Today, he embarrassed Iowa by trying to push the false rumors connecting Barack Obama with Muslim extremists.

As big a schmuck as King is (and I'm being kind), his comments actually present us with an opportunity, however, because it creates an opportunity to once again publicly state the truth: there's nothing wrong with being a Muslim -- but Barack Obama is not a Muslim. He is a Christian. His grandfather was a Muslim, but his father was agnostic. His mother was a Christian.

More importantly, when Americans view the world as the enemy -- as does Steve King -- we end up finding ourselves stuck in endless wars half-way around the world.

Ultimately, people like Steve King are telling us more about themselves than anything else.

Oh, by the way: last I checked, John McCain still hadn't repudiated King's comments.

Obama communications director Robert Gibbs emails reporters with a picture of Clinton and Sheryl Crow from a 1996 trip to Kosovo Bosnia, linking a series of recent articles including this Chicago Tribune piece making the point that Clinton wasn't a central player on foreign policy in her husband's administration.

Clinton's claim to the mantle of experience has always been complicated, though it's one voters, according to polls, accept. Obama has made sporadic attempts, starting in the fall in Iowa, to challenge it. This shot — complete with silly photo — seems to open a new front, as well as to signal the general atmosphere of ill will between the campaigns.

I think the moral of this story is: presidential candidates shouldn't base their campaigns on false premises.

18 12 delegates were at stake. Update: I just heard Jessica Yellin on CNN say that the Clinton campaign is claiming a come from behind close loss. Whatever exactly that means. The final results were 61%-38%.

I think the question is whether it will end up as an 8-4 split for Obama (which I think it has) or a 7-5 split.

As you know, given the Democratic Party's arcane rules, both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will need support from superdelegates to actually win the Democratic nomination in 2008.

The question is whether the superdelegates should support the results of primaries and caucuses or whether they should vote their conscience, irrespective of who actually wins more pledged delegates.

Not surprisingly, Hillary Clinton believes that superdelegates should vote their conscience, picking the candidate they think is most electable -- even if that means overturning the judgment of Democratic primary voters and caucus goers.

Barack Obama believes that superdelegates should respect our decision. (Maybe he'd think differently if he were losing, but that's immaterial because he's not losing. He's winning.)

It turns out that most of Hillary Clinton's own supporters agree with Barack Obama.

We know this from exit polls taken during Tuesday's primaries which posed the following question:

If the Democratic nomination were to be decided by superdelegates, they should: - Vote for who would have the best chance in November (Clinton's view) - Vote based on results of the primaries and caucuses (Obama's view)

The exit poll shows that not only do most Democratic primary voters agree with Barack Obama's position, but most Hillary Clinton voters agree with Obama as well.

A weighted average of each state shows that overall, 62% of Democratic primary voters on Tuesday agreed with Obama and just 34% agreed with Clinton.

57% of Clinton voters agreed with Obama and 73% of Obama voters agreed with their preferred candidate.

Hillary Clinton's view did not generate majority support among her voters in any of the four states. The closest she came was Rhode Island, where support was evenly split. (Why is it not surprising that Rhode Islanders would be more comfortable with overturning the popular vote than people from other states?)

::

The moral of the story: the idea that superdelegates will be able to overthrow the results of primaries and caucuses is a fantasy.

Even Hillary Clinton's own supporters would oppose such a move.

The only way Hillary Clinton will be able to secure the nomination while maintaining legitimacy is by winning the overall battle for pledged delegates in Democratic primaries voters and caucuses.

Even her own supporters don't want to win it any other way.

She's got a tough challenge ahead of her, and probably won't succeed.

But she's got every right to try -- just as long as she doesn't attempt to steal the nomination should she fall short.

About half-way through the Wyoming caucuses, Barack Obama has a lead, but we won't have final results for another four hours or so. Update: PocketNines is tracking the results at Daily Kos.

It turns out one of of the sleeping children in Hillary Clinton's 3am ad is now 1718 years old -- and a huge Barack Obama supporter. She'll be eligible to vote in November's election and caucused for Obama in Washington.

And last night Barack Obama put an end to Hillary Clinton's arrogant, patronizing, and condescending bandying about of the VP slot as a consolation prize:

You won’t see me as a vice presidential candidate -- you know, I’m running for president. We have won twice as many states as Senator Clinton, and have a higher popular vote, and I think we can maintain our delegate count -- but you know, what I’m really focused on right now, because all that stuff is premature, is winning this nomination and changing the country.

Amen!

Yesterday, Hillary Clinton may have opened a big can of worms.

Seeking to stay on the offensive against Barack Obama, Clinton attacked him for saying one thing to Americans and another thing to foreigners. Her evidence? Comments about Obama's Iraq withdrawal plan made by Samantha Power (also of Monster-gate), who has now resigned from her unpaid role as an informal adviser to Barack Obama's campaign.

Obviously, Clinton's campaign must be pretty desperate to be attacking the unofficial comments of an informal unpaid adviser (who has now resigned).

But the real story is that her decision to make contacts between campaign advisers and foreign governments an issue could boomerang something fierce.

Here's what Clinton said:

I think it’s important to look at what she and his other advisors say behind closed doors, particularly when they’re talking to foreign governments and foreign press.

Sounds reasonable to me. Just remember that turnabout is fair play, and unless she is a complete hypocrite (always possible) she ought to be more than happy to cooperate in investigations into her own adviser's relationships with foreign governments.

I'll give you just three examples of areas where more needs to be known: her chief strategist Mark Penn's representation of sovereign wealth funds from the United Arab Emirates, her husband's financial ties to the United Arab Emirates, but and also her husband's relationship with Frank Giustra and what that could mean for U.S. relations with Kazakhstan in a third Clinton administration.

(Video of Clinton's attack and Obama's strong response is available here.)

Yesterday, one of Barack Obama's advisers resigned after calling Hillary Clinton a "monster." There's been considerable speculation about whether or not Hillary is in fact a monster, but that's another topic for a different day.

Here's where things stand on the race to get a 1,627 pledged delegates, a majority of the delegates elected through primaries and caucuses.

We're now using the Obama campaign's numbers (at least until media organizations get their numbers up-to-date).

At this point, Hillary Clinton would need to win 65% of the remaining delegates to become the legitimate nominee of the Democratic Party.

Even though she won a slight delegate lead on Tuesday, she still lost ground. Going into Tuesday, she needed about three-fifths of the remaining delegates. Now she needs 65%.

Things got tougher for her because she's running out of field. I'm not saying Barack Obama should mail it in -- he shouldn't -- but the fact is that he's got such a big lead that there is almost no way that Hillary can win, at least not legitemately.

By the way, things don't change much if Florida and Michigan end up having primaries or caucuses after all. Clinton would still need to win 60% of the remaining delegates. It would be like adding a few minutes to the clock at the end of the game even though outcome isn't much in doubt.

Over at Daily Kos, MaverickModerate makes a persuasive case that that Barack Obama actually won Texas. As you may recall, Texas is a caucus-primary hybrid and over one million people showed up for the caucuses. Between Barack Obama's net delegate gain and overall margin if you include caucus participants, Obama actually did better in Texas than Hillary Clinton.

Not to mention the fact that he didn't do it with the help of Rush Limbaugh.

Eugene Robinson nails it:

If, as expected, Obama wins in Wyoming tomorrow and Mississippi on Tuesday, we'll be right back where we were before the latest Clinton renaissance.

There must be Clinton campaign staffers who have sore backs from moving those heavy goal posts so often. Back when Obama was winning 11 primaries and caucuses in a row, the Clinton camp maintained that the whole contest was about delegates, not momentum. But since Tuesday, when Clinton won three out of four states, the delegate count is being dismissed as a mere formality. The way to assess the race, say Clinton's backers, is to look at momentum.

But it's an odd kind of momentum that we're being asked to appreciate. Apparently, the contests in Wyoming and Mississippi won't count if Obama wins them, because that's what everyone expects. The April 22 primary in Pennsylvania will definitely count if Clinton wins, however, even though that's what everyone expects. To paraphrase Orwell, some states are more equal than others.

From NBC's Bethany Thomas

What began as a typical chat session with traveling reporters on the plane from Atlanta to New Orleans quickly became a testy exchange with McCain. The senator was questioned on the details of a conversation with former presidential nominee John Kerry in 2004 about being his potential running mate.

The topic came up earlier this morning during a town hall at the headquarters of Chic-Fil-A, where an employee asked if McCain would consider John Kerry as a running mate for this election cycle.

McCain answered in Atlanta that his and Kerry’s political views are too different. “I just totally disagree with them,” McCain said. “He is a liberal Democrat... I am a conservative Republican. When we had that conversation in 2004, that’s why I never even considered such a thing.”

Pressed further aboard the plane by a reporter as to whether he did in fact have a conversation with Kerry, McCain showed his infamous temper.

More and more, it becomes clear, you cannot trust a single thing Hillary Clinton says. If she told me my name was Jed, I'd wonder if my real name was Frank and if my mother had been lying to me all these years.

If you're not into streaming video, here's a decent article on the flap.

This is just unbelievable. For the third time in four days, Hillary Clinton has extolled John McCain's fitness to be commander in chief while slamming Barack Obama's. From The Swamp:

In a Cabinet-style setting, surrounded by retired military leaders, Sen. Hillary Clinton said the public should ask whether Democratic presidential rival Barack Obama has met the criteria needed to become the nation’s commander in chief.

“I think that since we now know Sen. (John) McCain will be the nominee for the Republican Party, national security will be front and center in this election. We all know that. And I think it’s imperative that each of us be able to demonstrate we can cross the commander-in-chief threshold,” the New York senator told reporters crowded into an infant’s bedroom-sized hotel conference room in Washington.

“I believe that I’ve done that. Certainly, Sen. McCain has done that and you’ll have to ask Sen. Obama with respect to his candidacy,” she said.

Calling McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee a good friend and a “distinguished man with a great history of service to our country,” Clinton said, “Both of us will be on that stage having crossed that threshold. That is a critical criterion for the next Democratic nominee to deal with.”

What kind of experience is it that Hillary McClinton thinks puts her and John McCain above Barack Obama? Her experience parroting the Bush administration propaganda on Iran? Her eight years of experience watching her husband in the White House, which she says led her to vote for the war in Iraq?

These are questions that media needs to ask.

Here's an update on where the delegate battle stands, using the latest numbers from MSNBC.

As a reminder, the real magic number is 1,627 -- a majority of pledged delegates selected through primaries and caucuses. Once a candidate has 1,627 pledged delegates, he or she will become the nominee unless the superdelegates overturn the judgment of voters.

(For more on the details behind these numbers, read It may not have seemed like it, but Barack Obama took a major step closer to the Democratic nomination on Tuesday.)

By the way, there's a lot of buzz about Michigan and Florida. Because they don't have delegations, they obviously aren't included in these charts.

What would happen if the states decided to hold DNC-sanctioned primaries or caucuses?

Well, that would put another 313 delegates in play, and the new magic number would be 1,783.

It wouldn't change that much on the delegate math challenge confronting Hillary Clinton. She would have to win 59% of the remaining delegates, and Obama would have to win 44%.

There's been considerable debate over whether or not Hillary Clinton's final attack ad for the March 4 primaries darkened Barack Obama's skin tone to capitalize on racial prejudice.

As you can see from the image above, there's no question that the skin tone from the Clinton ad is darker than the the original video. It's also stretched, making Obama's face look darker than it really is.

The question is whether or not this was intentional. Here's a good Daily Kos diary arguing that the color difference was not intentional and was mostly an artifact of the conversion process from source video to YouTube. The diarist argues:

Darker, isn't it? But why? It has to do with uploading to streaming video.

conversion to Flash format drives up contrast and reduces the mid-range color values that are frequently found in flesh tones and facial detail.

But it's worse on YouTube. You see,

Some of the differences may be due to video compression required by YouTube, which encodes video to Flash format and re-sizes it, using its own required parameters before posting. The Clinton camp may have had one color scheme in its original video and ended up with a slightly different one after YouTube's processing.

I decided to test that hypothesis and created a set of screen captures from Hillary Clinton's YouTube channel and compared them to the ad in question, which is located in the center of the collage below (click on it or click here to view a larger version).

The important thing to note about this collage is that instead of comparing Hillary Clinton's video of Barack Obama to MSNBC's original video of Barack Obama this collage compares Hillary Clinton's ad to other video produced by Hillary Clinton.

There is clearly a difference. It's up to you to decide whether or not it was intentional, and if so why.

It's very important to note that there's nothing -- absolutely nothing -- wrong with having darker skin -- or lighter skin, for that matter. However, if someone is intentionally darkening someone else's skin to capitalize on racial prejudice, that is exploiting racism in the worst way. And in my mind, it should disqualify someone from winning the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008.

I'll post the original screen captures soon.

Clinton Wins Big, but Math Is Troubling

But the March 4 results have not changed Obama's strongest talking point (and reality point) for why Clinton should exit the Democratic race: Math. It appears numerically impossible for her to overtake his lead among elected delegates.

(I've updated the numbers in this post in Barack Obama is getting closer to having a majority of elected delegates.)

Now that we have emerged from the intensity of Tuesday's primaries, it's become clear that it's winning delegates that matters -- not winning states.

We knew this all along, but probably got a little greedy and hoped to land a knockout blow, ending the campaign prematurely. We didn't, and so the campaign continues.

But even though the campaign didn't end on Tuesday, Barack Obama got closer to winning the nomination -- and Hillary Clinton got further away.

The reason? The delegate math. On Tuesday, Barack Obama cut the number of delegates he needs to win a majority of pledged delegates from 425 to 272. Hillary Clinton just barely managed to get her number down to where Barack Obama started the night.

You can see the numbers on the chart below here.

It shows that we are in a much stronger position than Hillary Clinton because we are closer to the real magic number -- 1,627 -- than she is.

Once we hit 1,627 pledged delegates, Barack Obama will become the nominee -- unless the superdelegates step in and overturn the judgment of voters. And that's not going to happen.

(The source for the pledged delegate total is MSNBC. Barack Obama's official estimate puts him even further ahead, but I've tried to rely on independent media estimates rather than campaign estimates. That being said, Obama's estimates have proven to be fairly accurate in the past.)

There are 611 delegates remaining to be selected, plus we have yet to learn the allocation of 48 delegates that have already been elected. Those delegates are mostly (if not entirely) from the Texas caucuses.

As you can see, we need to win 272 of these 659 delegates -- 41%.

Hillary Clinton needs to win 414 of them -- 63%.

That will be a nearly impossible challenge.

Clinton is trying to focus the media's attention on Pennsylvania, but as you probably know there are two contests before Pennsylvania: Mississippi and Wyoming, and both favor Barack Obama. 45 delegates are stake in those contests.

In fact, although Pennsylvania is the biggest individual state left, just 26% of the delegates left to be selected are in Pennsylvania. It makes for good TV to focus on Pennsylvania, but the cold hard delegate math tells the smart person that Pennsylvania is just one of many remaining prizes. For example, shortly after Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Oregon hold their contests and between them, there are more delegates at stake (167) than in Pennsylvania (158).

The reality is that the media coverage (and even my own blog coverage!) has been very misleading. By focusing on who won which state on Tuesday, they conveyed a sense that Hillary Clinton had won a major victory.

In truth, she really didn't. She's celebrating a layup in a game that she trails by twenty points with just a couple of minutes left in the fourth quarter.

Here's one way to measure that:

On Tuesday morning, Barack Obama needed to 43% of the remaining delegates to hit 1,627. Hillary Clinton needed to win just under 60%.

As of today, Barack Obama needs to win just 41%. Hillary Clinton must win 63%.

Every time that Barack Obama wins another delegate, Hillary Clinton's challenge gets harder. That's why even though she won a few more delegates than Obama on Tuesday, she really lost.

↑ Shrink post ↑

I am always amused by those who argue that the New York Times is a progressive publication. (For example, the NYT's flawed reporting on WMD in the run-up to the Iraq war makes it more responsible for that conflict than any other newspaper in America.)

Altough it's op-ed page has a clear anti-Hillary Clinton bias (from both the left, Frank Rich, and the right, Maureen Dowd), its political coverage has definitely tilted towards her campaign.

Take, for example, this headline:

Clinton Success Alters Delegate Race’s Dynamic

The implication seems to be that she has tilted the delegate battle in her favor, right? At least that's what I would take from the article if I was just scanning headlines.

When you delve into it, it's pretty clear the reporters were grasping at straws:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s victories in the primaries on Tuesday barely dented Senator Barack Obama’s lead in delegates, but they seemed to slow the Democratic Party establishment’s move in his direction while giving her campaign time to try to turn the race in her favor.

That is the first paragraph of the article. I submit to you that it is utterly devoid of any real meaning or substantive fact. I'm sure high school students have written more compelling material.

The article devolves into high comedy:

“Let me state it categorically: This party is not going to nominate somebody who hasn’t passed the commander-in-chief test,” said Howard Wolfson, Mrs. Clinton’s communications director. “If he can’t convince Democrats in Ohio and Texas that he can be commander in chief, he is not going to be nominee of our party.”

You can state it as categorically as you want, Howard, and the New York Times can print it however many times they want, but it won't change this fact: if your boss can't win a majority of pledged delegates, she ain't winning this nomination. The superdelegates just aren't going to overturn the judgment of voters.

This puts Clinton's recent comments about John McCain in perspective:

Hillary Clinton is at it again. This morning on CNN, she said:

I have a lifetime of experience. Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience. Senator Obama's campaign is about one speech he made in 2002.

She added:

if your entire campaign is about one speech and that's what you hold up as your credential to be president against a lifetime of experience from John McCain and a lifetime of experience from me, I think the voters can draw their own conclusion.

(The full transcript is available at CNN.com.)

Hillary Clinton finally won a state on Tuesday, but that doesn't mean she's won the Democratic nomination.

Barack Obama still has a nearly unsurmountable delegate lead and unless Clinton manages to win 65% of the remaining delegates after Wyoming and Mississippi, the only way Hillary Clinton will become the nominee is if the superdelegates overturn the judgment of voters.

If you're interested in just how tough the delegate math is for Hillary Clinton, check out this excellent Daily Kos diary by PocketNines. (For a bonus, you can read this totally irrelevant and off topic comment I posted about a poker hand I once played...with pocket nines.)

1,627 is fifty percent plus one of the 3,253 democratically selected delegates to the Democratic nominating convention. Once a candidate has 1,627 of these "pledged" delegates, he or she will win the nomination -- unless the 796 superdelegates overturn the judgment of voters.

According to MSNBC, there are still 119 delegates left to be allocated for the March 4 contests. Obama seems likely to win at least sixty of these delegates, meaning that to hit the magic number, he must win 260 of the 626 delegates left to be decided (42%). Hillary Clinton must win 393 of those delegates (63%). There is virtually no chance of that happening.

Mind-numbingly arrogant:

Clinton hints at shared ticket

JIM KUHNHENN and CALVIN WOODWARD, AP News
Mar 05, 2008 09:11 EST

Hillary Rodham Clinton, fresh off a campaign saving comeback, hinted Wednesday at the possibility of sharing the Democratic presidential ticket with Barack Obama — with her at the top. Obama played down his losses, stressing that he still holds the lead in number of delegates.

If Clinton isn't careful, she's going to remind people what drove them to Barack Obama in Iowa and twenty-four other states.

Terry McAuliffe makes it clear that if Barack Obama wins more pledged delegates than Hillary Clinton, she will nonetheless plead her case to the superdelegates -- even though that would mean overturning the judgment of voters.

Greg Sargent at TPM:

Obama campaign advisers are privately urging the networks and media figures to consider, as they evaluate the incoming results, that in Ohio there are areas where as much as 15% of the vote is provisional ballots.

The Obama camp isn't urging the networks to hold off on calling the race, but...[snip]...Obama aides are pointing out that the nets erroneously called Missouri for Hillary before the provisional ballots came in and were later forced to reverse the results when those ballots came in from the St. Louis area and put Obama over the top.

The point isn't that Obama may have won Ohio -- the point is that Hillary's victory margin may in fact be much smaller than it currently seems to be.

According to Chuck Todd, it will be next to impossible for Hillary Clinton to overtake Barack Obama's pledged delegate lead, but superdelegates could still give her the nomination by overturning the judgment of voters.

That's basically the story of the day, pretty close to what I thought would happen. Hillary Clinton has won an important public relations battle with the media, but as far as what matters -- the overall pledged delegate lead -- the biggest thing that happened tonight was that Barack Obama maintained his lead and moved closer to the magic number of 1,627.

Barack Obama began his speech with congratulating Hillary Clinton for her two victories today (her twelfth and thirteenth) in Rhode Island and VermontOhio. He then moved on to a forcefully rejection of the seemingly coordinated lines of attack against him coming from the Clinton and McCain campaigns. Good -- it's time to fight back, and he's doing it with class.

We don't yet know what the final vote or delegate distribution will be, but keep in mind that Obama trailed Hillary Clinton by double digits within the past month.

Update: Hilarious moment in Hillary's victory speech -- she reads off the states that she thinks count...and only includes states she won. She then talks about the states yet to vote...and only mentions Pennsylvania.

Via Ben Smith, Barack Obama looks set to net at least one delegate from Vermont and Rhode Island combined. Vermont is set to split 9-6 for Obama, and Rhode Island will go 10-8 for Clinton. (There's actually a slim chance of Obama and Clinton splitting the delegates in Rhode Island at nine apiece.)

Overall, worst case for Obama seems to be 17-16 for the first 33 delegates. 337 left to go!

This means that Obama now must win 408 delegates to hit the magic number of 1,627. Clinton must win 569.

Update: According to Chris Bowers at Open Left, Clinton will net one delegate out of Vermont and Rhode Island. CBS has just called Texas for Clinton, but the delegate split looks close. Chris shows a lopsided gain of 24 delegates for Clinton in Ohio. Overall, Chris projects about two-thirds of the delegates so far, so Clinton's lead could grow (or shrink).

I just finished listening to McCain's victory speech and it seems like he's going to offer up the war in Iraq as the centerpiece of his campaign. That doesn't seem like a good idea.

The exit polls (OH, TX) offer a breakdown of how men and women voted, and the share of the electorate for each.

From those numbers you can extrapolate what the exit polls are saying the final numbers will be. Here they are:

Ohio: 51-48 for Clinton
Texas: 50-49 for Clinton

Now the thing is, these polls are always off by a little. They readjust them when returns start coming in so they can fine tune their projections. But when they are as close as they are in Texas, for example, they are basically meaningless as a tool for determining who won. (Later on, they can tell you why the winner won.)

Case in point: Obama is currently leading the early voting in Texas, a result not predicted by the exit poll.

We're just going to have to count the ballots the old fashioned way.

Looks like Clinton is doing well inAs expected, Hillary Clinton wins Rhode Island, balancing Obama's victory in Vermont.

Elsewhere, Obama is leading amongst early voters in Texas. According to the exit polls, it looks very, very close.

In Ohio, nobody has called anything, but the exit polls suggest a lead for Hillary Clinton.

(bumped)

As I've said many times, the real magic number is 1,627 -- a majority of the pledged delegates selected through primaries and caucuses.

Once a candidate hits 1,627, he or she will win the nomination -- unless superdelegates step in and overturn our judgment.

Here's a look at how things stand at the beginning of the evening.

The question tonight is how much closer each candidate gets to the magic number.

There's only about one thousand delegates left to be selected (including the 370 up for grabs tonight). As you can see, the challenge for Hillary Clinton is severe.

Update: According to the CNN exit poll, 1 in 10 Texas primary voters were Republicans, though they split fairly evenly, tilting slightly for Obama. So, barring any additional information, I think Bennett's speculation is likely bunk. Maybe he's dreaming about the Bellagio?

I don't know what to make of this, but it's pretty clear Bill Bennett (not exactly the world's most trustworthy guy) thinks that Republican voters may be interfering in the Texas primary. Recall that Rush Limbaugh yesterday urged voters there to do just that. Also, earlier today Ben Smith noted a report from a Texan that on conservative radio stations, callers were complaining that after voting for Clinton, they weren't allowed to vote in the GOP primary.

It may be a long night, but this is a nice way to start!

Update: CNN's Schneider says exit polls show Barack Obama's opposition to the war in Iraq from the very start (and Hillary Clinton's support thereof) was a major factor in Obama's victory.

Update@5.20pm: Beeton apologizes (and removes the original false claims):

[editor's note, by Todd Beeton]Edited to make my own post more consistent with reality. Sorry for carelessly jumping to conclusions, JEDReport.

I appreciate Beeton's apology.

A few hours ago, Todd Beeton over at MyDD.com falsely accused me of manipulating video footage to distort Hillary Clinton's statement yesterday that John McCain was more ready to be president than Barack Obama.

His accusation is completely false.

In the video I posted, here's what Hillary Clinton said:

I have a lifetime of experience that I will bring to the White House. I know that Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience that he will bring to the White House. And Senator Obama has a speech he gave in 2002.

Beeton responds:

Sure, if you splice the video just so, as JEDReport did in his ridiculously manipulative video, it sure looks bad, but in the full context, imagine that!, while clumsy to be sure, her response is revealed to be merely the same electability argument she's been advancing in various forms since McCain became the presumptive GOP nominee.

Beeton then quotes what he claims is the original statement:

"I think you'll be able to imagine many things Senator McCain will be able to say," she said. "He's never been the president, but he will put forth his lifetime of experience. I will put forth my lifetime of experience. Senator Obama will put forth a speech he made in 2002."

Notice something? Beeton's quote doesn't match the one in my video.

The reason? He's talking about a different statement -- one Hillary Clinton made in Forth Worth, Texas on March 1. Of course it doesn't match the one in my video, which is a statement from March 3 made in Toledo, Ohio!

Yet he accuses me of manipulating the video of her statement. Amazing.

The plain truth: I didn't manipulate the video at all.

Here's the video I posted:

Here's the original source for that video:

As you can see, I posted -- verbatim -- what Hillary Clinton said. I edited out Wolf Blitzer, but I can hardly be faulted for that.

The claim that I manipulated the video is false. Beeton owes me an apology.

As does Hillary Clinton to all Democrats.

By the way, while I'm on the topic, let me give an example of how a real Democrat talks about John McCain:

(bumped)

This evening, 370 delegates are up for grabs. When the night is through, we'll be more than eighty percent of the way through the delegate selection calendar and only about six hundred will remain to be chosen.

You're going to hear a lot of talk about the the 2,025 delegates a candidate needs to win the nomination, but that number includes superdelegates.

The real magic number is 1,627 -- a majority of the 3,253 pledged delegates (the ones democratically selected in primaries and caucuses). Once a candidate has 1,627 of these pledged delegates he or she will win the nomination -- unless the superdelegates step in an overturn the judgment of voters.

And that's not going to happen.

It's been pretty clear over the past few days that the new Clinton strategy of beating the press over the head with a two-by-four has been working like a charm.

Well, instead of grousing about it quietly, Barack Obama is returning fire:

SAN ANTONIO, Texas (CNN) – Democrat Barack Obama — a candidate who's confronted two of the most negative news cycles of his campaign over the past couple of days — said Tuesday that he's "surprised" rival Hillary Clinton's strategy of taking aim at the media has helped her campaign "as well as it has."

"I didn’t expect that you guys would bite on that," Obama told reporters aboard his plane, "this whole spin of just how the press just has been so tough on them and not tough on us."

To be clear, Barack Obama has received more favorable press coverage than Hillary Clinton in February.

There's a reason, though. He's utterly dominated the primary calendar, winning a majority of delegates on Super Tuesday and every single contest since then.

Anytime a candidate wins that much he or she will get positive coverage -- unless the media decides not to report who is winning and who is losing.

And for the the record, any comparison the Clinton campaign is making between the Rezko trial and Monica Lewinsky, draft dodging, Frank Giustra, Whitewater, the Rose Law Firm, Gennifer Flowers, etc. is just ridiculous. I feel completely betrayed that they are trying to make an issue out of this after I defended them on scandal after scandal, from Norman Hsu to the Lincoln bedroom to dishwashers.

Jonathan Alter weighs in on Hillary's math problem, noting that Slate's Delegate Calculator allows the truly geeky at heart to try an infinite number of scenarios for the distribution of delegates in the final stretch of the primary process:

The Clintonites can spin to their heart's content about how Obama can't carry any large states besides Illinois. How he can't close the deal. How they've got the Big Mo now.

Tell it to Slate's Delegate Calculator.

True that. Tell it to the calculator.

You can spin all you want, but 2+2 still equals 4, and 1,627 is a lot closer to Barack Obama than it is to Hillary Clinton.

And there's a reason for that: he's won more votes and more contests than Hillary Clinton. And though every voter in Texas and Ohio and Rhode Island and Vermont are important, they aren't more important than voters in other states.

First, there was the Xerox insanity (this is the real plagiarism).

Then it was shame on you.

Followed by the triumph of pessimism (no wagic wand for you!).

Then it was the media's turn, and Rezko, in the guise of the media. (By the way, I completely agree with my friend Mark Hall who feels like the Clintons have stabbed him in the back. In the 1990s, we defended them on everything from Monica Lewinsky to Whitewater, from draft dodging to Gennifer Flowers -- and now they want shove Rezko down our throat? As if there was any possible comparison between the accusations made against them.)

This weekend, there was 3:00 AM.

And now Hillary "disloyal Democrat" Clinton is saying the John McCain is better prepared for the Presidency than Barack Obama.

Leaving aside the fact that both Clinton and McCain supported the war in Iraq, can you imagine the difficulties Clinton would have debating McCain after her statements today? She basically said that both she and McCain were equally ready for the Presidency. I doubt McCain will be so kind.

And that brings me to a video that dharmafarmer at Daily Kos brought to my attention. It's of Barack Obama challenging John McCain on Iraq.

This video shows one of the many reasons why Barack Obama should be the Democratic nominee: he can challenge John McCain on Iraq in a way that Hillary Clinton can't -- because she voted for the war.

It's not that Limbaugh is for Hillary Clinton, mind you -- it's that he thinks the longer the Democratic nomination battle lasts, the more it will help John McCain. (Who he now seems to love, surprise, surprise.)

Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow slam Hillary Clinton's contention that John McCain is more ready to be President than Barack Obama.

h/t: turneresq

Delegates selected through March 4: 2,259.

Delegates selected on March 4: 370.

Already, about 20 million votes have been cast and 35 states have voted (included DC).

Obama has won more than one million more votes than Hillary Clinton, and has won 24 of the 35 states.

He leads in delegates 1,194 to 1,037.

Voters in Texas, Ohio, Vermont, and Rhode Island are important.

But they are no more important than voters every other state.

Three New Polls: Clinton's Ohio Lead Growing

Of course, even if Hillary wins every single delegate in Ohio (which she won't), she'll still end the day tomorrow significantly behind Barack Obama in the overall contest for delegates -- thanks not only to Obama's current lead, but also to Texas, Vermont, and perhaps Rhode Island.

Hillary Clinton just said John McCain is more ready to be president than Barack Obama:

I have a lifetime of experience that I will bring to the White House. I know that Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience that he will bring to the White House. And Senator Obama has a speech he gave in 2002.

Hillary Clinton's embrace of McCain is outrageous.

Yes, this is the same John McCain who is the biggest cheerleader for the war in Iraq and is the architect of the surge.

This is the same John McCain who admits he doesn't know know a thing about economics and proves it with his tired-old right wing rhetoric.

This is the same John McCain who gladly embraces an anti-Catholic pastor in the pursuit of votes from evangelical extremists.

And Hillary Clinton thinks John McCain is better suited to the presidency than Barack Obama.

Ben Smith has a good post on the contention by Barack Obama's campaign manager that no matter what happens today, Hillary Clinton has no conceivable path to the pledged delegate majority.

A commenter named Lisa chimes in with a funny line, quoted in the title of this post.

SurveyUSA is one of the most accurate pollsters, and if this poll is accurate -- Clinton 54%, Obama 44% -- then even though Clinton's hopeless position in the delegate battle will remain unchanged, her campaign will continue, and we'll see an even nastier, scorched earth battle.

If you don't get why Hillary Clinton's remarks about the false Muslim smears against Barack Obama are offensive, imagine the following scenario.

Barack Obama, on 60 Minutes, is asked about scurrilous rumors that Hillary Clinton is lesbian.

His answer goes something like this:

I take Hillary at her word that she isn't. Why would I believe that she is? There's nothing to base that on -- as far as I know. And I've been the target of a lot of smears myself. So I have sympathy for people who get targeted with these typical political smears.

I think a lot of people would be outraged -- and rightly so.

Hillary Clinton's Delegate Hub web site is her campaign's main vehicle for making the case that superdelegates should support her campaign.

Delegate Hub's newest line of argument? Hillary Clinton is winning white Democrats.

I've never seen anything like it.

TPM reports that Obama is leading in both Ohio and Texas according to Zogby's tracking poll -- by 2 and 3 points, respectively. Bottom-line: it's still close, but Obama continues to trend upwards.

As you may have heard, last night on 60 Minutes Hillary Clinton said that "as far as I know" the false smears about Barack Obama being a Muslim aren't true. Not exactly a clear-cut repudiation of the false smears.

This video debunks the false smear in the hopes that the next time Clinton's asked about it, she won't hedge. It also includes the full 60 Minutes segment in which her "as far as I know" comment was included, as well as the continuation of her comments in which she talks about smears that have been made about her in the past.

In addition to the debunking the false Muslim smear, this video debunks the false national anthem smear, the false pledge of allegiance smear, and the false flag lapel pin smear.

Overall, the video is a bit rough -- it kind of has the kitchen sink thrown in there -- and it would have benefited from some more editing, but there's only so much time in the day.

As always, if you have any thoughts, I appreciate your comments, either here or in the YouTube comments.

The answer in her own words.

On the Meet the Press today, Tim Russert reviewed the debate he and Brian Williams moderated on Tuesday, starting out with a question he asked of Obama which John McCain later tried (and failed) to use as a line of attack on Obama.

During the panel discussion, Mike Murphy (a Republican) briefly brought McCain's embrace of the anti-Catholic pastor John Hagee. Given Russert's grilling of Obama on his rejection of Louis Farrakhan's endorsement, you'd expect Russert to be fair and discuss McCain's acceptance of Hagee's endorsement.

Nope. Russert just moved on, skipping over the issue entirely.

You see, when Democrats reject endorsements from bad people, it raises troubling questions that the media must dissect in great detail.

But when Republicans accept endorsements from bad people, it gets swept under the rug.

America's punditocracy, in action.

1,627 should be a familiar number to you by now. It's the number of pledged delegates a Democratic presidential candidate needs in order to secure a clear majority of the delegates chosen by Democratic primary and caucus voters.

Once a candidate hits 1,627 pledged delegates, the only way he or she can lose the nomination is if superdelegates decide to overturn the judgment of voters.

Here's where we stand according to MSNBC's estimate: Barack Obama has 1,194 pledged delegates and Hillary Clinton has 1,037.

On Tuesday, there are four primaries -- Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island, and Vermont. In total, 370 delegates will be awarded. As you probably know, the only one of those whose outcome is not in doubt is Vermont, where Obama will certainly win. Clinton is favored in Rhode Island, but it's closer there. Still, the big prizes are Ohio and Texas.

Obama has led many of the recent polls in Texas and is closing the gap in Ohio. Because of the way delegates are distributed in Texas, Obama will probably do no worse there than breaking even. In Ohio, I suspect Clinton will eke out a small victory (mostly because I have a horrible track record at predicting things like that!).

Anyway, all in all, I wouldn't be surprised to see Hillary Clinton end up with 190 of the 370 delegates awarded on Tuesday, compared to 180 for Obama.

If that happens, after Tuesday she'll be at 1,227 pledged delegates and Obama will be at 1,374.

At that point, we'll be more than 80% of the way through the process with just 624 delegates left to be awarded.

To hit the magic number, Clinton will have to win 400 of the 624 delegates -- 64%.

Obama will have to win 253 of the 624 delegates -- 41%.

(The numbers add up to 105% because John Edwards has 26 pledged delegates and it is possible neither Obama nor Clinton would hit 1,627.)

The bottom line is that even if Clinton does about as well as she can expect to, it will still be almost impossible for her to acquire enough pledged delegates to hit the magic number.

There's just virtually no chance she could win anywhere near 64% of the remaining delegates after Ohio and Texas. She'll point to Pennsylvania, which is is a big prize worth 158 delegates, but Obama will counter with Oregon, Mississippi, and North Carolina which combined have 200 delegates and will almost certainly deliver larger delegate margins to him than Pennsylvania ever could to Hillary.

Under an absolute best case scenario for Hillary Clinton, she might scrape by with a net loss of about 4 delegates from those states.

At that point, with just 266 pledged delegates left to be selected, Obama would need win just 72 of them to hit the magic number. Hillary Clinton meanwhile would need 223 of them -- 84%.

Barring an unforeseen epic collapse by Barack Obama on Tuesday, there's just about no chance Hillary Clinton will hit the 1,627 number.

Yet she's still running hard, and attacking even harder.

The question is: why? Her situation is nearly hopeless -- unless she thinks she can pull off a superdelegate engineered victory.

That's a topic I'm planning to address in the coming days, because I'm beginning to think that no matter what happens on Tuesday, Hillary Clinton will push on past Ohio and Texas.

And that could get very ugly.