From the Obama campaign memo on WV and the state of the campaign:

MYTH 1: The Primary has left Democrats divided.
FACT: Democrats are united behind Barack Obama, even more so than Republicans are united behind McCain

• May 12 Washington Post poll shows that Obama wins 81% of Democrats in a matchup against John McCain.
• Indeed, more Republicans crossover to vote for Obama (15%) than do Democrats for McCain (13%).
  • NOTE: In 1996, Bill Clinton won 84% of Democrats.

MYTH 2: The Primary campaign has hurt Obama with swing voters and Republicans:
FACT: Obama is winning the swing voters against McCain by a wide margin.

• Obama holds a 51-42 lead among Independents in the Washington Post poll.
  • NOTE: Clinton loses 46-49 to McCain among Independents.
• Not since 1988, when George Bush beat Michael Dukakis 57-43 among Independents, has a candidate won such a large margin among swing voters.
  • In his two victories, Clinton only managed a 6-point margin over the Republican among independents in 1992 and an 8-point margin in 1996.
  • Indeed, no Democrat has won a majority of Independent voters since exit polls were first conducted in 1976.  

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This is pretty big news, and I think I'm justified in breaking the embargo. Hope you agree. (And hopefully the Obama campaign will understand.)

::

Remarks of Senator Barack Obama, Tuesday, May 13, 2008. Embargoed until 10PM Eastern.

Yeah, it's snark. ;)

(APPLAUSE) Thank you. We began this campaign sixteen months ago on a cold day in Springfield, Illinois. Now, more than thirty million votes later, we've built a grassroots political organization, fueled by volunteers and donations from millions of Americans. After forty-eight contests, we've won 32 primaries and caucuses to Senator Clinton's 17. We've earned over sixteen million votes -- more than anyone else -- and we've won over 1,600 pledged delegates to Clinton's 1,444.

If we continued this campaign, we'd be on pace to secure a majority of pledged delegates by May 20. Recently, we overtook Senator Clinton's lead among the superdelegates, the insiders who can -- if they choose -- overturn the will of the people. After tonight, we'd need just 145 more delegates to claim victory, less than half the number needed by Clinton.

But tonight, the people of West Virginia have spoken, and I must accept their verdict, which is that Hillary Clinton should be the next presidential nominee of the Democratic party.

I understand the historical legacy that has led to tonight's results, but I have no hard feelings. Change is not easy -- I've always understood that.

And despite efforts by other campaigns and some in the media to goad me into labeling the people of West Virginia as this or that, I understand that doing so would be divisive, counter-productive, and bad for our country. In short, it would be unpresidential.

But none of that matters now. What's important is that another 0.7% of the delegates to the Democratic National Convention have been selected, and most of them will be supporting Hillary Clinton.

Clinton, in turn, has argued that those delegates are worth more than others. There is no easy response to such a compelling argument.

Consequently, I am announcing that effective immediately, I am suspending my presidential campaign.

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If you haven't already had a chance to read it, you'll enjoy Jeffrey Goldberg's refutation of the lie spread by John Boehner and others that Barack Obama called Israel a "constant sore." (Obama was actually referring to our inability to resolve conflict in the Middle East.) Here's a snippet:

I have no doubt that Mr. Boehner will issue a correction to his press release in which he states the obvious, which is that Obama expressed -- in twelve different ways -- his support for Israel to me.

If he doesn't, however, I would, sadly, have to agree with my colleague, the less-forgiving Andrew Sullivan, who called Boehner's statement a "flat-out lie." In fact, I would add to Andrew's post, by calling Boehner's statement mendacious, duplicitous, gross, and comically refutable. So Mr. Boehner, do the right thing, and correct the record. I'll be happy to post the correction right here.

Episodes like this one are a good reminder that if you think we've seen a lot of lying so far in the campaign, it's time to buckle up. Some of these right-wing hatchet men are going to make Hillary Clinton look like Mother Theresa by comparison. And so far, unfortunately, John McCain seems quite comfortable playing their game.

Gov. Ted Kulongoski (D-OR), a Clinton endorser and superdelegate,
at McCain campaign event on Monday (AP Photo/Greg Wahl-Stephens)

I'm still mystified by the decision of Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski to attend a John McCain campaign event yesterday in Portland.

The entire message of the event was that John McCain is not George Bush, and having the Clinton-supporting Democratic Governor of Oregon at his side was quite valuable in making that point.

I just don't understand why Kulongoski would decide to help McCain in this way, especially eight days before the primary -- which Barack Obama is expected to win.

Making things more confusing, at the same time as Kulongoski was standing next to John McCain, Bill Clinton was also in the state campaigning for Hillary.

If I were in Kulongoski's shoes and decided to attend a campaign event, I'd have been with Bill.

But Kulongoski chose McCain. Strange.

Jeff Mapes, a reporter for The Oregonion, called it "a curious episode." Mapes reported that the governor's spokeswoman denied his appearance was political and said that he would support Obama if Obama won the nomination. Mapes also noted that McCain and Kulongoski met privately after the event, but had no information on what was said, though he surmised it was "congenial."

DCW has a nice write-up of the days super events:

• Former DNC Chair Roy Romer, who says the race is over.
• New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin
• Indiana Congressman Joe Donnelly

Add these to Anita Bonds, and the tally is 4-0 (plus that pledged delegate switch of Jack Johnson). And James Carville is musing about the race coming to an end.

First, some good news. Two more superdelegates, and one of them is a switch:

• Anita Bonds, an undecided superdelegate from DC where she is Chair of the Democratic Committee, joins the Obama bandwagon.
• Prince George's (Maryland) County Executive Jack Johnson switches back to Obama from Clinton, who he had supported since February.
  • Update: Johnson is actually a pledged delegate. Although his vote has the same weight as a superdelegate, I don't think the Obama game plan involves pursuing any pledged delegates other than the ones pledged to Edwards.

A new poll from ABC News:

• Obama leads Clinton 53%-41%
• Obama leads McCain 51%-44% and Clinton leads McCain 49-46%
• Clinton does slightly better with Democrats than Obama (85%-10% compared to 81%-13%), but Obama does much better with Independents (51%-42% compared with 46%-49%) and also better with Republicans (15%-83% compared with 10%-87%).

Closer to home:

• My governor (Republican Jim Gibbons, embroiled in a nasty divorce) has filed papers to evict his wife from the governor's mansion. (You can usually find some funny commentary on the divorce at the the Las Vegas Gleaner.)

And finally something that's just interesting:

• A series of maps on American Ethnic Geography, including religion, language, politics, and more.

Louisville, Kentucky - May 12

Over the past four and one-half months, Barack Obama has contested 48 different primaries and caucuses against one of the most powerful families in American political history -- and he's come out on top.

He hasn't won every contest and he's made his share of mistakes. But viewed in perspective, what he has accomplished has been historic. And in the process, he's demonstrated the overwhelming strength of his candidacy.

It's amazing how far Barack Obama has come, from trailing Clinton by more than twenty points in national polls to the cusp of the Democratic nomination:

It's not just the polls -- Obama has done well where it counts, on election day. Ever since the first delegates were awarded in Iowa, he has led Hillary Clinton among democratically selected pledged delegates. And next Tuesday in Oregon, he will clinch the pledged delegate majority, securing his wire-to-wire dominance in this important category.

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This is weird: today, Oregon's Democratic governor Ted Kulongoski stood by John McCain's side at a campaign event designed to distance McCain from George Bush's failed energy policy.

Gov. Kulongoski

Dem gov puts wind in McCain sails

PORTLAND, Ore. - John McCain got an unexpected boost in his bid to woo independent and Democratic voters here this afternoon: a shared stage with Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski.

Kulongoski is a Democrat who has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. So local reporters were stunned to see him turn up at wind-power firm Vestas near Portland International Airport along with McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. The event, a major speech on global warming, was designed to pitch McCain's environmental views to moderate western voters.

Why would a Democratic governor (and superdelegate) stand by McCain's side for such an important campaign event?

Making things more curious, it turns out Kulongoski is a Hillary Clinton supporter and as he stood beside McCain, Bill Clinton was on the trail in Astoria, Oregon, 90 miles away, also taking about energy policy.

So instead of going on the stump with a former President to support a Democratic candidate, Kulongoski decided to lend his credibility to John McCain's campaign.

Strange.

I'd love to know if the Clinton campaign was aware of Kulongoski's decision to attend the McCain event, and if they were, whether they encouraged or discouraged him from attending.

I know that if I were a Democratic governor who was supporting a Democratic presidential candidate, there's no chance in hell that I'd go to a Republican presidential candidate's campaign event, especially if that event were one week before my state's primary. And if there were a perception that my candidate's campaign was working to undermine the party's likely nominee, I'd be extra-sensitive to appearances.

Something just doesn't seem right here. What's going on?

Update @ 5:09PM: An Oregon resident suggests in the comments a plausible, non-nefarious explanation -- Kulongoski may have attended the event to support the company and the issue, rather than McCain. I'm not totally sold on this -- the theme of McCain's event was to establish his independence from Bush, and I can't imagine Kulongoski wouldn't have understood the significance of his presence. Then again, politicians make dumb mistakes all the time. Perhaps this was one.

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The outcome of tomorrow's vote in West Virginia is not in doubt, and neither is the impact it will have on the nomination process, which will be commensurate with its 0.9% share of pledged delegates.

So to make things interesting, the number I'll watch is percentage of each candidate's voters who say they plan to vote for John McCain in November regardless of who wins the nomination.

This assumes that the exit poll will have the same questions as it did in Indiana and North Carolina, where voters were specifically asked who they planned to vote for in November, regardless of how they voted during the primary.

The fact that West Virginia is a semi-closed primary (Democrats and unaffiliated voters can participate, but not Republicans) is largely irrelevant -- just under 70% of West Virginia voters are eligible to vote.

In North Carolina, which also had a semi-closed primary, 16% of Clinton's voters said they planned to vote for McCain even if she won the primary. (Oddly, in Indiana, which is open, 13% of her voters said the same.)

Assuming the exit poll has the same question, I'll set the over-under at 15% for the percentage of Clinton supporters who will vote McCain even if she wins the nomination, and I'll set the over-under at 4% for Obama.

If the only thing you cared about was winning an election, would you rather be (a) John McCain, the candidate who had forged a political alliance with the least popular incumbent president in recent American history, or would you rather be (b) Barack Obama, the candidate whose ex-pastor had repeatedly made statements that much of the electorate had found offensive?

Purely based on electability, I'd pick Obama any day of the week -- and two recent surveys support that decision. In late April, an NBC/WSJ poll determined that Bush was a more significant albatross for McCain than Wright is for Obama (at least in the opinion of voters). Today, Gallup crunches numbers from another recent survey and comes up with the same result:

Obama picks up his fourth superdelegate of the day, Keith Roark of Idaho. One week ago, Roark tipped his hand:

"Every time I say this, it's a guaranteed applause line," [Bill Clinton] said. "You can drop me in the middle of Idaho where there's not a Democrat in 200 miles and an elk would applaud me on that."

Idaho Democrats called Clinton's comments an insult. They said the state party is making a comeback - after suffering setbacks during Clinton's two terms in office.

"If Bill Clinton had done for elk in Idaho everything he did for Democrats, we'd have far fewer elk," said Idaho Democratic Party Chairman Keith Roark - an uncommitted superdelegate - Wednesday morning.

This was brilliant:

1. Denial: “But Senator Clinton hasn’t conceded yet! She doesn’t admit that she’s lost! She keeps moving the goal posts, continues playing the race card, it therefore must not really be over for her. We need her permission to move on!“
2. Anger: “If the rest of you don’t lash out at what’s upsetting me in exactly the way I am, you’re as bad as she is!”
3. Bargaining: “This means that Obama has to put Clinton on the ticket (like Andrew Sullivan says, ‘hello again to all that!’). Oh, wait, scratch that: he has to put a Clinton supporter on the ticket. Or maybe he has to put a different woman on the ticket… or how about…”
4. Depression: “Where’d everybody go? God, I miss the adrenaline of when this was a real contest!”
5. Acceptance: “Oh, goodie: More adrenaline to come! A general election campaign! Of course Obama will choose his running mate according to his standards. I bet it’ll be as smart a move as those that got him here!”

Al is also thrilled about the Akaka endorsement. Typical, eh?

So according to one count, as of this morning, since Tuesday Obama has picked up 20 superdelegates and Clinton has picked up 0.5. With today's announcements, the numbers probably look like this:

• Obama: +23
• Clinton: +0.5

So here's my spin prediction for Camp Clinton: "Hey, we're both in double-digits!"

Ben's on fire today:

• The candidates and the calendar (an awesome Krauthammer smackdown)
• Six ways for Hillary Clinton to lose.
• Quick hits: MoveOn: 'Obamacan', Sublimminable, Obama heading to Michigan, and Obama's Jewish Roots
• Supers for Obama: Tom Allen, Dolly Strazar, Daniel Akaka, and Keith Rourk

And coming soon, I predict, Ben will blog the endorsement of Obama by Sen. Daniel Akaka.