worship Christ as they had Hitler.

. . .

“He's the question,” Bengt retorted, half-smiling, satisfied with his inversion by which doubt became the essence of a dogma. God was just what Bengt desired Him to be, even as Bengt was, in the face of God, “nothing.” Not for aesthetics alone, I realized, did Bengt and the Family reject the label “Christian.” Their faith and their practice seemed closer to a perverted sort of Buddhism, their God outside “the truth,” their Christ everywhere and nowhere at once, His commands phrased as questions, His will as simple to divine as one's own desires. And what the Family desired, from Abraham Vereide to Doug Coe to Bengt, was power, worldly power, with which Christ's kingdom can be built, cell by cell.

And those are the more sensible and relevant quotes from the article.

When you actually read both articles, you come up with only the following facts:

Fact: The annual National Prayer Breakfast is run by a right-wing organization with its roots in anti-socialist reactionaries during the Great Depression.

Fact: This organization proselytizes aggressively for Christ in a non-denominational fashion.

Fact: The organization believes in a doctrine that calls for obedience to authority.

Fact: A number of high-ranking officials from various nations attend their events, including the annual National Prayer Breakfast and weekly group prayer meetings.

Fact: These is no actual evidence these individuals are involved with this group in any way other than to participate in these prayer meetings.

Fact: The organization has reached out to groups and individuals who normally would not be acceptable to Christian organizations. You know- like Christ did. Remember, St. Matthew was a tax collector?

Fact: For all the spooky "inside dirt" Sharlet deals out- and he's got a whole book coming out this summer- there is no proof of any conspiracy to conquer the nation and alter its laws to make all Americans worship Christ. The closest it comes to conspiracy is an attempt to ensure that world leaders follow Christ's teachings.

And finally, Fact: we only have one reporter's word for all of this.

For my money, rather than a conspiracy to rule the world, the Family is really a small organization with a donor base of wealthy individuals who politicians have used for their own ends for the past sixty years- everything from gaining campaign donations to providing cheap temporary housing for Congresspersons when Congress is in session.

There's nothing here that shows that Hillary Clinton is trying to create a theocracy, or even that she is an active member of the Family- except for one man's reporting filtered through another woman's pen.

And, unfortunately, that woman is an Obama supporter, so there's every reason to accuse her of bias in this article- not just accuse her, but accuse all of us who support Obama.

Friends and neighbors, conspiracy theorists are not solely a phenomenon of the far right. The left is capable of them too- as these two articles demonstrate.

And in honor of having demonstrated this so well, and even though it's a day late, and even though neither person involved is a Libertarian... Barbara Ehrenreich and Jeff Sharlet, this week's Corn Flakes!

First Signs of the Obama Speech Reaction

Well, first the bad news.

Carrie Burdoff Brown at the Politico reports that in the white working-class neighborhoods of Philadelphia Obama's speech was counterproductive; those voters apparently will accept nothing less than a total rejection of Rev. Wright by Obama. In fact, most of the people quoted in the article wouldn't vote for Obama even if he did reject him. This is bad, because Obama needs voters like this to keep Pennsylvania close when the vote comes.

Glenn Peter, 54, a patron at Rauchut’s Tavern, said he heard finger pointing, not reconciliation. He took issue with Obama’s explanation that Wright’s observations of a racist America were reflecting the racial scars of his past.

“I don’t want to hear that you are blaming us for him saying this,” said Peter, who is white and worked at an auto parts factory until it was shuttered several years ago. Cutting ties with the church “would have been the best way to do it. That way, I could have been able to listen to him again.”

On the other hand, when Ben Smith at Politico mentioned this article on his blog, the response was that the people interviewed for Brown's piece would never vote for Obama anyway. Several people said that if Jesus Christ himself returned in the form of a black man, the NE Philadelphia ethnic enclaves would vote against him. Other commentators pointed out that there were plenty of white voters in that area who would, indeed, vote for Obama. My view: the white population of Pennsylvania is well represented by the article's sample, and Obama will find it all the more difficult to keep the result within a ten-point spread when the vote happens next month.

MSNBC reporter Carrie Dann writes that reception of the speech is mixed in North Carolina. She gives three viewpoints: the negative viewpoint is from a 72-year-old white man who identifies as Republican. The second viewpoint, from a former Clinton supporter converted to Obama, ignores the speech. The final viewpoint adores the speech, but is apparently undecided between Obama and Clinton. This article, more than the first, serves as a reminder: "data" is not the plural of "anecdote." We have to wait and watch the polls, which took a distinct downward trend before the speech, to see what's really happening.

"I think he played the race card too much," says George McNeill of Aberdeen, N.C., as he politely nudges to the side his plate of ham mac n' cheese. "In all honesty, I got the idea a time or two that he was more looking down on the white race than I thought he should."

. . .

"He's not talking in a foreign language to anybody," Ruffin says, scanning the line of faces - black, white, young, and old — with trays piled with sliced turkey and unapologetically gooey pieces of pie. "He understands white. And he understands black."

He says that negativity in the race had started to leave a sour taste months ago. But it wasn't until the last few weeks that he finally made the switch when Hillary Clinton proposed that Barack Obama would make an excellent contender — for vice president. "He's the frontrunner!" he chuckles. "There's somethin' just not quite right with that."

. . .

As a lifelong churchgoer and a Southern woman at her core, Deborah Parish has a deep appreciation for the religious and racial roots that anchor Obama's identity.

A white woman often transplanted by her husband's military service, she's had her taste of unsavory comments from ministers at the many churches the couple has attended throughout their travels.

"We've had pastors who I haven't agreed with," she says in defense of Obama's association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright. "But I didn't stop going to church. Because I'm not going for the pastor, I'm going for my soul."

The first of those polls gives me a bit of cause for hope. Gallup's tracking poll shows Obama closing on Clinton today, after a five-day slide which took him from a 50-44 lead to a 49-42 deficit yesterday. (Today's score: 48-43.)

Obama made a major speech on Tuesday addressing the race issue in large part to help move past the controversy. While Tuesday night polling showed no immediate benefit for Obama, the Wednesday results were more favorable to him, as reflected in the slight drop in Clinton's three-day average lead. This suggests at least the possibility that Obama has stopped his losses. The tracking data over the next several days will be a crucial indicator of the lasting impact, if any, of the Wright controversy.

Viewpoints from the media provide further food for thought. Amy Walter of the National Journal writes that Hillary Clinton's last hope of winning the nomination, making the "electability" argument to sway superdelegates, was eliminated by Obama's decision to lay his views on race out in the open:

This should benefit Clinton, right? After all, her plea to primary voters as well as superdelegates has been to let the process play out until the last vote is cast, to allow for a proper vetting of the candidates. But it seems as if Obama's speech effectively turned the "electability" question into a code word for "acceptable to whites." If so, it means that superdelegates will be very wary of opening a racial divide among Democrats that won't heal before November and may not for a long time to come.

Quite frankly, I'm dubious about this- I really don't think we know yet whether or not Obama has succeeded in re-defining the race issue or the Wright issue. Associated Press reporter Charles Babington reports that a large number of Republican activists and advisors are rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of attack ads linking Obama and Wright. John McCain's campaign has already suspended a staffer who created such a video and posted it to YouTube.

Should Obama become the Democratic nominee, conservative activists are virtually certain to remind voters of Obama's ties to Wright, perhaps by using the videos in TV ads, several strategists said.

"He can give a speech a week, and it's not going to make the issue go away," said Chris LaCivita, a Republican adviser who helped create the "Swift Boat" ads that severely damaged John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign.

. . .

At least one conservative activist already has posted a video on the Web site YouTube with Wright's most incendiary remarks mixed with snippets from Obama speeches and interviews, which are edited to make the senator seem to be sputtering and unpatriotic. The Politico, a Washington-based newspaper, reported that the two-minute video was the work of Lee Habeeb, a former producer of the Laura Ingraham Show, a conservative talk program.

The Politico quoted Habeeb as saying, "I'm trying to join the YouTube generation and have some fun. We wanted to see if we could get in circulation."

The video was distributed Thursday by a McCain campaign aide, Soren Dayton, who subsequently was reprimanded and suspended. "We have been very clear on the type of campaign we intend to run and this staffer acted in violation of our policy," campaign spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker said.

There is the possibility that these efforts could backfire on McCain, but I doubt it. Swift Boat didn't backfire on Bush; Willie Horton didn't backfire on Bush the Elder. What's more probable is that similar efforts could backfire on Clinton.

It seems, according to Eloise Harper at ABC News, the Clinton campaign has been using Rev. Wright to try to persuade Democratic superdelegates that Obama is unelectable in the general election.

However at a Thursday press availability in Terra Haute, Indiana after a report surfaced that the Clinton campaign was pushing the Wright story to superdelegates arguing that the relationship hurt Obama's electibility -– Clinton refused to deny that her campaign was pushing the story.

. . .

When Clinton was then asked specifically if her campaign was pushing the Wright story –- she shrugged and took the next question, ignoring the reporter.

Bob Beckel, head of Walter Mondale's 1984 Presidential campaign- the last time superdelegates decided the nomination- has weighed in not just on this issue, but also on the overall superdelegate issue.

The third key to Mondale's nomination, and arguably the most important, were superdelegates. Superdelegates were created in the early '80s with the strong backing of the Mondale campaign. These were party leaders (most with long histories with Mondale) who would decide the nomination if a candidate failed to get enough pledged delegates for a convention majority. Mondale had predicted enough delegates to claim the nomination after the last primaries on June 5th, '84. We came up short and needed roughly 50 superdelegates to commit. They did, allowing Mondale to claim the nomination on June 6th.

Did we twist arms and call in old debts like the Obama campaign believes the Clintons are doing? Sure, but that kind of pressure rarely worked. Our strongest arguments (which sold virtually all 50 superdelegates) were that: Mondale had won the most pledged delegates overall, gotten the most popular votes, and, more importantly, had won the home states or districts of the superdelegates we had targeted that day. Without a compelling reason, superdelegates were loath to go against the majority of their constituents. It was true in '84 and it should be true in '08.

. . .

But the Republican right wing has seized on the Wright story and is unlikely to let it go. For John McCain this has serious downside potential. Anger in the black community towards Republicans is established and immutable. But if conservatives are perceived as exploiting yet another race story, anger could spread to moderate Republican and Independent voters, many in the suburbs, where the Republicans have been bleeding support the last decade.

For those supporters of Hillary Clinton who see the story as a way of selling superdelegates on Obama's unelectability, the downside is far more dangerous. If the Clinton campaign is caught using the race card, particularly after Bill Clinton's 'cracker tour' of South Carolina, it will assure a Clinton defeat in November. Not only will blacks boycott the polls, so will many of the millions of young voters Obama has brought into the political process.

. . .

To repeat, for the benefit of undecided superdelegates; the nominating voting process ends on June 3rd. Superdelegates will have all the information they need (and none of the excuses they've been hiding behind) to declare support for one of the candidates by June 4th. If voting trends continue as they have, there is no other choice but Barack Obama.

If they go with Hillary Clinton, the case against Obama's electability better be a strong one. If not, superdelegates will be responsible for ripping the party apart in an election year that favors Democrats on every front. These "party leaders" will also be responsible for alienating our most loyal constituency and locking the door on our first young recruits in decades.

Do it on the "big state" argument and you deserve to be laughed out of town or maybe horsewhipped in Denver.

Of course, as we've seen already, the Clintons never think about tomorrow, never think any further than the battle at hand. They will say and do anything they can to win the nomination, and only then will they consider the general election. Mark Penn is already pointing to polls that show Obama has lost his general-election poll lead over John McCain... but he fails to point out that Clinton is also losing, in the same polls, by the same or greater margins. They are willing and eager to throw away the general election in their efforts to win the nomination.

To sum up: a bit too early to say what the speech has done, but it is definitely not the big winner a lot of the media have painted it as. Wright is not going to be allowed to fade from public consciousness, which means he will continue to hurt Obama until at least the general election, if not long after. Wright harms Obama's ability to cut into Clinton's base. The one positive about the speech is that it is likely to reassure superdelegates- on whom all depends for both candidates. Anything else is too early to say- until new polls over the coming week clearly show trends after the speech.

(Well, there's two positives, actually. Breaking news tonight is that State Department contractors, on multiple occasions, illegally accessed Obama's passport records. Obama supporters can now point to a vast White House conspiracy to send in modern-day Plumbers to dig up the dirt on the Democrats, and suggest that Bush would prefer Clinton in the White House to Obama. Obama himself would never do such a thing, but...)

(Oh- and adjustments to superdelegate estimates tick Obama's magic number to shut the door on Clinton down one. Magic number now 112.)

Why Spitzer Should Discourage People from Voting Clinton

It's typical of Barack Obama's luck the past couple weeks that on the day when he comes out with a killer response to Hillary Clinton's offer of the vice-presidential slot on her ticket, it gets buried by New York governor Eliot Spitzer's high-class prostitution scandal.

As I type this, the wheels are in motion for Spitzer to either resign gracefully or be forced out. Spitzer was a Hillary supporter- although not one the campaign bragged about after Clinton got caught waffling on his proposed program to issue driver's licenses for illegal immigrants program. As governor, Spitzer was a superdelegate; since his lieutenant governor, also a Clinton supporter, was already a superdelegate as a member of the Democratic National Committee, Spitzer's resignation will cost Clinton a delegate when every single delegate is precious.

Now, it's really easy for certain people (especially right-wing commentators) to draw a guilt-by-association argument against Hillary. "Look at who supports her," they'll say. "Look at who she works with. That's the kind of person she is."

I say: Don't do it. It's unfair and unjust. You don't get to choose your supporters, and Hillary has been putting distance between herself and Spitzer for months now. Nobody can say with a straight face that Eliot Spitzer played any significant role in the Clinton campaign or would play any significant role in a possible Clinton White House.

But there's a better argument to be made about why Eliot Spitzer's scandal- a former prostitution-ring busting attorney caught hiring extremely expensive prostitutes- is a reason not to vote for Hillary Clinton.

As everyone who hasn't been living under a rock knows, Obama's motto and main talking point is, "Yes We Can." Yes, each of us can achieve the American dream. Yes, we can make our own lives better and find success in our chosen field. Yes, we can demand accountability and responsibility of our government. Yes, we can take control of that government and use it to provide people assistance- without taking away their freedom or making them utterly dependent on that government.

That's the direct opposite of Clinton's unspoken motto, which is, "You Need Government."

You need government to force you to buy health insurance, because otherwise you might decide you can't afford to pay that much for a policy that might not cover you.

You need government to force you to build green, because otherwise the extremely high price for green construction and the lack of return on that investment would probably make you decide not to.

You need government to tell you what you can and can't watch, read or buy, because otherwise you might choose some form of entertainment which is unwholesome, antisocial, or harmful to minors.

You need government to defend you against criminals, because you cannot be trusted with a firearm or any other weapon with which you could defend yourself.

You can't do it by yourself. You can't work your way to a better life. You can't make the right decisions. You can't live the way you deserve you live... without government to make the decisions for you.

That's the basic Clinton philosophy.

But consider: in order for this to work, government has to be better at making decisions than ordinary people. The people who end up in public office need to be a better class of human beings than the common crowd- noble, upright, honest people with the intelligence and integrity necessary to make the right decision for all 300 million Americans- every single time.

But we know that government does not always make the right decisions. In fact, the wrong decisions often seem to outnumber the right ones. Corruption and abuse of power are endemic to the institution of government itself- ineradicable and all-pervasive. Even in cases where those in office are making honest efforts to do the right thing, unintended consequences makes the cure worse than the original disease- as Jeff Jacoby points out, in regards to how biofuels and lending laws are making global warming and the housing bust worse instead of better.

And even if we consider both Bill and Hillary to be members of this mythical noble breed- which the evidence strongly contradicts- Eliot Spitzer is demonstrably not. Nor is George W. Bush. Nor is Rep. Bill "That's Not $90,000 in My Ice Box, It's Frozen Cabbage" Jefferson. Nor is Senator Larry "Wide Stance" Craig. Nor is Rep. Alcee "Impeached Corrupt Judge Gets Elected to Congress" Hastings. Nor Senator Ted Stevens, nor Mayor Ray Nagin, etc. etc. etc. The best we can say about our elected officials is that they're no better people than anyone else; the worst we can say is, the purest scum rises to the top.

Hillary Clinton believes that she can rule us justly, make all our decisions for us, and guide us to a better world. Let's take some Pepto to kill the nausea as we presume, for the sake of argument, that she can. Maybe she is one of those noble all-wise leaders who can make all the right decisions... but she is not going to be in office forever.

And she will not be the sole person carrying out her orders.

When Hillary is gone- or where Hillary cannot extend her reach directly- her proposed laws, and the power they give government to control individual lives, remains. Lesser human beings will take hold of that power for their own purposes. They will certainly not be all-wise, noble people of integrity. They will be out for themselves. They will abuse that power, turning it to their own profit, and bungling the call on those issues that don't affect them one way or the other.

Government on the Clinton model would make us all dependent on the goodwill of government and those who administer it for our day-to-day livelihood. Without the better kind of person Clinton presumes would run her ideal government, this leave the individual American citizen vulnerable... for what government gives, government can take away- with interest.

The next time Hillary Clinton, or anyone else, talks about what government can do for you, imagine Eliot Spitzer, a man who prosecuted madams before being caught paying one, in charge of government.

Would you trust Eliot Spitzer to make your healthcare decisions? Your TV, reading, Internet, video-game decisions? Decisions on where you will live, where you will work, what you will eat and drink, whether or not you can defend yourself in the event of attack?

Every government official is an Eliot Spitzer or worse, so far as you know- because they haven't gotten caught yet.

Most of them never get caught at all.

Most of them, despite their hypocrisy, can be trusted with some basic things- trusted to defend our nation against attack, trusted to prosecute theft and murder, trusted to keep trucks rolling, water in the pipes, food on the table. It is in their best interests to make sure these, and other, basic functions work well for all.

But don't put your full trust in them. Don't become dependent on them. Don't buy into the ideal of all-benevolent government that Hillary Clinton preaches. It isn't true. It has never worked and will never work.

The only one you can trust to have your best interests in mind is YOU.

Don't let Hillary Clinton take your power to do for yourself away and give it to another Bush, another Spitzer, or any other corrupt or incompetent politician. You may need help, but you don't need a government nanny to do everything for you.

You can do it for yourself.

Yes, YOU can.

Clinton: "How Dare You Go Negative, Obama You Horrible Man?"

(This is a bit behind; wrote it yesterday, but it took a full day until I could log in here, for some reason.)

MSNBC reports that Obama campaign foreign affairs advisor Samantha Power has resigned her position, after The Scotsman printed an interview in which she referred to Hillary Clinton as a monster who will say and do anything to get elected.

The exact quote, according to MSNBC:

"In Ohio, they are obsessed and Hillary is going to town on it, because she knows Ohio's the only place they can win," Power is quoted as saying. "She is a monster, too — that is off the record — she is stooping to anything."

According to MSNBC, the Clinton campaign demanded Power be fired from the Obama campaign as "a test of his character."

And here's something that, so far as I can tell, was reported only on the TV coverage...

...when asked about Clinton staffer Howard Wolfson's claim that Obama was acting like Whitewater independent counsel Ken Starr in calling for the Clintons to make their tax returns public, the Clinton campaign said that, unlike the 'monster' comment, their comparison to Ken Starr "was not a personal attack."

Riiiiiiiight.

Samantha, you had it right the first time.

Andrew Sullivan Gets It Right.

Not one, but two essays today on Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish blog that I consider must reading...

Bill and Hillary Clinton are NOT vetted, he says first... they've just been more successful in being secretive, from Whitewater and the Rose law firm records to now.

Second, he points out that the Clintons are political gamblers, addicted to taking risks and actively seeking out drama. Without drama, Sullivan postulates, the Clintons can't be at the center of the story- and they can't live without being the center of everything.

Go, read, and comment.

Post-March 4th Analysis

I'm having a very significant revulsion reaction right now to the talking heads. The campaigns- all of them- are just repeating their same old talking points over and over, and none of them are willing to answer any questions that might challenge their position.

Yesterday was the worst-case reasonable scenario for the Obama campaign. Reasonable means that nobody expected Clinton to win 60-40 in either Ohio or Texas or better. This was as bad as anybody who watched the contest would reasonably expect it to end up from the Obama camp's point of view. They lost their momentum, ending a twelve-contest winning streak. Furthermore, they failed to defeat Clinton's big-state strategy- and thus failed to force her out of the race.

So far as I can tell this morning, Obama's rumored announcement of fifty superdelegate endorsements isn't going to happen. Bill Richardson's endorsement of the candidate ahead in the delegate count isn't going to happen. A Democratic party leadership intervention isn't going to happen. This race doesn't just go to Pennsylvania; it goes on clear to the convention, plain and simple.

The popular talking point among the media is that Clinton won by regaining her base of support, reversing the inroads Obama had made into that base. That doesn't explain, though, why that base went back to Clinton in Ohio and Texas.

Clinton's attacks worked. Beginning in the Ohio debate- which I didn't score, and in retrospect maybe I should have- and continuing with attack ads and insults and borderline slander on the stump, Hillary kept Obama on the defensive all week, resulting in nearly a two-to-one advantage among those who decided their candidate in the last three days (and a 60/40 split of those deciding in the past week). This especially hurt Obama in Ohio, where the NAFTA-Canada story allowed Clinton to misrepresent what actually happened as Obama himself double-talking on the NAFTA issue.

Ben Smith at politico.com also suggests that race favors Hillary; as many as one in five voters are still voting based on race, and Clinton wins that vote by a stronger margin than the overall result. The difference, though, isn't enough to change the outcome in yesterday's results, if the MSNBC exit polls are accurate.

Obama has to not just counter Clinton's attacks; he has to find a way to take the initiative. His attempt to attack Clinton on NAFTA backfired big time; never attack your opponent's weakness in an area where you, yourself, are also weak. Clinton has shored up her vulnerability on Iraq and is seen as the most qualified to keep America safe; Obama has to undermine this, especially since Iraq is the one and only issue-based advantage he has. He also has to demonstrate that he has experience and substance- an argument Clinton has been winning despite the facts.

Now, here's my own delegate count at present. It's looking like, at best, Obama will win the Texas caucuses by 55-45. Of course, those delegates won't be decided pro forma until June, three rounds of county and district and state conventions later. Despite that, I'm going to project that Obama gets 36 delegates to Clinton's 31.

That makes the delegate math from yesterday, by my best estimate (and using projections from various sources on district-based delegate counts):

OHIO - Clinton 77, Obama 64
TEXAS PRIMARY - Clinton 65, Obama 61
TEXAS CAUCUS - Clinton 31, Obama 36
RHODE ISLAND - Clinton 13, Obama 8
VERMONT - Clinton 6, Obama 9

MARCH 4 TOTAL - CLINTON 192, Obama 178

In other words, Clinton nets a total of fourteen delegates.

Adding these in to my own running total, I get the following totals:

TODAY'S TOTAL, PLEDGED DELEGATES: Obama 1,380, Clinton 1,236 (Obama up by 144)
TODAY'S TOTAL, PLEDGE PLUS ESTIMATED SUPERDELEGATES: Obama 1,574, Clinton 1,477 (Obama up by 97)

Now, looking forward, here's the good and the bad news. Bad news first.

BAD NEWS

1. Pennsylvania is a closed primary. That means that Obama supporters must register as Democrats not later than March 25. I'm going to go a step farther and make this prediction, barring a Clinton disaster: Obama loses Pennsylvania. He'll win Pittsburgh (narrowly) and win Philadelphia (strongly), but the rest of the state is mostly rural, mostly conservative, and mostly white, with a strong racist tinge. Obama has a definite ceiling in the Democratic race there, and I'm setting it at 45%. I'm predicting Philadelphia's 158 delegates to go 87 to Clinton, 71 to Obama.

Obama will have to dump a lot of resources into Pennsylvania to make it this competitive- and to avoid appearing to turn his back on what will be a battleground state. That will be wasted money, for the most part. For the moment Obama has it to waste... but he should set some aside for post-Pennsylvania contests, because he's going to need those contests badly.

2. Michigan and Florida may come back into play. The Republican governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, has offered a state-funded re-do of the Democratic primary. If a similar movement comes up in Michigan, it will be difficult to stop a re-do from happening. Obama is not likely to win either state- Michigan is Ohio only more so, and Florida's results are not likely to change from the original in any meaningful way. Bringing these two states in more or less erases Obama's current delegate lead, if the numbers from January hold up- not just in pledged delegates, but in superdelegates who currently have no vote, and who are unanimously in Clinton's back pocket. My view is, if Michigan and Florida count, Clinton wins.

3. There's only one caucus left- Wyoming. After Wyoming, with only twelve delegates, the rest of the contests are primaries. Obama doesn't have any substantial blowouts coming to him. (I'm still predicting that racial polarization will lead to a Clinton narrow win in Mississippi, although I'll be very glad to be wrong.)

4. It is mathematically impossible for either candidate to win without superdelegates. Obama has, by my estimate, 1,380 pledged delegates. The goal to reach, remember, is 2,025. There are only 613 pledged delegates left, and Obama needs 645. It is now official; superdelegates will decide this election.

Now the good news:

1. Without Michigan and Florida, the math does not favor Clinton. There are only 613 pledged delegates left. What's more, there are only about (by an average of estimates) 361 neutral superdelegates remaining. That's less than a quarter of the delegate total currently in play (although, remember, the superdelegates can potentially shift at any time).

By my calculations, Obama currently needs 451 delegates (46% of the total number remaining) to reach the magic number of 2,025; Clinton needs 548 delegates (56% of the total number remaining). Clinton would have to win all the contests like she won Ohio last night and like I feel she's going to win Pennsylvania- and she's not going to be able to do that- and she needs to pull down a lot more superdelegates.

If you do away with superdelegates altogether and focus on pledged delegates alone, as the website ObamaIsWinning.com does, the magic number is 1,627 delegates. Obama needs only 247 of the remaining 613 pledged delegates to reach this number (40%). Clinton needs 391 (64%). In order to get 64% of the delegates, Clinton is going to have to get substantially more than 65% of the actual vote to get those delegates.

2. More of the contests remaining favor Obama. For a concise rundown, Hillary must be considered favored in Pennsylvania, West Virginia (rural, poor, bigoted) and Kentucky (ditto). Obama is favored, and pretty strongly so, in North Carolina (the second largest remaining contest, with 115 delegates in play), Oregon, South Dakota, and Montana. Indiana could be an even split (red state, adjacent to Illinois, v. large rural white vote and large "rust belt" constituency), but a poll from mid-February showed Obama with a 40-25 lead (and a massive undecided). And Puerto Rico, the last contest, cannot be called for Clinton, because...

3. All the heavily Latino states have spoken. The Latino vote has been pretty consistently 2-1 Clinton- with Obama's support coming almost universally from the youngest Latino voters. However, the one contest remaining with a large Latino vote is Puerto Rico... and Puerto Ricans are not the same, by any means, as the Latino vote here in, for example, Texas. Puerto Rico politics is vastly different, based on a combination of patronage and internal statehood v. commonwealth arguments. What's more, the governor of Puerto Rico has endorsed Barack Obama. Finally, Puerto Rico has a large minority of citizens of African descent. Puerto Rico could go either way, or split right down the middle, depending on circumstances.

4. Obama is still winning the money race. Obama is still out-raising Hillary; rumor has it, he raised over $50 million in February to Clinton's $35 million. If he uses his money advantage wisely, he can compete in more contests than Hillary- enabling him to take an advantage.

Balancing the bad and the good, here are my current projections for the remaining contests:

WYOMING - Obama wins 9 delegates, Clinton 3 in the final caucus.

MISSISSIPPI - Clinton edges out Obama, winning 18 delegates to his 15.

PENNSYLVANIA - Clinton wins handily, 87 delegates to 71.

INDIANA - Clinton closes a bit but not enough; Obama wins this neighboring state, gaining 41 delegates to Clinton's 31.

NORTH CAROLINA - Obama wins North Carolina on the black vote, gaining 64 to Clinton's 51.

WEST VIRGINIA - Absolutely overwhelmingly Clinton. I think the best Obama can hope for is what I'm giving him- an 19-9 delegate split in Clinton's favor.

KENTUCKY - Also strongly Clinton, but not quite as much as West Virginia, thanks in large part to Louisville. Clinton picks up about 31 delegates to Obama's 20.

OREGON - The Washington caucus was overwhelmingly Obama; the beauty-contest primary was an even split. To my mind Oregon is more liberal, and thus slightly more Obama. Obama gets 29 delegates to Clinton's 23.

MONTANA - A substantial Obama win, but not many delegates- Obama 9, Clinton 7.

SOUTH DAKOTA - Another Obama win, but one fewer delegates. Obama 8, Clinton 7.

PUERTO RICO - Your guess is as good as mine, especially since there are rumors that the delegates will be picked without regard to the primary vote. I'm splitting them evenly for now, giving Clinton the edge, 32-31.

Add all of these together and you get a pledged delegate vote (by my estimate) of Obama 1,686; Clinton 1,545. Obama beats Clinton by 141 delegates in the pledged vote, but just BARELY gets over 50% of the pledged delegate total. If all of Puerto Rico's votes go to Clinton, Obama still beats her and still gets 50%... but by such a small margin as to call it a tie.

Factor in superdelegates currently endorsing candidates and the overall totals are:

OBAMA 1,880: CLINTON, 1,786.

That's just under a hundred-delegate difference; that's well below the 2,025 needed to wrap up the nomination. Obama falls 165 delegates short.

Barring an overwhelming and firm turn of the Democratic leadership towards Obama, this goes all the way to a brokered convention in Denver in August...

... where the machine, the environment, and the tactics all favor Hillary Clinton.

Those of you who fear a repeat of 1968 have every right to do so.