Lately, I've been doing almost all of my blogging at ObamaIsWinning.com. I'm working on a way to integrate The Jed Report and my single-issue blogs and hopefully within a week or two, maybe sooner, I'll have that solution live. For now, the best way to track what I'm up to is over there.

Don't blame me -- blame kid oakland.

Updated video. View the original here.

This reminds me of Hillary Clinton's Bob Johnson moment in January when just days after "finding her own voice" in New Hampshire, she had Bob Johnson attack Barack Obama for him in South Carolina with things she didn't want to say herself.

Most of what Clinton says in this video is just flat-out false. I'm working on a new version of the video to reflect that. This is an updated video -- you can view the original one which does not have any newspaper clippings, here.

(h/t: jvc)

The always hilarious Las Vegas Gleaner:

we suspect the story of McCan't's amorous adventures was in fact planted by the McCan't campaign itself in a desperate effort to convince voters of the 189-year-old's vitality and virility. Tip off: Unlike the typical Republican sex scandal coming out of Washington, this one involves a member of the opposite sex.

ABC:

Clinton Camp Pushes O-Bomber Links: Ignores Her Own Radical Ties

The Hillary Clinton campaign pushed to reporters today stories about Barack Obama and his ties to former members of a radical domestic terrorist group -- but did not note that as president, Clinton's husband pardoned more than a dozen convicted violent radicals, including a member of the same group mentioned in the Obama stories.

(h/t: SmileySam)

It seems that many folks, mainstream pundits and bloggers alike, took Hillary Clinton's closing argument during last night's debate to mean that she's giving up. For example:

NBC: Clinton ended the debate on a VERY conciliatory note | The Nation: It sounded like a concession. | Marc Ambinder: she is thinking, already, about life as a Senator from New York supporting Barack Obama | NYT: [left viewers] suspecting that Senator Hillary Clinton was conceding the race.

Don't be fooled. Hillary Clinton is not giving up. In her closing comment, she gave people a reason to be for her instead of against Obama. For that, she is to be saluted. But she isn't conceding. Indeed, she is doubling down.

Now is not a time for Obama supporters to relax. It ain't over -- not by a long shot.

Here's some reasons why:

1. Hillary Clinton is continuing her fight to seat the Michigan and Florida delegations seated based on the results of their unsanctioned primaries in which no candidates campaigned. In Michigan, only Clinton was on the ballot. There should be a way for Michigan and Florida to have a say in the process, but you just can't use the results of an election that went uncontested. That's like Politburo rules.
2. Last night, Clinton dodged a question about whether or not superdelegates should overturn the judgment of voters. Her campaign continues to make the case that they should on its Delegate Hub website.
3. Despite Clinton's graceful closing speech, she still slammed Obama with the crude "Xerox" one-liner. She backed off after being booed by the audience, but on two separate occasions declined to defend Obama's fitness to be commander in chief.
4. A small group of her supporters are donating at least $100,000 each for a $10 million pro-Clinton advertising campaign in Ohio that likely violates the law.
   
5. Hillary Clinton went on all three network morning shows today. She said that her closing speech in the debate was not a "valedictory" of any sort.
6. On ABC, Clinton backed away from her husband's suggesting that if she didn't win Ohio and Texas, she couldn't win the nomination -- implicitly embracing the idea that superdelegates could overturn the judgment of voters.
7. In the same interview, Clinton highlighted the 2,025 delegates it would take to win the nomination in a convention floor fight, indicating that she rejects the idea that the nomination should go to the candidate who wins the magic number of 1,627 pledged delegates -- a majority of democratically selected delegates.
8. Clinton's campaign spokesman said her closing speech "showed women and men why she is the best choice."
9. The Clinton campaign is continuing to make the argument that Barack Obama is not ready to be commander in chief -- the exact same argument advanced by John McCain's campaign. Yesterday, Mark Penn, Clinton's chief strategist, and Charlie Black, John McCain's top adviser, discussed the strategy in the Wall Street Journal. The interesting thing? In addition to his work on the Clinton campaign, Mark Penn is CEO of a public affairs firm whose DC-based lobbying subsidiary is headed by Charlie Black. (More here.)

So what does all this mean?

It means you should tell your friends and family in the states left to vote that they need to get to the polls and support Barack Obama. It means now is a good time volunteer for the campaign, if you have the time. It means now is a good time to make a contribution to thecampaign, if you can afford it.

Barack Obama is still winning this campaign -- but he hasn't won it yet.

On ABC's Good Morning America, Hillary Clinton seemed to back away from her husband's suggestion that if she doesn't win Ohio and Texas, she can't win the nomination.

In the process, Clinton again implicitly embraced the idea of superdelegates overturning the popular vote. In the event that she does lose either state, that's the only way she could win.

She explicitly referred to the 2,025 delegates needed to win a convention floor fight, indicating that she rejects the idea that the candidate who hits the magic number of 1,627 pledged delegates -- a majority of democratically selected delegates -- should become the nominee.

Over at Daily Kos, JedReport offers thoughts on the similarities between the attacks on Barack Obama leveled by the Clinton and McCain campaigns.

Could it have anything to do with the fact that Hillary Clinton's chief strategist Mark Penn is CEO of a public affairs firm whose DC-based lobbying subsidiary is headed by John McCain's top adviser Charlie Black?

It's sort of amusing to read Clinton donors ripping the Clinton campaign post-mortem-style -- while the campaign is still in full force.

Many people are interpreting Clinton's debate performance last night as a sort of concession speech, but it wasn't. More on that a bit later.

For now, schadenfreude: NYT: Clinton Donors Worried by Campaign’s Spending.

ABC has a dead heat in Texas (48-47, Clinton) and a very close race in Ohio (50-43, Clinton).

Since January 2007, survey after survey has revealed that Barack Obama would be a stronger candidate against John McCain than Hillary Clinton and in the last couple of months the data has become even more compelling.

In 2007, both Obama and Clinton enjoyed similar levels of support in public polls. Against McCain, Clinton averaged 45.3% and Obama averaged 44.8%. The reason why Obama performed better overall despite having slightly less support than Clinton was that he held McCain to a lower level of support than did Clinton. Against Clinton, McCain averaged 45.0%, while against Obama, he averaged just 42.5%.

Thus, in 2007, the difference between Obama and Clinton had more to do with Clinton's negatives than with Obama's positives.

In 2008, however, the more voters have learned about Barack Obama, the more they seem to like him. At the same time that Hillary Clinton's support is dropping, Obama's is increasing, and the data illustrating his superior electability is strengthening.

SurveyUSA: Obama halves Clinton's lead from seventeen points a week ago (56-39) to nine points (52-43) this week. The poll was taken before Wisconsin.

Is the finish line in sight?

New York Post (via Ben Smith):

MIKE CLAIMS VOTE 'FRAUD'

By DAVID SEIFMAN

February 20, 2008 -- Mayor Bloomberg charged yesterday that "fraud" was behind the unofficial results in the New York Democratic presidential primary that produced zero votes for Barack Obama in some districts.

"If you want to call it significant undercounting, I guess that's a euphemism for fraud," said the mayor.

Unofficial tallies on election night gave Obama no votes in 78 out of more than 6,000 election districts.

A friend writes in that Bay Buchanan said the following on CNN:

In fairness to Clinton, it's not just that she's losing -- Obama is winning.

Hillary Clinton is mocking Democratic voters

Hillary Clinton appears to be in the early stages of humiliating the Democratic Party.

Her campaign has established a new web site to defend the right of superdelegates to overturn the judgment of voters. I kid you not.

You can find it here.

The web site also proposes that the votes in Michigan in Florida -- neither of which were part of the nominating process -- should now be included as official primaries, even though Obama didn't campaign in either state and wasn't even on the ballot in Michigan.

In the view of the Clinton machine, merely winning is not enough.

Later today, we'll be posting analysis of the numbers in the wake of yesterday's primary in Wisconsin and caucus in Hawaii.

A few quick observations, though.

First, according to MSNBC's delegate projection, Barack Obama now has 1,156 pledged delegates to 1,014 for Hillary Clinton.

With 986 delegates left to be selected (and another 71 to be allocated from previous voting), Barack Obama is now 71% of the way towards the magic number of 1,627 -- the number of delegates needed to guarantee a majority of democratically selected pledged delegates.

Hillary Clinton is languishing at 62% of the way towards the goal.

To hit the magic number, Obama must win 44.5% of the delegates remaining to be selected and allocated.

Clinton must win 58% -- a threshold she has hit exactly once this campaign, in Arkansas.

Meanwhile, Obama hit 58% yesterday in Wisconsin and Hawaii.

Translation: it's very unlikely to happen.

Yesterday, Jake Tapper offered this observation on the prospects of a big loss by Clinton in Wisconsin:

If Clinton Loses Big in Wisconsin Tonight

February 19, 2008 10:03 PM

And that's an "if" as of now….

But if she does…

You do have to wonder…

9 in a row…(and likely 10 by Wednesday morning)

Largely by HUGE margins....

I mean, embarrassing margins, really...

All over the country...from Washington State to Maine to Wisconsin to Louisiana...

You can't explain this away as small states…or caucus states…or black states…or whatever the excuse du jour may be.

I mean, they can.

And they will.

But at some point it really might start to seem like...well...

Well, like this is a rejection by Democratic voters.

A rejection. Of Clinton and her politics.

And a full-fledged embrace of Obama.

Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

- jpt

From the Houston Chronicle:

Hardt, the Young Democrats leader, said the criticism of superdelegates is unfair. They are the activists who keep the party going, he said, and they deserve a say in choosing the nominee.

"I don't knock on doors in the 100-degree heat in the middle of a Texas summer for nothing," he said.

"When we're in the middle of a down time, and everybody thinks the party is dead in a state or in the nation, and we have no electeds, someone's got to keep that party together. It's usually people like us.

"So we have earned our right to sit at the table."

Obama wins.

Wisconsin.

Roger Simon:

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign intends to go after delegates whom Barack Obama has already won in the caucuses and primaries if she needs them to win the nomination.

Update: Clinton press spokesman denies this charge.

Bill Richardson, quoted by the NYT:

If superdelegates decide this nomination, it’s going to look like big-shot politicians and fat-cats decided who should be president.

Or something like that.

Incompetence like this is not what we need after George W. Bush.

The Clinton campaign is just now realizing it may lose Texas, although bloggers have been on the case for some time now:

I'm a 23-year old grad student who is not even living in Texas right now. KT is younger than I am, and just moved back to Texas a few months ago. How is it that Senator Clinton's campaign was not prepared for Texas?

As ABC's Jake Tapper puts it: "Hillary: Ready On Day ... 57?"

According to a new New York Times/CBS News survey of superdelegates, Hillary Clinton leads Barack Obama by a margin of 547 superdelegates, 189.5 to 142.5.

Clinton's 547 superdelegate lead is almost half the size of her lead just last month, when she led by 105 superdelegates, 204 to 99.

Meanwhile, in the democratic part of the nomination process, according to MSNBC.com, Barack Obama leads Hillary Clinton by 131 pledged delegates, 1,116 to 985.

The magic number to achieve a majority of these democratically selected pledged delegates is 1,627. Once a candidate reaches that threshold, the only way he or she could lose the nomination is if the superdelegates were to step in and overturn the judgment of voters.

With about one thousand delegates left to be chosen, Obama is significantly closer to the finish line than Hillary Clinton. At this point, she would have to win about 57% of the remaining delegates to win a majority of pledged delegates. Obama must only win 47%.

After tomorrow's primaries, seventy percent of pledged delegates will have been selected, and unless Hillary Clinton wins both Hawaii and Wisconsin by significant margins, the math will get even tougher.

So what should you do to influence how superdelegates vote?

If you want them to hear your voice, the Obama campaign has established a mechanism for you to do just that.

But more importantly, you can help Obama win big.

The harder the nomination is to steal, the less likely it is to be stolen.

So volunteer, donate, and tell your friends in states yet to decide that if they want to avoid a nasty battle over superdelegates, they need to get out and vote for Barack Obama.

That according to Jake Tapper, offering Monday's best liner in response to the new CNN poll showing Hillary at 50 and Obama at 48 in Texas.

More here, plus a rundown of the day's odds and ends here.

Has the Clinton campaign finally come to its senses?

"I told President Clinton that I thought it was really important that pledged delegates be the deciding factor. And he agreed with me."

- Oklahoma Rep. Dan Boren, a superdelegate, on his discussions with Bill Clinton

Alas, it turns out that Clinton won Oklahoma. So President Clinton was undoubtedly referring to Oklahoma's pledged delegates, not everybody else's.

The rules -- because they only matter when they work for you.

Clinton adviser: The race will be over in June

Posted: 05:22 PM ET

(CNN) — One of Hillary Clinton’s senior advisers said Saturday on a conference call with reporters that the New York senator would have the nomination “nail(ed) down” after primary season voting ends in June, when Puerto Rico weighs in.

“At or about, certainly shortly after, the seventh of June, Hillary’s going to nail down this nomination. She’s going to have a majority of the delegates,” Harold Ickes said, thanks to a combination of pledged delegates awarded through primary and caucus votes, and superdelegates – Democratic elected officials and party leaders who are free to choose any candidate they wish. Ickes is himself a superdelegate.

ABC News notes another up-is-down moment from Team Clinton:

Clinton's camp, meanwhile, contends that superdelegates should not be swayed by the voters of their districts but should support the person they think is best fit to be president.

"Automatic delegates are supposed to exercise their best judgment," Ickes said.

The Clinton campaign is also continuing to push for delegates from Florida and Michigan to be counted at the convention.

Ironically, last summer Ickes -- as a sitting member of the Democratic National Committee Rules and Bylaws Commission -- voted to strip those states of their delegates when the states moved up their primaries to dates before February 5. Those moves were seen as a threat to the traditional first states Iowa and New Hampshire and were therefore punished by the party.

"With respect to the stripping, I voted as a member of the Democratic National Committee. Those were our rules and I felt that we had an obligation to enforce them," Ickes said.

But now Ickes, as a member of Clinton's team, wants to change the rules.

Clinton camp: All the way to convention

From NBC/NJ’s Athena Jones and NBC's Domenico Montanaro

The Clinton campaign held a conference call, led by Harold Ickes, a top aide, to discuss the superdelegates issue and expectations for the upcoming contests.

(snip)

Ickes argued the "superdelegates" should be called "automatic delegates" instead, because the former makes it sound like they have “superpowers.” The DNC itself refers to them as “superdelegates” and as “unpledged” delegates.

(snip)

The effort to change the terms journalists use to refer to the superdelegates was particularly interesting as a political ploy. The word "automatic" has implications that would seem to fit well with the arguments the Clinton camp has been making, namely that superdelegates should exercise their independent judgment.