The 1995 Seattle Mariners slogan was "Refuse to Lose," but when
game 5 of the 1995 ALDS went into extra innings, the game was tied.

Barack Obama has just retired Hillary Clinton in the top half of the ninth inning of the seventh game of the American League Championship Series.

He's the home team, and he's leading 9-7, so he's already won, not just the game, but also the series.

But Clinton is insisting on taking the field to play out the final meaningless frame. It's never been done before in the history of baseball, but Obama, being a gentleman, is obliging.

Strangely, the umpires don't do anything to stop the game from continuing, even though it's completely under their control.

After Clinton finishes her warm up pitches, Obama steps up the plate. Clinton delivers three fastballs, each right over the heart of the plate, but Obama doesn't lift the bat off his shoulder. He strikes out in three pitches (West Virginia), clearly mailing it in in the hopes of avoiding injury.

Clinton, not recognizing the reason for Obama's nonchalant attitude, taunts him mercilessly. "You can't hit my kind of pitches!" she she screams.

Of all the typos in the world...to make this one, with John McCain of all people. Well, oopsie doopsie. (From my post "John McCain and his lobbyist gambling buddy" published earlier today.)

Yeah, I know, I've got a 10-year-old's sense of humor. (Update: Another one.)

Mac Daddy McCain loves rolling the dice (from Connie Bruck's profile in The New Yorker):

"McCain is an avid gambler. Wes Gullett, a close friend who worked for McCain for years, told me that they used to play craps in Las Vegas in fourteen-hour stints, standing at the tables from 10 a.m. to midnight." (Emphasis added.)

As a Las Vegan, McCain's affinity for gambling doesn't bother me in the slightest, though it might irritate his family values base.

What really interests me though is the relationship between McCain and his gambling buddy Wes Gullet. Gullet is a lobbyist, and he once worked for McCain, both on the campaign trail and in the Senate.

John McCain (or his body double) playing craps in Las Vegas, summer 2006.
The source of the photo thinks they are at Mirage, but it's actually Bellagio.

It would be a great story for an intrepid reporter willing to dig a little deeper into their relationship. Even better, it involves the biggest land swap in Arizona history -- and one of McCain's top contributors was the primary beneficiary.

Here are the key elements of the story:

• Wes Gullet is an old friend and gambling buddy of John McCain. They rolled dice together in 14-hour-long sessions in Las Vegas.
• Gullet was McCain's campaign manger and top senate staffer and is now a lobbyist.
• Gullet was hired to lobby McCain on the largest land swap in Arizona history, exchanging private land in the wilderness for valuable federally-owned land rady for development.
• McCain, who initially opposed the swap, changed his position and supported it after Gullett was hired.
• The land swap benefited one of John McCain's top fundraisers who has hauled in more than $100,000 for his Presidential campaign.

All the elements all the elements for a great story -- Vegas, gambling, corruption, visually compelling Arizona landscapes, etc. And it's a true story. But with scattered exceptions, the media has ignored it.

Hattip to commenter SeattleAJ, who discovered the link after I first posted about McCain's interest in craps. Details below the fold. (Update: I've rearranged the material in this post for presentation purposes only.)

The one thing that I'll give the Clinton campaign credit for is that last week they managed to completely overshadow the fact that Barack Obama secured a majority of delegates elected by the American people.

This, however, should not be a source of pride. It may have been a close nominating battle, but close is not tied, and Barack Obama won.

Now it's time for Clinton supporters to make a decision: are they going to help their candidate find some sort of way to get out of the race with at least some of her dignity intact? Or are they going to continue enabling her increasingly bizarre campaign?

I know there's a sense that Clinton supporters need to be coddled, treated with kid gloves. But I have enough respect for them to believe that they can handle a firm -- but polite -- message such as this.

I know the frustration of having your candidate lose. Barack Obama was not my first choice. John Edwards was. I still miss his presence in the race. But he didn't win. So I had to move on.

Marc Ambinder passes along stats touted by the Clinton campaign, characterizing them thusly: "Basically, we won the second half."

Since March 4:

Hillary votes: 6,519,685
Obama votes: 6,007,744
Margin: Hillary +511,941

Hillary pledged delegates: 510
Obama pledged delegates: 495
Margin: Hillary +15 delegates

Hillary contests: 7 (OH, RI, TX, PA, IN, WV, KY)
Obama contests: 6 (VT, WY, MS, GU, NC, OR)

Fine, except:

• 1,005 delegates is less than one-third of the pledged delegates, so it's really more like the third period (of a hockey game).
• +15 net margin in pledged delegates? Even if that number is right...it's not enough to change the fundamental math.
• The calendar in the "third period" was much more favorable to Hillary than Obama
• She only won Indiana with the help of McCainiacs
• The popular vote metric is meaningless, but if it weren't meaningless, I'd offer a reminder that 362,000+ McCainiacs voted for Clinton.

Then there's always the part about how Barack Obama won the pledged delegate majority in the second half or third period or whatever we're calling it.

And that fact pretty much will end the game.

The conventional wisdom is that Barack Obama was soaring in February, crushing John McCain in poll after poll, while Hillary Clinton struggled far behind. Then came along March and April and changed all that around (according to the CW); suddenly, Clinton was on top and Obama was looking up to her, at least when it came to general election polling against John McCain.

Well, turns out...that's not exactly true. It is the case that Barack Obama tanked (to be blunt) from February to March -- but in every single month this year, he's done better versus John McCain than Hillary Clinton.

Here's a look at a brief analysis I conducted using polls on pollster.com, excluding polls which only had one candidate versus McCain (Data: Obama, Clinton). I sorted the polls by month, and calculated a simple average for each candidate. Here's the data for how each candidate fared against McCain for each month:

January 2008 (11 polls)

• Clinton: McCain +2.1% (44.9C, 47.0M)
• Obama: McCain +0.5% (44.8O, 45.4M)

February 2008 (25 polls)

• Clinton: McCain +1.9% (44.4C, 46.3M)
• Obama: Obama +4.0% (46.90, 42.9M)

March 2008 (31 polls)

• Clinton: McCain +2.2% (44.3C, 46.4M)
• Obama: McCain +1.3% (44.1O, 45.3M)

April 2008 (36 polls)

• Clinton: Clinton +0.2% (44.9C, 44.8M)
• Obama: Obama +0.5% (45.1O, 44.6M)

May 2008 (21 polls)

• Clinton: Clinton +1.5% (45.9C, 44.3M)
• Obama: Obama +2.5% (46.1O, 43.7M)

(The numbers don't all add up due to rounding.)

As you can see, versus McCain, Obama was stronger than Clinton in each month, either leading by more, or losing by less. Overall, he led 51% of the polls and tied in another 9%; Clinton led 41% and tied in 7%.

Even though March and April were tough months for Obama, especially after his exceptional February, he did better than Clinton -- and in April, better than McCain. And now, three weeks into May, it looks like he's mostly made back most of the ground he lost in March due to the Wright flareup.

Once upon a time (December) in a far away land (Iowa), the protector of Michigan, the defender of Florida, the savior of June...thought the campaign would end on February 5.

She's unprincipled. Hypocritical. Untethered. Delusional.

When will the superdelegates finally end this thing? We the people have already spoken. Barack Obama has won the pledged delegate majority.

The important part of the nominating contest is over, yet they dither. And now they have earned the blame for enabling Hillary Clinton's psychosis, and for forcing us to endure its consequences.

The time has come for them to put her -- and us -- out of our collective misery. There's too much at stake in 2008.

Another really strange aspect to Clinton's remarks today: if you accept her claim that she was merely pointing out an example of another campaign that had extended into June to show the process should continue, she was picking a really bad one.

The question she was responding to ("You don't buy the party unity argument?") came in the context of a discussion of the rationale for continuing her campaign.

In her answer, she cited Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign (falsely) and the 1968 campaign.

Even if she hadn't raised the assassination, highlighting 1968 would have been a strange way to make the point she was trying to make. At the time of RFK's death, there were three candidates with substantial delegate totals and the convention itself was a disaster. (It's also not entirely clear whether RFK would have won the nomination. Humphrey had the delegate lead.)

So if her point was that she wouldn't mind a campaign like 1968, no thanks.

(Update: Also, as KRK notes in the comments, in 1968 there were far more delegates left to be selected in states than there are today.)

I'm going to revise my earlier assessment. I still think there are two interpretations.

1. She is a psychopath and was intentionally raising the specter of assassinations.
2. She is completely untethered to reality, and flippantly tossed out the notion of an assassination as part of a remarkably weird (and bad) argument.

And I'm not sure that these options are mutually exclusive. In either case, she demonstrated she is not fit to be President of the United States of America -- nor is she fit to be vice president.

Update: Video Olbermann's Special Comment added to this post. (Transcript here.)

...you have to admit that she's incredibly gaffe prone.

And if you are an undeclared superdelegate, you have to wonder: would the disclosure that John McCain had cancer surgery in February been bigger news had it not been for Clinton's continued presence in the race?

It's not just the drama about her remarks today, it's also her pursuit of the vice presidency.

I'm under no illusion that the media would be doing a fair job if Clinton were out of the race, but by staying in it, she's certainly making it easier for them to give John McCain a free pass.

From The Field:

The endorsement by US Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-California) of Obama today sends an extremely firm message to the Clinton campaign, and not only because he was, until today, a Clinton superdelegate.

The Field has learned that Cardoza is the first of a group of at least 40 Clinton delegates, many of them from California, that through talking among themselves came to a joint decision that all of them would vote for Obama at the convention. They have informed Senator Clinton that it’s time to unite around Obama, and that they will be coming out, one or two at a time, and announcing their switch between now and the convention if Senator Clinton doesn’t do the same.

If you're into digg, you can digg Al's article here.

Update: Aravosis points out that the the window of time between now and the convention is large. The supers need to act -- and now.

Clinton raises the potential of assassination as a rationale for remaining in the race.

This is a thought that has no place in the public sphere.

She should never be president. She will never be president.

TPM has a longer clip with more context; I don't think it mitigates her comment one iota, you can judge for yourself. TPM also has her attempt to clarify her remarks.

Update: I see two explanations for Hillary Clinton's remark:

1. She is a psychopath
    
2. It was an innocent remark, but one that proves yet again that she is so gaffe-prone that she would be a disastrous nominee

You can guess which ONE I believe. In either case, setting aside for a moment the nature of her statement, it isn't a rationale; her remaining in the race is not a necessary precondition for becoming the nominee if Obama were to withdraw for whatever reason.

And once again it all comes down to the people that are enabling Hillary Clinton: the undeclared superdelegates.

Update 2: I was just watching Chris Cilizza, EJ Dionne, and Michelle Bernard on Hardball -- of the three panelists, only Michelle Bernard was willing to straightforwardly point out how horrific Clinton's comments were. The other two were disappointingly cautious.

My reason for opposing the selection of Hillary Clinton as Barack Obama's VP is simple: I wouldn't vote for her for president, so why would I want her within a heartbeat of the presidency?

As Clinton loyalists begin to make the case for Clinton as veep, however, their arguments will be mostly political, claiming that Barack Obama needs Hillary Clinton to win. As Dianne Feinstein said today:

The weight of the states he carried versus the states she carried, it's different. And, therefore, if you combine them both, you've got the best electoral path.

There's a problem with that argument, though. Not only is Obama leading McCain by 9 points in the latest Ohio poll and by 8 in the latest Pennsylvania poll (and by 7 in the latest Virginia poll), he also does at least as well as Clinton nationally.

Pew is one of the national polling organizations to reveal demographic breakdowns. Take a look at their most recent polling, conducted just after the second Wright flareup at the end of April. Compare the Obama-McCain matchup to the Clinton-McCain matchup. They both win, but would anybody in their right mind trade Obama for Clinton?

It's not just polling data; Barack Obama does not need Hillary Clinton for fundraising either, nor does he need her for grassroots support. With 1.5 million donors and volunteers across the nation, he is now more powerful than her; it's an amazing thing, but it's true.

In part because of that, if Obama did pick Clinton it would be seen as a sign of weakness, not just because he selected someone who had ruthlessly attacked him for months, but also because he'd be sending a signal that he tacitly agreed with her attacks.

For Obama, the weakness he would project by selecting Clinton would present a far greater electoral risk than the challenge he faces of uniting the Democratic Party.

Don't forget, the most important political endorsement this year has already taken place: George Bush embraced John McCain. And that more than anything else will help pull the party back together.

In a Senate election, the popular vote has clear meaning. In a presidential election, the popular vote is less meaningful because the electoral college is what matters, but at least there's a relatively uniform set of rules from state to state. (If Bush had clearly won Florida, there would have been heartache, but not nearly as much controversy.)

But in the Democratic presidential nomination process, there just isn't any such thing as the national popular vote. For better or for worse, the national party created pledged delegates to reflect the popular will. The national party then empowered each state party to come up with its own method for selecting the delegates, subject to approval.

As a result, there is no uniform voting procedure; adding up the total "votes" is really a meaningless exercise (which I've spent too much of my time doing). It should be noted that Obama leads in this metric, adding another layer of dishonesty to Clinton backers who claim she leads the popular vote, but that fact shouldn't count in Obama's favor.

What matters is that Barack Obama has won a clear majority of the delegates selected by the people. The fact that Hillary Clinton has spent the past few days trying to obscure that fact tells you all that you need to know about her commitment to democracy.

...but he sure does love him some espresso.

Who's he winking at anyway? I swear I see Joe Lieberman's reflection in his eye.

p.s.: I mostly took the ads down(I left one up on pages with posts). The ads were annoying me, and according to Google AdSense, they paid out $8.11...for 15,502 page impressions.

PocketNines makes it in an excellent diary over at Daily Kos. The Cliffs Notes version: Obama is still a lock to win the nomination even if Michigan and Florida are seated in full, and by giving Clinton everything she wants, her rationale for taking the campaign to the convention disappears.

I've never seen someone yawn as big as the guy behind Hillary Clinton...and then, well, I won't spoil it for you, but all I'll say is that even Jerry Seinfeld wouldn't have said it was a scratch.

Update: I swapped out the Kimmel video with this one from Leno that's even funnier.

Update 2: I bumped this and changed the headline which no longer made any sense with the new video still. Whatever you do, just watch the clip -- it's hilarious.

John McCain's been a busy fellow: yesterday, he divorced his two most controversial pastor-endorsers, John Hagee and Rod Parsley. I'm not worried about losing a political issue -- they were both bad men, and McCain was right to dump them. Anyway, if there's any relationship that should be relevant to the 2008 campaign, it is the one between George Bush and John McCain.

I've (somewhat relucantly) decided to put up ads from Google AdSense as an experiment, at least for a few days. The downside is: ads. The upside is that they may give me another justification to spend so much time blogging, which hopefully you'll be pleased about, but John McCain won't. (Update: I'm blocking ads from newsmax.com and humanevents.com, but it's taking forever for the filters to take effect, so you may see some of them for a bit.)

John Aravosis and Joe Sudbay at AMERICAblog and Arianna Huffington at HuffPo are stepping up to the plate and targeting the undeclared superdelegates.

They are absolutely right: we have nobody to blame but the superdelegates who refuse to make a decision.

No matter how distasteful Hillary Clinton's antics may be, she is merely taking advantage of the opportunity they have provided. It was utterly predictable that she would do this, and the time has come for them to stop it.

Let's not forget that Barack Obama has already won a clear majority of pledged delegates. The people have already spoken. There are no more excuses for waiting. As Clinton supporter Paul Begala said:

"These superdelegates are super ratifiers. That's all they're going to be, that's all they should be by the way. Because I think they are an abomination against democracy."

Begala is right. It's time for superdelegates to release their stranglehold on this process. Let us move on.

Earlier today in an interview with the St. Petersburg Times, Hillary Clinton endorsed the Republican Party's decision to cut in half the voting power of the Florida delegation to the RNC.

Why should they have been cut in half? "Because it was a Republican decision" to change the primary date, she said.

The problem? Democrats also supported the decision. In fact, it passed the state senate by a 37-2 margin and it passed the state house by a 118-0 margin. Moreover, the state party leadership steadfastly stuck with the January 29 date even though they knew the DNC would not seat the Florida delegations.

Clinton herself supported the DNC's punishment when she signed a pledge to honor the DNC's rules. The key line in that pledge: "the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee will strip states of 100% of their delegates and super delegates to the DNC National Convention if they violate the nomination calendar."

And now, even though Clinton is conceding that the Republican Party was correct to penalize its delegation, she is refusing to agree to a compromise that would apply the same exact penalty to the Democratic delegation. The basis of her refusal is a demonstrably false claim.

And that of course leads us right back where we started: for Hillary Clinton, Florida has nothing to do with principle.

It's just another power play.

Update: I should also mention that the final resolution of this will have no impact on whether or not Barack Obama wins the Democratic nomination. As Al Giordano makes clear, Barack has got it locked up, even if you count Michigan and Florida at full strength. It will, however, take longer, which means more distractions from Clinton.

More importantly, it weakens the ability of the DNC to control a nomination process that we can all agree is horribly deficient. If every state can do whatever they want whenever they want, we're never going to improve the process.

Note: I swapped in a new version of the clip that fixes a typo. The old version with typo is here.

Sorry for the light posting -- I'm working on a new video which I hope will be done within the next hour or two. (It focuses on this interview by Clinton earlier today.)

Avi Zenilman reports that Harold Ickes says the Clinton campaign wants Michigan's uncommitted delegates to stay uncommitted.

In a conference call with reporters, Clinton Senior Adviser Harold Ickes clarified their position on Michigan -- they don't want the 55 "uncommitted" delegates to go to Obama (his name did not appear on the ballot in Michigan). ... UPDATE: Wolfson says that most -- if not -- all of the uncommitted delegates would likely go for Obama.

The issue here is that according to Michigan's delegate selection plan, "uncommitted," which received 40% of the vote, got 55 delegates.

According to the exit poll, most of the uncommitted voters favored Obama (about 70%). Almost all of the rest favored Edwards -- about 30%.

If the Clinton folks think they have any sort of legitimate claim to those 55 uncommitted delegates, they are on even more crack than I ever could have imagined. (Wolfson's update suggests there is a dose of reality somewhere in Clinton-land.)

Even if they recognize that the uncommitted delegates will go for Barack, there are a couple of explanations for why they might continue pushing for them to be formally uncommitted. First, if they are uncommitted, there is more uncertainty, extending the process. Second, if they are uncommitted, then they may think they have a stronger argument for only counting Clinton's votes in their fictitious national popular vote metric.

Whatever. If they are seriously thinking along these lines, they really are delusional.

One other point: the exit poll numbers I've cited focus on the percentage of people who voted uncommitted but say they would have voted for Edwards or Obama if their names had been on the ballot.

It's worth remembering that almost one-fifth of all people who voted for Clinton say they would have supported either Obama or Edwards had their names been on the ballot (about two-thirds of these folks would have supported Obama).

At least with Florida, their argument can be spun in such a way that it is believable. In Michigan, there's just no way to take them seriously.

If Hillary Clinton can't win...why is she spreading so much toxic waste? (It's really true that she can't win, by the way, not even if Michigan and Florida are seated at full strength. See Al Giordano for the details.)

The usual suspects: she's delusional (thinks she can win), she's negotiating (wants VP), she's spiteful (angry that she lost, or as ctk points out in the comments, angry that Obama has said "no" to her VP aspirations), and that she's undermining Obama (for 2012).

There's some truth to all of those, but here's a different idea: this could mostly be a cynical attempt to retire her mountain of debt.

The HillaryClinton.com homepage yesterday

Remember, she's stuck with something on the order of $21 million in debt. That's probably one quarter or or one fifth of her net worth, and she's going to be on the hook for it if she doesn't get it paid off soon.

Even if she can get around the rules which say that she must retire the debt by late August, as soon as her supporters think the nomination contest is over, the flow of money will stop.

She has to make the campaign seem real, otherwise nobody will donate to it...and she'll be stuck with the debt.

Clinton's message these days is "show me the money" as much as anything else. If you watch her on the trail, everywhere she goes, she is pushing people to go to HillaryClinton.com to make a contribution. Her last two "victory" speeches were more like infomercials. Yesterday, I checked out her site and it had been completely taken over by a fundraising pitch.

If this is what Clinton is up to, even in part, I do find her actions heartbreakingly cynical. It's not just that she's encouraging 11 year-old kids to sell their bikes to raise money for her campaign -- it's also that she's putting the entire 2008 campaign at risk and further dividing the Democratic party for selfish financial reasons.

↑ Shrink post ↑

A little bit of stand up comedy, a little bit of blunt talk, and a lot of wisdom. From yesterday, in Kissimmee, Florida.

Hillary Clinton has overcome way more sexism than anybody should ever have to, and that is part of what makes her such an inspiring candidate for so many people.

But sexism is not what cost Hillary Clinton this campaign: Iraq was, and what's more, she knows it -- or at least she should know, because her staff does. On February 17, 2007 she told people who disagreed with her vote on Iraq to choose from the other candidates:

“If the most important thing to any of you is choosing someone who did not cast that vote or has said his vote was a mistake, then there are others to choose from,” Mrs. Clinton told an audience in Dover, N.H., in a veiled reference to two rivals for the nomination, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina.

Her decision not to apologize is regarded so seriously within her campaign that some advisers believe it will be remembered as a turning point in the race: either ultimately galvanizing voters against her (if she loses the nomination), or highlighting her resolve and her willingness to buck Democratic conventional wisdom (if she wins).

What she needed to do was admit making a mistake. Instead, she told her critics to buzz off. It was an arrogant decision, and it will go down as one of the worst in the history of Democratic nomination campaigns. It was the decision that sunk her campaign, and she owns it entirely.

So I decided to torture myself by looking at a few different ways of tallying the popular vote. Since there's no concept of the national popular vote under Democratic Party rules, there's an unlimited number ways you can slice the pie. Thus, one of the many problems with using the popular vote as meaningful measure is that nobody will ever agree on how to count it. (Here's some other problems.)

Anyway, here's five different ways you could count the popular vote, some more reasonable than others. (I didn't waste my time considering the methods that exclude caucus-only states.)

Guardian:

Israel and Syria announced today they have begun indirect talks to reach a "comprehensive peace" in the first formal negotiations between the two mutual enemies for eight years.

Israeli PM Ehud Olmert: "It is always better to talk than to shoot."

George Bush: "F**king appeasers. Bring it on."

John McCain: "All I know is they would never endorse me."

p.s.: Israel is also talking to Hamas. John McCain...is talking to himself. Or something.

Joe Sudbay at AMERICAblog underscores the essential point:

Does anyone else find it disturbing that despite knowing Obama, our nominee, was heading to Florida to mend fences and start the general election campaign against McCain, Hillary Clinton decided to go to Florida to rub salt in the wound? That says it all, really.

Hillary Clinton is doing more for John McCain than his eventual choice for VP could ever do.

Hillary Clinton on WMJI in Cleveland, Ohio earlier today:

I think that what's happened with Florida and Michigan raises serious questions about the principles of our party.

Now obviously, I did well in both states, but beyond that, it just says 'wait a minute, the Democrats are going to be disenfranchising people?'

The Republicans made a decision right after those states held their elections, they quickly said 'okay, we're going to penalize you a little, but we're going to seat your whole delegation, your going to have half a vote, let's just go on.'

And here we are, months later, talking about denying people their rights to be heard, and yet 2.3 million people showed up in Michigan and Florida.

This is not about us for Bill and Hillary Clinton. It's about them, and their needs. We fought for them during impeachment, and she thanked us by trashing MoveOn.org. I have to say, more and more, I'm agreeing with Rachel Maddow -- the only way to end this race will be to push Clinton out of it. Politics can be a rough business, and at some point you have got to take a stand.

Update: It's important to remember that Clinton is attacking the Democratic Party for a decision that she herself embraced. NYT from last September:

Clinton, Obama and Edwards Join Pledge to Avoid Defiant States

PORTSMOUTH, N.H., Sept. 1 — Three of the major Democratic presidential candidates on Saturday pledged not to campaign in Florida, Michigan and other states trying to leapfrog the 2008 primary calendar, a move that solidified the importance of the opening contests of Iowa and New Hampshire.

... “We believe Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina play a unique and special role in the nominating process,” Patti Solis Doyle, the Clinton campaign manager, said in a statement.

And on Michigan she said:

It's clear, this election they're having is not going to count for anything.

So to the extent that Clinton's criticisms have any validity, she has played as much a role as any other candidate in creating this mess.

WSJ:

All she ever asked was let everybody vote and count every vote. Do the right and decent thing by Florida and Michigan. Don’t let the Republicans look more enlightened than us, which they do today. Which is unbelievable, I never thought I’d see that.

Our rules are the same as the Republicans. We could have seated Michigan and Florida delegates with half delegates and seated their superdelegates, and we’d be on our way to a resolution of this.

"All she ever asked": What bull. Clinton knew the rules, accepted the rules, and indeed defended the rules -- until they didn't work for her.

"Don't let the Republicans look more enlightened than us": If Republicans are gaining an advantage over us, the only reason is because the Clintons have given them all the ammunition they need.

"Our rules are the same as the Republicans.": Our rules are not the same as the Republicans. On what planet does he live?

"We could have seated Michigan and Florida delegates with half delegates and seated their superdelegates": So he's okay with cutting the votes in half as long as the superdelegates count full? What a crock.

The Clinton campaign was $19.5 million in debt as of April 30. In early May she loaned even more money to the campaign. How much more in debt are they now? And if they pay back the debt with a big speech or book, won't that be illegal?

Update: My original post said Clinton was $31 million in debt. (As did the article I linked to.) Turns out the article was wrong -- it's $21 million, just as Howard Wolfson said it was. I regret repeating the Los Angeles Times' error. (Heh -- always wanted to blame the LAT for something!)

Update 2: Turns out the re-updated article was also wrong, or at least misleading. It included $1.4 million that Clinton says she loaned the campaign in May. But since there is no way to to verify that, I'm just going to go with the actual FEC report which says $19.5 million.

Partners in crime?

I've crunched the numbers, and over the past month, one out of every ten votes for Hillary Clinton has come from a John McCain supporter.

These McCainiacs for Clinton vote for Clinton in the Democratic primary, but in the general election they say they will choose John McCain -- even if Clinton wins the Democratic nomination.

In all, over the past six primaries, they have cast about 362,000 of Clinton's 3.6 million votes. They're having a major impact -- without them, Clinton would not have won Indiana earlier this month.

I don't know whether these voters are part of Rush Limbaugh's Operation Chaos or if they are acting on their own initiative, but it doesn't matter. They will not support Clinton in the fall, a fact that must be taken into account by undeclared superdelegates as they assess Clinton's flimsy popular vote argument.

I think Rachel Maddow has it exactly right:

Tonight, Hillary Clinton signaled that as long as superdelegates stand on the sidelines, she isn't getting out of the race, and as long as she's in the race, she'll do whatever it takes to win, even if that means undermining Barack Obama's legitimacy.

So the time has come to push her out the race, and the only people who can do it are the undeclared superdelegates. They are the ones responsible for this mess, and they are the ones who must end it.

This is pretty funny. In Oregon, Hillary Clinton can't even beat John McCain:

• Clinton: 230,796 (86% reporting)
• McCain: 255,471 (86% reporting)

Meanwhile in Kentucky, Obama defeated McCain:

• Obama: 209,711
• McCain: 142,855

And in West Virginia, Obama also finished ahead McCain:

• Obama: 91,747
• McCain: 89,782

So Obama takes his two worst drubbings of the campaign...but still gets more votes than John McCain in each one of them. Hillary Clinton suffers a moderately large defeat, and also loses John McCain by a significant margin. Who's more electable now?

"You came out on a cold winter’s night in numbers that this country has never seen, and you stood for change.  And because you did, a few more stood up.  And then a few thousand stood up.  And then a few million stood up.

"And tonight, in the fullness of spring, with the help of those who stood up from Portland to Louisville, we have returned to Iowa with a majority of delegates elected by the American people, and you have put us within reach of the Democratic nomination for President of the United States."

Hillary lied...and we laughed!

Don't forget to read the fine print! In the meantime, here's some information on why the popular vote "standard" is bogus even when applied honestly.

Update: This is funny

"I won the popular vote" is the new "Iraq had WMD"

I just listened to Chris Matthews and Lisa Caputo try to figure out why so many of Clinton's primary voters say they won't vote for Barack Obama in the general election if he wins the nomination. They both beat around the bush for awhile before Matthews finally suggested that race was a factor, and he's probably right.

One thing they didn't note, however, is that 13% of Clinton's voters say they will vote for John McCain even if she wins the nomination.

That 13% is almost one-third of the 43% of Clinton voters who say they will vote for John McCain if Barack Obama wins the nomination. So while there's probably some racism and raw feelings, a lot of it is just that a lot of Democrats in Kentucky are just as conservative as Republicans in other parts of the country.

Update: I should note that by and large, I think MSNBC has done a good job tonight, at least compared to other networks in the past. They have consistently pointed out that Clinton's strength (or Obama's weakness) is regional.

This is a central point. Tonight, Obama speaks from Iowa, and he'll win Oregon -- both overwhelmingly white states. In fact, there is a smaller African-American population (in percentage terms) in both Oregon and Iowa than there is in Kentucky.

Clinton's campaign reacts furiously when rumors emerge that Barack Obama will claim a pledged delegate majority tonight -- something which will indisputably happen. Telling this truth, they say, would be offensive.

Yet even before Barack Obama speaks tonight, Hillary Clinton in her speech tonight infomercial for HillaryClinton.com claims that she has received more votes than any candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination has ever before received?

A statement which would only be true if Barack Obama weren't also running, and hadn't received more votes than her?

Chuck runs through the scenarios for tonight, including how Barack Obama secures the pledged delegate majority, even if Michigan and Florida are included. (I don't think he includes the Edwards delegates from Florida, which is why he says Obama needs 31 or 32 from Oregon to cross that threshold.)

A couple other observations:

• The symbolism of Iowa isn't just about returning to where it all started -- Iowa is 91% white non-Hispanic. The point couldn't be more clear: he does not have a problem with whites. To be sure, there are certain regions of the country where he has not done well with whites during the primary. But as today's poll in Pennsylvania shows, primary performance does not necessarily indicate general election performance.
• Barack has an outside shot of winning enough pledged delegates tonight to be able to reach the magic number of 2,025.5 without getting the support of any new superdelegates. (He still wouldn't reach the magic number until June 3, however.)

When Barack Obama secures the pledged delegate majority tonight, the key point is that he will have won the democratic part of the Democratic Party's nomination process -- and that victory is the most important reason why superdelegates will support him at the convention in August.

Here's some terrific quotes (mostly via Jake Tapper) from Clinton supporters on the topic:

Paul Begala: "These superdelegates are super ratifiers. That's all they're going to be, that's all they should be by the way. Because I think they are an abomination against democracy."

Charlie Rangel: "It's the people [who are] going to govern who selects our next candidate and not superdelegates."

John Corzine: "I feel superdelegates will end up trailing along with the conclusions that I think the voters express."

Elaine Kamarck: "The superdelegates are not interested in overturning the will of the people and they never have been, and there’s no indication they ever would…Now if the will of the people is a complete dead tie, then I think we’re in new territory and perhaps the superdelegates will play a role at that point."

Julian Epstein: "If there was a perception that one candidate won the popular vote and won the vote of delegates, and that that decision was then overturned by a smoke-filled room of superdelegates, I think it would lead to a civil war within the party."

Jake Tapper asks Barack Obama:

You're likely to be the Democratic nominee but you will also likely lose Kentucky overwhelmingly tonight, and one of the reasons for the likely loss is what's been evident in previous primaries -- Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, West Virginia -- your message is not resonating with white working class voters. Do you acknowledge that this is a problem and how do you intend on remedying that for the general election?

I guess Oregon doesn't count? It's true that 88% of Kentuckians are white non-Hispanics, but so are 81% of Oregonians. As Andrew Sullivan noted yesterday:

Male median income in Oregon: $41,536; Kentucky: $39,595; Female median income in Oregon: $32,390; Kentucky: $29,392. Oregon is slightly more prosperous than Kentucky, but its share of blue collar jobs is not far off Kentucky's.

The gap is a little bit bigger if you look at just the white, non-Hispanic population, but not big enough to validate the premise of Tapper's question. Moreover, as this poll from Pennsylvania shows, Tapper's assumption that primary results forecast general election performance is flawed: Obama now leads McCain by eight points in the Keystone State.

As for the difference between Kentucky and Oregon, it seems that regional and cultural differences would be the biggest factor to consider. It's also relevant that Obama has campaigned far more extensively in Oregon than Kentucky.

No, it's not a day for celebrating Mark Cuban. It's Cuban Day. And McCain is marking it by attacking Obama. Too bad he can't keep his story straight. (h/t: SeattleAJ)

HuffPo is promoting what it calls McCain's "New Iran Gaffe." It's a video of John McCain doing battle with Joe Klein at a press conference over whether or not Barack Obama has ever indicated he would personally sit down for talks with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Here's Joe Klein on the issue:

On Friday, I promised to check into whether Obama had ever said that he would negotiate--specifically, by name -- with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Indeed, according to the crack Time Magazine research department and the Obama campaign, he never has. He did say that he would negotiate with the Iranian leadership -- but, on matters of foreign policy and Iran's nuclear program, the guy in charge is the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. As of today, John McCain was still accusing Obama of wanting to negotiate with Ahmadinejad.

I am sympathetic towards what Klein is trying to do here. The problem is that if we want to make this a debate about whether Barack Obama referenced Khamenei or Ahmadinejad, it's clear that he referenced the latter.

The real issue is that the reference consisted entirely of two words, and expressed a willingness, not a pledge. More importantly, the two words were just one part of Obama's response to a question submitted by a voter on YouTube. In fact, in the only specific reference to Iran in his answer, Obama was clearly talking about staff-level contacts, not presidential level.

Do you miss hearing Mark Penn's name? If so, the WSJ has the cure:

Clinton Keeps Up Fight As Staff Tensions Rise

Heading into twin Democratic primaries Tuesday in Kentucky and Oregon -- which the two candidates are expected to split -- Sen. Hillary Clinton is vowing to stay in the race to the end, even as her staff and supporters show further signs of fraying.

In an interview in Bowling Green, Ky., on Sunday where she was campaigning ahead of Tuesday's vote, Sen. Clinton said, "I'm still here because I think I would be the best president."

However, faced with growing pressure to drop out of the race, Sen. Clinton is getting hit with conflicting advice from within her own camp. Some of her top strategists are warning that she is injuring her political future by staying in. Others -- notably her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and strategist Mark Penn -- are urging her to remain in the race.

In case you've forgotten, until March, Mark Penn's lobbying subsidiary was headed by John McCain's top adviser, Charlie Black.

Friends helping friends?

This is hilarious. John Cole:

I Almost Forgot To Mock This

Mark Levin at the Corner:

Missed Story [Mark R. Levin]

How many people showed up for Obama’s rally in Kentucky? Oh, he didn’t campaign there?

Answer: 8,000

Your average drive-by ranting commenter at this crappy little website has better research skills than the National Review. Not that this should surprise anyone.

Update - Callous self-mockery is afoot at The Jed Report: As noted in the comments, I made a rather significant typo when first posted this, writing Juan instead of John. Perfect timing for a monster mistake, eh? (I shouldn't mock others in my first post of the day, I guess!)

If you like installing software before most everyone else, you can start using the new Firefox 3 web browser now -- just download it here.

Predictably some of my extensions don't work on Firefox 3 (I miss Google Browser Sync the most, but that should be updated soon, I would hope). There's some UI changes that will take a little getting used to (I am not a fan of the 3D look for the tabs, and the folders look weird on the bookmarks toolbar.

But those two complaints aside, the browser is blazing fast, especially with some Flash animations which used to bring my machine to a standstill. It's really a noticeable, positive difference.  I haven't used it long enough to get a sense of how stable it is, but so far, so good.

In case there is any confusion, allow me to underscore the point I was making in my post "The victory Barack Obama should declare tomorrow." As the title of the post implies, I believe Barack could make several different declarations of victory tomorrow. Here are three notable ones:

Oy vey...

As Ben Smith notes, Bill Clinton cited Rove's analysis yesterday, before it was reported anywhere else.

Welcome to Bizarro World: there's a growing consensus that Barack Obama should not declare victory tomorrow when he secures a majority of pledged delegates. The essential argument: if Obama says the contest is over, he will appear arrogant, and there will be a backlash from Clinton supporters.

With all due respect to Clinton supporters, they should not be the exclusive drivers of Obama's decision here, if for no other reason than the ones that will lead the backlash against him are already trying to undermine him and will never support him.

The thing that should drive Obama's decision with respect to a declaration of victory is simple: the state of the campaign. So let's review the facts.

1. Neither candidate actually becomes the nominee until August at the convention. Until that point, the question is whether one of the candidates emerges as the "presumptive" nominee.
2. The Democratic Party has no formal definition of presumptive nominee, and the very word itself denies finality; presumption expresses a probability.
3. Any reasonable observe would conclude that Barack Obama is already the presumptive nominee. (Since Edwards' endorsement, I have yet to hear any remotely plausible argument for how Clinton wins the nomination.)

So if Barack Obama is already the presumptive nominee (a fact which both Bush and McCain clearly understand), what is the debate about?

I think the answer is legitimacy. And that's why it's so important that Barack Obama declare a victory tomorrow.

After tomorrow, he can -- and I think he will -- say that that he has won the primaries and caucues. When he crosses the pledged delegate majority threshold, the voters will have spoken, and to let that moment pass without noting it would be an insult to the majority of Democratic voters who have chosen Barack Obama.

Given the interest in Geraldine Ferraro's threat that she might not vote for Obama (who she says is sexist) in the fall, I thought it might be useful to take another look at the data that I complied a few days back about race and gender in the primaries.

The following table is summary, showing the number (in millions) of votes for each candidate from voters who said that either race or gender was important in their decision making process.

As you can see, race was essentially a wash, but gender was a big net positive for Clinton.

Overall about one-fifth of Democratic primary voters said that race or gender was important to them.

In May of 2006, John McCain said former Sec'y of State James Baker was one of the "smartest" men he knew and that he was likely to ask Baker to serve as a diplomatic envoy to the Middle East. Speaking to an Israeli newspaper, McCain added "I know you in Israel don't like Baker."

Five months later, on October 6, Baker said "talking to an enemy is not, in my view, appeasement." It was the exact opposite of McCain's current dogma, yet within a matter of days, McCain had once again included Baker on the list of his potential Middle East envoys.

For the record, James Baker endorsed John McCain in February.

It's yet another striking example of the straight talk express is coming off the rails. The video is from an October, 2006 interview on Hannity & Colmes. Thanks to Carthage for the tip!

Update: Cognitorex (Craig Johnson) found this segment and posted it on TPM Cafe on May 18 (after having written about it in October of 2006).

It is going to be seriously hot in Vegas today.

If you're viewing this post from the home page, you need to click here to watch the video of Barack's full speech. Otherwise, it should start playing automatically.

I've also posted local Portland TV coverage of the rally (including KGW, which has the best report) and some cool aerial video shot from a helicopter, along with some good stage views.

I'm sure by the time I wake up a ton more stuff will have been posted -- I'll update in the late morning, Pacific time.

The best local coverage was on KGW, but it's not on YouTube, so I set up a special page if you'd like to see it. (I highly recommend it!)

I've now posted video of the full speech here, but these aerial helicopter and stage view shots from CNN are pretty cool. It's just a raw video feed, so the editing is a bit choppy, but you get a sense of just how massive -- and historic -- the event was.

And it's still May.

American Street has a couple other videos from the event.

So John McCain's lobbyist problem forces him to fire yet another top official on his campaign...and his response is to attack Barack Obama over Bill Ayers. In the words of McCain flack Tucker Bounds, Ayers is "an unrepentant domestic terrorist...if Barack Obama is going to make associations the issue, we look forward to the debate about Senator Obama's associations."

Ha! Talk about a non sequitur. These lobbyists were top officials on John McCain's campaign! We're not talking about flimsy associations (like G. Gordon Liddy, perhaps?).

There's no equivalence -- whatsoever. What a stupid argument to make.

Of course, what's really going on here is that the McCain campaign is doubling down on its only strategy for the fall elections: portraying Barack Obama as a radical terrorist sympathizer.

But if John McCain really wants to make being terrorist sympathizer a central plank of his campaign, it's about time he explained why he sided with pro-life extremists and opposed essential new legislation to protect women's reproductive health clinics across the nation from a wave of domestic terrorism.

In the early 1990s, patients, doctors, and staff at these clinics were the targets of physical intimidation, including bombings and murder. After the Supreme Court ruled that the Federal government could not use civil rights laws to go after the domestic terrorists, Congress passed legislation to give the Federal government the power to protect women, their doctors, and clinic staff.

The legislation, which was signed into law in 1994, was important because the campaign of violence against the women's health clinics crossed state lines -- and it worked. Violence fell dramatically after President Clinton signed it into law.

Extraordinarily, however, John McCain opposed the law, voting against it not once but twice, each time joining a small band of thirty extremist pro-life Senators.

Here's how the New York Times described the law:

Senate Passes Abortion-Clinic Crime Bill
By ADAM CLYMER

The Senate voted overwhelmingly today for a Federal law to prohibit bombings, arson and blockades at abortion clinics, and shootings and threats of violence against doctors and nurses who perform abortions..

The vote was 69 to 30. Twenty-eight senators who voted against Federal financing of abortions six weeks ago supported the measure, seeing it as a law-and-order matter rather than as an abortion issue.

So John McCain was one of a tiny minority of radical anti-choice Senators to oppose this new law, and he did so not just once, but twice.

:: ::

If John McCain is going to raise questions about Barack Obama's acquaintances, no matter how flimsy they may be, isn't it fair to ask him why he sided with pro-life extremists in opposition to tough new anti-terrorism legislation?

Aside from being entirely relevant on a substantive level, forcing McCain to confront his record on domestic anti-choice terrorism will help better inform independent voters about his strident opposition to reproductive freedom.

McCain has developed a moderate image on reproductive freedom, largely because of his battles with the National Right to Life Committee. The thing that many people don't realize is that NRLC's dispute with McCain has nothing to do with his views on choice -- their dispute was over McCain-Feingold and campaign finance reform. Here's the conservative publication The Weekly Standard:

Arizona senator John McCain, currently a bit behind Rudy Giuliani as Republicans' favorite presidential choice for 2008, is far and away the most consistently anti-abortion of all the top contenders. During his 20 years in the Senate (plus four in the House), he has never failed to cast his vote in favor of whatever abortion restrictions are arguably permitted under Roe v. Wade: bans against partial-birth abortion, abortions on military bases, transporting minors across state lines to obtain abortions behind their parents' backs, and government funding for abortion both in the United States and abroad (all but the transporting-minors bill have become federal law). In addition, McCain has voted to confirm every "strict constructionist" judge (that is, disinclined to find, à la Roe, a right to abortion and related activities enshrined in the Constitution) appointed by the various Republican presidents who have served during his tenure, including Robert Bork for the Supreme Court. In February McCain declared that Roe v. Wade ought to be overturned, and he was one of 35 senators who signed an open letter to President Bush earlier this year pledging their support for any veto by Bush of efforts by the Democratic-controlled Congress to change federal law on abortion. Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America, the leading abortion-rights advocacy groups, detest McCain and consistently award him ratings of absolute zero on their scorecards.

Nonetheless, McCain has a major problem with the nation's largest and most influential anti-abortion advocacy organization, the National Right to Life Committee. And the source
of that problem is . . . not abortion at all. It's the McCain-Feingold Act, that set of restrictions on political advertising during election seasons that McCain (along with a number of Democrats) started pushing in 1995 and succeeded in enacting into federal law in 2002.

McCain: Consistently anti-choice

As the article says, McCain opposes Roe v. Wade and would appoint justices to the Supreme Court that would overturn it. Unfortunately, far too many people don't know this, particularly independent women voters.

According to a March, 2008 survey of women in battleground states conducted for Planned Parenthood, half of women voters do not know whether McCain is pro-choice or anti-choice. Even more striking, 46% of women who support McCain want are pro-choice, and 36% of those pro-choice, pro-McCain women said they were less likely to vote for McCain once learning about his staunch anti-choice record.

Engaging John McCain in a lively debate about his refusal to support efforts to fight anti-choice domestic terrorism will serve two purposes.

First, it will turn his efforts to smear Obama as a terrorist sympathizer right back around on him.

Second, it will inform independent voters, particularly women, that John McCain is actually an extreme anti-choice conservative.

The McCain campaign has inadvertently given us another gift. Let's make sure we take advantage of it.

↑ Shrink post ↑

75,000 people showed up to hear Barack Obama today in Portland, Oregon.

75,000.

That's more people than voted for Clinton in 14 states (including DC). It's as many as voted for her in her 8 worst states -- combined. At a rally!

Video Update: I've posted video of the full speech here. I've also posted local TV coverage here and some cool aerial footage from a helicopter here.

Update: The New York Times has some very cool pictures of the rally. Update 2: Al Rodgers has a beautiful diary of photos up at Daily Kos. And another: The Oregonian (thanks rosebud!).

A few more thoughts on Halperin's dissent from reality:

• The issue isn't whether Barack Obama actually becomes the nominee on Tuesday -- that can't happen until August, at the convention. The question is whether Barack can flatly state that he will win the nomination, without fear of contradiction.
• Now that Edwards has endorsed, Clinton's last hope (Michigan and Florida) is effectively off the table. Obama could fairly make the claim today that he will be the nominee.
• On Tuesday, when he secures the pledged delegate majority (even including Michigan and Florida) the math will be even more solid, and more importantly, the last major milestone will have been crossed -- one which undeclared superdelegates have already said will guide their votes.
• The pledged delegate majority isn't some arbitrary statistic invented by Barack Obama. It's a milestone that many superdelegates themselves say they recognize -- and it closes the final door to the Clinton candidacy, short of her concession or of the nominating convention itself.

Whatever Barack Obama says or doesn't say on Tuesday, there's one thing that even Mark Halperin won't be able to dispute: as of Tuesday, Barack will have won the primaries and caucuses, fair and square. And once that has happened, there's no way the superdelegates are going to turn things back.

If it's not over now, it will be then.

Kathleen Parker

Over at Too Sense, dnA takes on Kathleen Parker's incredibly divisive syndicated column published earlier this week. Here's a snippet from her screed:

WASHINGTON—"A full-blooded American." That's how 24-year-old Josh Fry of West Virginia described his preference for John McCain over Barack Obama. His feelings aren't racist, he explained. He would just be more comfortable with "someone who is a full-blooded American as president."

Whether Fry was referring to McCain's military service or Obama's Kenyan father isn't clear, but he may have hit upon something essential in this presidential race. ...It's about blood equity, heritage and commitment to hard-won American values. And roots. Some run deeper than others and therein lies the truth of Fry's political sense. ...Full-blooded Americans get this. Those who hope to lead the nation better get it soon.

Despite her attempt to focus on what she calls a "patriot divide," Parker's column is really about as open an embrace of white nationalism as you'll see in the mainstream media. Sadly, as dnA writes, she's a nationally syndicated columnist:

The fact that Parkers is syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group shows how utterly mainstream nativist white thought is--you would never see Louis Farrakhan with a nationally syndicated column. Yet here is Parker, lauding the virtues of "full-blooded" Americans. ...

Steve Benen has already discussed this and pointed out that Obama's grandfather served in World War II but I want to further challenge the very premise that there is such a thing as a "full blooded American". What she means by this of course, is "white Americans". She makes this plain in that last paragraph.

I think dnA is right on this point. Some might object to characterizing Parker's column as white nationalism because she explicitly says that race is not the issue. The problem is that she turns right around and says the divide is between people who are "full-blooded Americans" and those who are not. And in her world view, only whites qualify as full-blooded.

As the campaign continues, we're going to see more of Kathleen Parker's brand of tribalism. The thing to remember is that dnA is right: there is no such thing as a "full-blooded American." There's only one kind of American, and we are all citizens of a nation founded upon a Constitution and governed by laws.

Halperin is worried about bias

Mark Halperin seems pretty upset by the New York Times' statement of the obvious: after Tuesday, it will be fair to say that Barack Obama will win the Democratic Party's nomination.

I don't know that it would be fair to call Halperin a Clinton loyalist, but I think his outrage is just a smidge over-the-top.

It's been quite some time since I've heard anyone outside of the immediate orbit of Camp Clinton make the case that at this point, she could possibly win the nomination, and on Tuesday it gets even harder. It's just a math problem.

To be fair to Halperin, the NYT article was short on specifics, but based on the paper's previous reporting, most of the undeclared superdelegates support the Pelosi standard. Given that Obama effectively needs just about one dozen superdelegates under the current rules (and 50 under the Florida rules), there's just no path to the nomination for Clinton.

Sure, Barack won't formally be the nominee until August. That's obvious -- that's why we're going to Denver. But it's equally obvious that he will be the nominee when the convention comes -- and that makes him the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party.

But if anyone wants to make an argument for how Clinton wins the nomination at this point, I'm ready to hear it.

Here's one issue that will sink McCain's prospects in Washington state and should put at least Missouri in play: his tireless work on behalf of Airbus in the European aerospace giant's bid for a $35 billion dollar defense contract for aerial refueling tankers. Airbus won the contract from Boeing, in large part because of subsidies from the French and German governments, costing jobs in Washington, Missouri, and Kansas, and sending most of them overseas.

The most galling thing about this is that several of McCain's top aides were paid lobbyists on the deal for Airbus. This is a perfect example of why the Democratic Party has such a big political advantage over the Republican Party in 2008: when they attack candidates who stand by Barack Obama, they use flimsy guilt-by-association attacks that don't even work in conservative districts in Mississippi. When we attack candidates who stand by John McCain, it's on real issues that have real impacts in people's lives.

From today's Times:

Senator Barack Obama has chosen to spend Tuesday night not in Kentucky or Oregon, the two states that will be holding their primaries that day, or even at his home in Chicago. Instead, Mr. Obama’s staff announced on Saturday, he will be returning to Iowa, where he won the Democratic caucuses way back in January and has at least two good reasons to revisit now.

Much more than nostalgia seems to have motivated that decision. If things continue to go as well for Mr. Obama this week as they have so far this month, with a romp in North Carolina, a strong showing in Indiana and daily growth in his support among party superdelegates, he could actually end up with enough pledged delegates to proclaim, without fear of contradiction, that he is now the Democratic nominee for president.

Not bad, coming form Hillary Clinton's home town newspaper.

(5:28AM: I updated this post with the paragraph about Iowa.)

If anyone still doesn't understand why Barack Obama is for all practical purposes the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party, the explanation is right here in this chart: his delegate math is unbeatable.

The chart shows how many more superdelegate votes Barack needs to hit 2,025.5 total delegates by the time voting ends on June 3, based on very conservative projections for the remaining contests.

Given that Obama picked up more than 50 superdelegates in the first two and a half weeks of May, he's a stone-cold lock to be at 2,025.5 by June 3 -- and probably sooner.

But what about Florida and Michigan? Aren't they Clinton's nuclear option?

Saturday seemed to be a pretty slow news day, so I decided to finish up a facelift/redesign for the blog.

I had two goals. First, come up with a way to highlight some posts longer than others without interfering with the stream-of-consciousness of a blog. (That's what the left-hand sidebar is intended to accomplish.)

Second, I wanted some way to put up links to articles or blog posts that I thought were interesting or cool, but that I wasn't planning on blogging about. (That's the "stuff I should have blogged" sections on the right-hand sidebar.)

I also of course want to keep the blog easy to read and navigate. Please feel free to give me feedback on the new look -- I'd love to hear any ideas you have, good, bad, or indifferent!