Based on the Obama campaign's projection of 38 pledged delegates from Puerto Rico, Montana, and South Dakota, Barack now needs just 27 more superdelegates to secure the nomination on Tuesday night.

And as this report from ABC News suggests, the campaign has no doubt that those superdelegates will come on board:

The Obama campaign is not worried about the tempest that erupted at a Washington, D.C., hotel on Saturday when top Clinton adviser Harold Ickes threatened to take the fight over Michigan's delegates all the way to the convention.

"He said 'reserve the right,' not that he was going to do it," said Obama adviser Anita Dunn. "They have to get through the next three days. I've been there before."

...Asked if Obama would wait to get a concession call from Clinton before claiming the nomination, Dunn said the onus was on Clinton now that the Democratic Party has firmed up the number of delegates needed to claim the party's nod.

"He's not going to wait by the phone like a high-school girl waiting for a date," said Dunn. "That's not Barack Obama."

"After Tuesday," Dunn added, referring to the final contests of South Dakota and Montana, Clinton "can decide how united she wants this party to be."

It all begins in St. Paul at the Xcel Energy Center, site of the 2008 Republican National Convention. We're moving on to the next round.

Update: You might get a kick out of this interactive seat chart which gives you views from inside the center.

I just updated this chart with the latest -- Clinton does have a resilient base, but Barack's growth has been steady, even as Clinton supposedly has hit her stride.

It's a reminder that her recent success is more of a function of when states chose to have their primaries than it is of any underlying trend. Indeed, if the nominating calendar had been flipped and the states that voted in March, April, and May had gone in January, I'd bet that Barack would not have done as well as he did.

If you think about what Barack Obama has pulled off this year, it's actually like defeating sitting or former vice president of your own party for the nomination -- and I can't remember the last time that happened.

Think about it: in 2000, Gore won the nomination; in 1988, Bush won; in 1984, Mondale won; in 1976, Ford won (though he was president at the time); in 1968, Nixon and Humphrey won; in 1960, Nixon won.

Pretty impressive.

He also affirms his support for the RBC's decisions today.

Meet Harriet Christian (via Jane Hamsher). She seems really interested in a unity ticket...between Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Outside the RBC she raised quite a ruckus, finishing off her rant with this gem: "I've got news for all of you -- McCain will be the next president of the United States."

Maybe I'm too cynical, but I smell Roger Stone.

I have trouble seeing how either of these women could possibly be real Democrats. Maybe they are. But it if they really thinks that Hillary Clinton is the victim of sexism and a paternalistic society, it's truly pathetic for her to run for comfort into the welcoming embrace of a seventy-plus year-old white man.

Seriously, I smell Roger Stone. Am I too much of a cynic?

So one of the obvious question is: where did the 69-59 split come from? And when Harold Ickes yowls about 4 hijacked delegates, what is he talking about?

The short answer is that Ickes is full of it. Obama's name was not on the ballot and nobody outside of Clinton's world think the election in January was serious. As debrazza notes in the comments:

"uncommitted" was not "uncommitted" because the Mich. Dem. Party itself was telling people to vote "uncommitted" to express their preference for Obama, Edwards and Richardson...[and] the Clinton position was that the all the votes should could and all of the voter preferences were valid, except for the 30,000 write in ballots who expressed a preference for Obama (or at least everyone believes they did).

Today's decision by the RBC is the first time that the DNC has accepted a Michigan delegate selection plan. There never was any other plan, so no delegates could have been hijacked.

The 69-59 itself was a compromise between a proposal by the Clinton campaign and the Obama campaign. Essentially, the RBC split the difference between each campaign's proposal, giving Clinton a slight advantage.

A longer explanation follows.

Florida passes unanimously, Michigan passes 19-8. It passed with the support of several Clinton endorsers, including former DNC Chair Don Fowler.

To recap: Florida is seated based on the "straw poll" primary from January with delegates at half-strength. Michigan is seated 69-59, also with delegates at half-strength.

We are now done. Clinton can of course fight the decision in front of the credentials committee, as indicated by Harold Ickes, but I can't imagine that she will; 5 of her supporters at the RBC jumped ship on Michigan, which gives you a sense of how much support she would lose if she tries to fight it. She would also have to defend a primary in which Obama was not on the ballot and write-in ballots were ignored. That's a very difficult position to defend, and I don't think she'll do it.

Chuck Todd's quick math is that Obama is now 65 delegates away. Less the 43 Todd predicts for the next three primaries, Barack would need just 22 delegates to hit the magic number. If he gets those before Tuesday, Montana will put him over the top. I'd bet heavily in favor of him getting all the superdelegates he needs to seal the deal on Tuesday evening.

:: ::

Update - Chuck Todd: "Yes it's true that Harold Ickes can threaten this stuff about the credentials, but Don Fowler really did signal today by being for the Michigan compromise that, 'Guys, it's over.'" (h/t: georgia10)

While the Florida solution was unanimous, Harold Ickes leveled a blistering attack on the RBC. The issue: he is outraged that the RBC did not abide by the Michigan primary. Fine -- if Clinton wants to double down on something, let her double down on defending an election in which her main opponent was not on the ballot and in which 30,000 write-in ballots, most of which had his name on them, are discarded.

Florida is settled -- a closed issue.

Monroe Anderson says that Barack Obama resigned from Trinity United Church of Christ today in the wake of the Father Pfleger controversy. Both Lynn Sweet and Ben Smith have picked up Anderson's story. Ben says the campaign has neither confirmed nor denied the report.

Update: Both CNN and NBC's Andrea Mitchell are making the same report.

Update 2: Ben Smith and Mike Allen confirm the story.

Chris Matthews finally convinced me to mute the box. He said something along the lines of: "Fairly or not, early in the process, after he won 10 or 11 straight contests, Barack Obama was deemed the front-runner."

1. Early on? Um...after that streak, 70% of the delegates to the DNC had been selected. He didn't become the dominant, widely accepted front-runner until well more than half the people had voted.
2. I seem to recall that Hillary Clinton was considered "inevitable" not just by the press, but by her own campaign. In fact, she entered January with a lead of about 100 superdelegates on Obama.

Chuck Todd on the other hand is a good reason to unmute the box. He's now saying Michigan is closing in on the 69-59 approach advocated by Sen. Levin, and that the Obama will get the two add-on superdelegates. The delegation would be seated at half-strength.

Update: Chuck says that once the deal is done, Obama will need just another 15 or 20 superdelegates after the voting is done on Tuesday -- assuming that he doesn't get another endorsement between now and then. Remember, both Russert and Ambinder reported that he has three dozen supers in the bank, so assuming that Chuck Todd's source is correct, Barack will have enough delegates to secure the nomination Tuesday night in Minneapolis.

If this were a Coen brothers film, that's what this'd be called. It seems as if the RBC is determined to come to a resolution, which is a good thing and would clear the path for a final resolution of the nomination battle next week. According to Chuck Todd, they will not be adopting Harold Ickes' "fair reflection" standard, which should make it even harder for Clinton to advance her bogus popular vote argument.

Joe Sudbay captured some video of Lanny Davis heckling the Florida Democrats during their press availability at outside the RBC meeting earlier today. Pretty funny. HuffPo and Jake Tapper have more. (And Jane Hamsher captured some video of Joe, heckling nobody.)

Howard Wolfson just effectively declared victory on Florida even though it doesn't appear that the Florida delegation will be seated at full strength.

What he focused on was that the vote in Florida was the basis for vote allocation. This seems to confirm what the Ickes-Levin exchange suggested: the Clinton camp's main goal in Michigan is getting the Clinton votes counted for her and the uncommitted votes counted as uncommitted (and not for Obama), allowing them to make their (false) popular vote argument.

It's sort of weird, because the popular vote argument is so flawed that I don't understand why they think it matters whether the votes are used to allocate delegates.

Update: Chuck Todd says that Clinton doesn't want Michigan to be resolved today, for it to be punted to the credentials committee, but he says she doesn't have the votes for this on the RBC. If the RBC did make this punt it would be a disaster.

Update 2: I should have made it clear that Clinton declaring FL as a victory is a very good thing for Obama. Resolution is good. It means that Michigan is the only open area.

So far today, I think think the Rules and Bylaws Committee comes down to this exchange.

ICKES: Fair reflection of uncommitted status stands in the same shoes and is given the same protections and the same rights as a named presidential candidate ... to take those delegates and convert them to Obama...does enormous violence ... Delegates that are put into those [uncommitted] slots are fair game for any candidate who wants to go to persuade them to join his or her ship.

LEVIN: You're calling for a fair reflection of a flawed primary. And what we're trying to do is keep a party together so we can win a critical state in November. You've got two candidates still standing, one of whom was on the ballot, and one of whom wasn't. ... You can't say that a ballot where you have got one candidate named and the other candidate not on the ballot should be reflected.

Here's where I think we're at: Clinton supporters are saying that no effort should be spared to count people who supported Clinton, but no effort should be made to count people in Michigan who supported Barack Obama or John Edwards.

By making this flawed argument, the Clinton operation has given up any claim it may have had to the moral higher ground.

10:14AM: Carl Levin's basic message: Don't stomp on Michigan. It's a fulsome defense of his state, and it's a reminder that each of our states has a unique nominating process. (DHinMI has more on Michigan at Daily Kos.)

10:17AM: Remember, the reason why there is no such thing as the national popular vote is that each state has its own process for selecting delegates. Trying to establish a national popular vote is the equivalent of adding together stats from the L.A. Lakers (basketball) and L.A. Angels (baseball) and comparing them with stats from the St. Louis Rams (football) and St. Louis Cardinals (baseball) to determine which city has a better sports town.

10:28AM: I'm going to post any further updates to this post in the comments -- feel free to join in!

Wexler just made an important point about Florida and the general election: John McCain supports the privatization of Social Security, and he's said so publicly, and in this campaign. Now, George Bush also supported privatization but he wasn't stupid enough to state it publicly before the election. In fact, when a New York Times Magazine report indicated that Bush supported privatization in the closing days before the 2004 election, Bush denied it vociferously. Of course, one of the first things that he did upon taking office was...attempting to privatize Social Security. That effort was beaten back -- and I can think of no state where supporting privatization would be more toxic than Florida.

Mark Brewer, the Michigan Party chair, just said that there were 30,000 write-in votes in Michigan -- something I hadn't known. Write-in votes aren't counted under Michigan law unless a candidate specifically asks for them to be counted, so we don't know who those votes were for, but it's hard to imagine that nearly all weren't for Obama and Edwards.

Meanwhile, Clinton supporter Elaine Kamarck just said: "I have no doubt that most of the uncommitted vote was for Obama, and that most of those delegates would be for Obama." She went on to argue that uncommitted voters in Michigan should be treated as uncommitted.

The understudy takes the president to the airport after a $3 million fundraiser in Phoenix last Tuesday. McCain did everything he could to avoid having his picture taken with the leader of his party, but for about 27 seconds there was nothing he could do but smile and say "cheese." Even FOX News couldn't spin it:

It was the first time McCain and Bush have been seen publicly together since the presumptive GOP nominee visited the White House on March 5, but if you turned away you might have missed it as the two were on the tarmac together for only 26 seconds and within camera shot for a total of 47 seconds.

Kind of like getting busted on a walk of shame.

Also notice that when McCain and his wife returned to their vehicle, he made her walk around to the far side. I could care less, but imagine the field day the McCain and Clinton campaigns would have had if Barack Obama were ever so unchivalrous to his wife.

Yikes:

TOKYO - A homeless woman who sneaked into a man's house and lived undetected in his closet for a year was arrested in Japan after he became suspicious when food mysteriously began disappearing.

For all of Bill and Hillary Clinton's bellyaching about the Democratic Party's nomination process, and all their whining about how the rules have screwed them over...without the rule that created superdelegates, where would they be?

Tonight, both NBC and ABC had segments spotlighting Father Pfleger's sermon. The thing that really struck me was how different the two reports were. ABC's made the case that Pfleger's sermon could make it impossible for the Democratic Party to unite, costing Obama the election this fall. In contrast, NBC's report was not nearly so hyperbolic, and offered far more balance. In particular, NBC mentioned that Geraldine Ferraro had written similarly divisive words for today's edition of the Boston Globe, while ABC didn't (a particularly dishonest judgment call, further confirming my view that when it comes to the general, ABC is solidly pro-McCain). Here's a key excerpt from Ferraro's op-ed:

Since March, when I was accused of being racist for a statement I made about the influence of blacks on Obama's historic campaign, people have been stopping me to express a common sentiment: If you're white you can't open your mouth without being accused of being racist. They see Obama's playing the race card throughout the campaign and no one calling him for it as frightening. They're not upset with Obama because he's black; they're upset because they don't expect to be treated fairly because they're white. It's not racism that is driving them, it's racial resentment. And that is enforced because they don't believe he understands them and their problems. That when he said in South Carolina after his victory "Our Time Has Come" they believe he is telling them that their time has passed.

I think both the views of both Pfleger and Ferraro were divisive, but it is important to note that while Ferraro intended her remarks for a national audience, Pfleger's remarks were delivered to parishioners.

Meghan McCain

...at least she does according to the absurd standards of Pam Geller and Michelle Malkin. The issue: she's been caught wearing a scarf like the "controversial keffiyeh"  worn by Rachel Ray in that Dunkin' Donuts ad. Malkin offers the following wisdom:

Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Spain’s Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, and Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, and Hollywood darlings Colin Farrell, Sienna Miller, and Kirsten Dunst, and rapper Kanye West have all been photographed in endless variations on the distinctive hate couture. So has Meghan McCain, daughter of the GOP presidential candidate, who really ought to know better given that her dad positions himself as the candidate best equipped to “confront the transcendent challenge of our time: the threat of radical Islamic terrorism.”

Michelle Malkin hates America and everything that it stands for. Or something like that.

Chris Cilizza was just on MSNBC a few minutes ago and made the case that it would be a bit of a disaster for the Democratic Party if Hillary Clinton's supporters felt in any way that she had been pushed out of the campaign before she was ready to leave.

C'mon. That is such a patronizing attitude to take towards Clinton supporters. I know they will be disappointed when Obama finally hits the magic number, but the overwhelming majority of them will be able to handle it.

They're not delicate flowers that need to handled with extreme caution. I'm not saying we should taunt them, but blowing smoke up their ass isn't really showing them respect either. When the campaign is over, it's over, and there's no reason not to say it.

Ben Smith says that it will be in St. Paul, Minnesota -- in the Xcel Energy Center, the same facility that will house the GOP convention in September:

Tuesday is the night of the final Democratic primaries, and the choice of venue is a mischievous, aggressive way for Obama to unofficially kick off the general election campaign against Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). The location gives huge meaning to the moment, with Obama likely to frame a tough case against his new opponent in the very hall where McCain will accept his party’s nomination.

Update: The Obama campaign has now confirmed the event, which will be free. Admission will be on a first-come, first-served basis. "The event is free and open to the public.  Tickets are NOT required, but an RSVP is strongly encouraged.  Members of the public are invited to RSVP at www.barackobama.com. ***For security reasons, do not bring bags.  Please limit personal items.  No signs or banners permitted.*** Further details to be announced as they become available. Doors Open: 7:00 PM Public Entrance: Gates 1 and 3"

John Bush McCain, May 29: "We have drawn down to pre-surge levels." (Uh, no. That claim is totally false.)

John Bush McCain, May 30: "The rest of them will be home the end of July. That's just fact, those are the facts as I stated them." (No sir, that's not what you said, and YouTube is gonna' prove it.)

So not only does John McCain have no idea how many troops are in Iraq, he's got no idea what he said...just yesterday. What a strange man.

Update: Tonight in Great Falls, MT, Barack hammered McCain on the troop level gaffe:

John Bush McCain is doubling down on his false claim that troop levels "have drawn down to pre-surge levels" and it's not going well.

He started out the day earning 2 Pinocchios from the WaPo fact checker. After his campaign's silly complaint that reporters were "trying to nitpick the tense of the verb", he has now earned 3 Pinocchios. Do we hear 4?

Wow, here's a spectacularly amusing response to John McCain's gaffe about troop levels in Iraq (he said yesterday that they had been "drawn down to pre-surge levels" when in fact no such thing thing has ocurred). Ben Smith captures the massive hilarity:

McCain campaign: Don't nitpick his verb tenses

On a McCain campaign conference call,  Senator Jon Kyl did not concede that McCain had made an error in saying "We have drawn down to pre-surge levels," instead accusing the Obama campaign and reporters of "trying to nitpick the tense of the verb about the surge troops being home."

..."To get into a debate about a verb tense rather than the real fundamental national security issues at stake is really a distraction," [McCain advisor Randy Scheunemann] said.

This verb tense thing is a novel excuse, with potentially wide future use on both sides. Hillary, for instance, could have been referring to the risk of future sniper fire. Obama, perhaps, meant that the U.S. will, at some future date, add seven states.

John McCain: an angry, stupid old man who hates America and the English language?

I am pleasantly surprised that John McCain's most recent gaffe -- claiming that troops in Iraq are at pre-surge levels when in fact they are not -- is starting to get some attention from the MSM. Here's an item from a WaPo blog:

Sen. John McCain has attacked Sen. Barack Obama for not traveling to Iraq to see the "facts on the ground." But a recent statement by McCain about troop levels has his opponents raising questions about his own knowledge.

In comments to reporters on Thursday, McCain asserted that "I can tell you that it is succeeding. I can look you in the eye and tell you it's succeeding. We have drawn down to pre-surge levels. Basra, Mosul and now Sadr city are quiet and it's long and it's hard and it's tough and there will be setbacks."

In fact, as the Obama campaign was quick to point out, the troop level in Iraq is at about 155,000 right now, well above the 130,000 that would mark a return to pre-surge levels.

The McCain campaign's response is, typically, to lash out in anger:

Clearly John Kerry and Barack Obama have very little understanding of troop levels, but considering Barack Obama hasn’t been to Iraq in 873 days and has never had a one on one meeting with General Petraeus, it isn’t a surprise to anyone that he demonstrates weak leadership. What informed people understand, John McCain included, is that American troops are not even close to Surge levels. Three of the five Army ‘Surge’ brigades have been withdrawn and additional Marines that were initially deployed for the ‘Surge’ have come home as well – the remaining two brigades will be home in July. Talk about a political stunt, it’s sending out campaign surrogates to parse words about a topic Barack Obama has no experience with, and has shown zero interest in learning about.

As Ben Smith notes, the McCain campaign's response fails too address McCain's false claim; instead, they just lash out and attack anything with a (D) next to its name.

McCain says he knows so much about Iraq, but he keeps on getting everything wrong about it -- and his ignorance is hurting America. At some point we gotta start wondering: does John McCain hate America as much as George Bush and Dick Cheney?

The campaigns of both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have outlasted the now former relationship between Sarah Larson and George Clooney. Awww.

(By the way, this is a scheduled post -- I'm probably asleep right now. Feel free to use it as an open thread, or just stare at George or Sarah or both. I know...it's kind of hard not to.)

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on KGO radio yesterday:

There's not going to be a fight at the convention...we are all going to urge our folks to next week make a decision very quickly. Simple math indicates that next Tuesday...Obama will probably have the necessary number.

Another Reid quote:

I don't lament this campaign taking as long as it has, but it's time it ended. ...By this time next week, it will all be over give or take a day.

The L.A. Times reports that Reid and Pelosi are working together to end the campaign next week.

WASHINGTON -- Hillary Rodham Clinton is coming under growing pressure from Democratic Party leaders and elected officials to quit the race, while some of her own supporters seem reluctant to rally behind her strategy for salvaging her presidential ambitions.

Intervening in the primary fight, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are sending public and private messages to superdelegates urging them to make a choice once primary voting ends Tuesday.

..."We're going to urge folks to make a decision quickly -- next week," Reid said in an interview with a radio program in his state of Nevada. "We agree there won't be a fight at the convention."

Pelosi and Reid have made it clear this thing will come to a close next week, and there's no one better positioned to get the undeclared superdelegates off their butts than those two. Assuming they pull it off, the race will have moved that much closer to finality regardless of what Clinton does.

Here's the background: Father Michael Pfleger, a Catholic priest from Chicago who has known Barack Obama for years, gave a guest sermon at Trinity this past weekend. In his sermon, he mocked Hillary's tears in New Hampshire and suggested she was crying merely because she had felt she was entitled to the the nomination based on her relationship with Bill and the fact that she was white.

In some ways it was reminiscent of Geraldine Ferraro's attack on Obama as a sexist, except Ferraro was once a part of the Clinton campaign, and she went on national television. Pfleger made his remarks from the pulpit of a church in Chicago. Here's a video of Pfleger and Ferraro side-by-side, if you're interested in making the comparison.

Anyway, Barack Obama gets out ahead of the story and flatly condemns Pfleger's remarks:

I am deeply disappointed in Father Pfleger's divisive, backward-looking rhetoric, which doesn't reflect the country I see or the desire of people across America to come together in common cause.

Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised that the Clinton campaign was unhappy with Barack's condemnation. Here's Howard Wolfson's response:

We are disappointed that Senator Obama didn't specifically reject Father's Pflegler's despicable comments about Senator Clinton, and assume he will do so.

Huh? Does Howard live on the same planet as you and me? "Divisive" and "backward-loooking" aren't good enough? Expression deep disappointment isn't good enough? What do they want him to do? Curse up a storm? For crying out loud!

Someone over in Camp Clinton needs to chill out. Seriously -- take a deep breath.

Affairs, evictions, even cocktail waitresses: Nevada governor Jim Gibbons' divorce scandal has it all. Yesterday, his wife accused him of an affair. Last month, he tried to evict her from the governor's mansion. And now he's losing support from his own party, which, thankfully, is the GOP.

The Las Vegas Gleaner is on top of it all, in typically hilarious fashion.

Here's some video to give you a flavor of the local coverage:

Isn't it a bit ironic that Bill Clinton is going on and on about the the popular vote when he's the first president since Woodrow Wilson in 1916 to have been re-elected without achieving a popular vote majority in either of his elections?

In 1992, he won 43.01% of the vote. In 1996, he won 49.23%.

In 1912, Wilson won 41.84% of the vote. In 1916, he won 49.24%.

Data from Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections.

Update on 5/30 at 11:45PM: The point of this post is not to dispute the legitimacy of Bill Clinton's election -- he was the popular vote leader both times.

Moreover, even though a majority of voters chose someone other than Bill Clinton, in both of his elections, they were also both 100% legitimate. Why? Because he followed the rules that everybody had agreed to ahead of time and won large electoral college majorities.

Similarly, Barack Obama has followed all the rules -- he's not the one trying to change the rules in the middle of the game. The Clintons are the ones trying to change the rules, not just on Michigan and Florida, but also on how the Democratic Party judges the winner of the primaries and caucuses.

Their popular vote argument has jingoistic appeal, but it quickly falls apart once you think about it. Under Democratic Party rules, each state has a unique method of electing its pledged delegates; you can't simply add up the results of each contest and say the resulting number is a true reflection of the popular will. It's actually worse than meaningless, because when you do add them together, what you end up with is a situation where 27 states end up getting their power significantly diluted. For more on that, see this post.

There's certainly some jingoistic appeal to Hillary Clinton's "count every vote" refrain, but the truth is that what she is proposing is a massive power grab, and as in every massive power grab, there are winners and losers.

In this case, it turns out that the losers would be 27 states representing two-fifths of the U.S. population.

Under Clinton's proposal, they would go from having a proportional voice in the nomination process to having a dramatically minimized one, from having 41% of the votes to select the nominee down to having just 24%.

These are state that even Mark Penn would admit matter, among them New York, Washington, Connecticut, Florida, and Michigan.

The flip side is that 22 states would have their power boosted dramatically. And the partisan makeup of these states is surprising: 10 of them actually voted for Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton.

Here's some more examples of how Clinton's "popular vote" argument screws Michigan:

• 12 states that have a smaller population than Michigan nonetheless cast more votes
• In these states, on average the population was 6.6 million and the number of votes cast was 1 million.
• Michigan's population is 10 million and just under 600,000 people voted.
• Therefore, on a per capita basis, the 12 states states with smaller populations but more voters would have 2.6 times the impact of Michigan if Clinton's popular vote argument were adopted, violating the Federalist principles upon which our system of government is based.

What Clinton is proposing is essentially the same as eliminating congressional districts and the senate with a system of proportional representation. Perhaps there's some merit to the idea, but I think everybody would agree that it would be unfair to have national elections for the Senate while different states have different rules for voting. (For example, Oregon, with vote by mail, would have disproportionate influence.)

The point is that while Clinton's "popular vote" war cry has some jingoistic resonance, upon closer examination, it falls apart under its own weight, independent of who it would help or hurt.

Again, the key principle here is that under our nomination system, each state -- within certain guidelines -- is free to choose its own system for electing pledged delegates. It's absurd to add together the "votes" from each of these systems, because in each state, a vote means something different.

And when you do go down that path, you end up with bizarre results, such as this one: under Clinton's standards, on a per capita basis, Wisconsin would have 3.4 times as much clout as Michigan. Surely any standard that would yield a result like that is deeply flawed -- and should not be adopted the Democratic Party.

I figure this deserves a post of its own given the concern I had about Carville's interview on GMA yesterday. From Greg Sargent at TPM:

In a quick phone interview with me just now, prominent Hillary supporter James Carville diverged from the Hillary campaign message on several key "electability" questions, saying that he thinks Obama "will" win the general election. ...Carville's repeated suggestions that Obama "will" beat McCain contrast with the core Hillary message -- repeated frequently by Hillary advisers -- that Obama merely "can" win a general election, while Hillary "will" win it. Carville's comments also suggest that with the fall contest looming, it's becoming tougher for prominent Hillary backers to sustain any argument that doesn't show full confidence in Obama's chances against McCain.

This interview is a good sign -- whatever you think of Carville's support for Clinton (I think it is out of loyalty), he's one of the most effective political communicators in the Democratic Party.

So Hillary Clinton's argument to superdelegates is that if you add up every contest, she's received (or will receive) more votes than Barack Obama. (Her claim is only true when you count certain votes and not others.)

She also says that if we don't count every vote cast in Michigan, we'll certainly lose the state in November.

But here's the problem:

• Michigan has cast 1.6% of all votes in the 2008 Democratic primaries (as defined by The Green Papers)
• If it were seated at full strength, Michigan would have 3.6% of all pledged delegates
• If it were seated at half strength (most likely), Michigan would have 1.9% of all pledged delegates

In other words, as long Michigan ends up being seated at half-strength or better, it will have more influence under a pledged delegate standard than under a popular vote standard.

So no matter how you count the votes, Michigan is better off under a pledged delegate standard than a popular vote standard.

Luckily for the Democratic Party, we use pledged delegates to make sure that every state has a fair shot at being heard, so Hillary Clinton's risky gambit to diminish Michigan's influence on the nomination process (sic) will fail, sparing us the inevitable electoral repercussions in November.

(Although all the numbers in this post are accurate, if you detected a bit of snark in my tone -- well, your snark detector is working just fine.)

Update: Here's some more ways the popular vote argument screws Michigan.

Vets for Freedom is a swiftboat-style group attacking Barack Obama, and the McCain campaign is using the exact same attack. Last week, HuffPo broke the news about the close ties between the two organizations. Now the question is: have they  coordinated their messages? If so, they are breaking the law.

Watch this video comparing a Vets for Freedom ad with the attack lines used by John McCain and his co-chairman Lindsey Graham who until yesterday was on the swiftboating group's board of advisors. It seems obvious there was message coordination, especially given the tight links between the two groups.

Already, the McCain campaign has been forced to ask Senators Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, both McCain campaign co-chairmen, to take leaves of absence from the group. However, two members of McCain's campaign team still maintain roles with the organization.

Now will the mainstream media cover this potential scandal of illegal campaign activity?

I keep on getting e-mails from Clinton supporters, frequently with the subject line something like this:

Check it out, 'bama whore, check it out

The e-mails go on to talk about how since March 1 Clinton has done better than Obama. Well, yes, this is true. But it's not like he won West Virginia in February, and now the state has turned on him. It's just the nature of the primary calendar. If you look at the bigger picture, which is really only measurable by public opinion polls, Obama has gained ground over Clinton every month this year.

One other point -- I'm sure some Clinton folks will bellyache, saying things would have been different if West Virginia had come in January instead of May. Well, first: it didn't. Second: John Edwards probably would have won West Virginia. After all, he got 7% of the vote there in May -- and he'd dropped out of the campaign nearly four months earlier.

With Lieberman and Graham at his side, McCain called the swiftboating group a "wonderful organization" just last month

NYT:

Senators Joseph I. Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, prominent surrogates for Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign, stepped down Wednesday from their positions with an independent group that released a pair of Internet advertisements attacking Senator Barack Obama on Iraq.

Mr. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, and Mr. Graham, Republican of South Carolina, were both on the policy advisory board to the organization, Vets for Freedom, which on Wednesday released its second Web advertisement in less than a week attacking Mr. Obama.

The senators’ positions with the group, which describes itself as a grass-roots advocacy organization pushing for victory in Iraq and Afghanistan, seemed to place them in contravention of new conflict-of-interest rules released by Mr. McCain’s campaign that specifically prohibit anyone “with a McCain campaign title or position” from participating in a “527 or other independent entity that makes public communications that support or oppose any presidential candidate.”

After inquiries from reporters, the senators released a joint letter to Vets for Freedom on Wednesday saying they had requested a leave from their positions to come into compliance with the new policy.

McCain announced his conflict of interest policy on May 15, and since that point, everyone who has been in violation of it has been asked to leave the campaign -- until now. Now, apparently, all you have to do is announce publicly that you've taken a leave of absence from the position creating the conflict. What a joke of a policy.

The real question though isn't whether or not the McCain campaign was in conflict with his own policy: it is whether his campaign violated the law by coordinating message strategy with Vets for Freedom.

Katrina Vanden Heuvel looks back at the Clinton campaign, concluding:

We have big issues and big differences to thrash out in this election. On June 4, I hope Hillary Clinton exits this historic race, gracefully, with dignity. That exit should win her the respect due her from all those in the Democratic party, whether they are Hillary or Barack supporters. It is an exit that is in the interest of the party and the nation. And she must know that how she exits will define the winner in November 2008.

It is time to for this election to turn to the defining issues.

As Vanden Heuvel shows, at almost every point in this campaign, Hillary Clinton has missed an opportunity to do the right thing. That's what got Hillary to where she's at now. And that's why it's hard to believe that she'll start on June 4.

All the current numbers are based on figures from DemConWatch. But don't blame them if I've screwed anything up. (Leave that to me!)

Excluding MI/FL:

• Today, Barack has 1,980 delegates, 45.5 short of the 2,025.5 he'll need
• By Tuesday, he will have picked up another 40 or delegates from the elections (perhaps more, probably not less).
• Assuming the forty superdelegates that Russert and Ambinder (who said 36) exist, than Barack should end Tuesday or begin Wednesday with 2060 or so -- well beyond the magic number that everybody agreed to at the start of the campaign.

Including MI/FL at full strength (this will not ever happen, but being able to say he's got enough delegates that he'd win IF they were seated at full strength will be an important talking point):

• Today, Barack has 2,081 delegates (including 22 of the uncomitted Michigan delegates), putting him 129 short of the 2,210 he'd need.
• Projecting 40 for Tuesday and assuming the 40 "banked" delegates exist, Barack will have 2,161 delegates, leaving him 49 short.
• There would be 18 Edwards delegates and 33 uncommitted Michigan delegates. Assuming that he can get most of these delegates on board, he'd only need a handful of undeclared supers to come on board to hit 2,210.  With a lot of luck, he might even be able to say that he's got the 2,210 number locked down by Tuesday or Wednesday; it should certainly by possible very shortly after Tuesday.

The value of getting to that 2,210 number is that Clinton has no comeback; I don't like playing the game by her rules, but if someone proposes a game you know you can't lose, it's not the worst thing in the world to take them up on it.

ABC News' Sunlen Miller reports: Sen. Barack Obama has high hopes for the results of the last primary contests on Tuesday: He believes that will likely mark the start of the general election.

Asked aboard his plane returning to Chicago from Colorado if the general election will begin after Tuesday’s voting in South Dakota and Montana, Obama answered in one word: "Yes."

Obama said he believes at that point he will be the nominee. But with three primary contests left -- Puerto Rico on Sunday and Montana and South Dakota on Tuesday -- Obama is still couching his prognosis ever so slightly.

"You know, it’s technically not over until we have the number of delegates needed to secure the nomination," Obama said of the 2026 delegates needed. "Once we have that number, we will focus on the general election."

One thing to note is that 2,026 number looks like one that ABC inserted. Whatever happens this weekend, it seems extremely unlikely that 2,026 will be the number. That's why he's been stockpiling superdelegates -- so that whatever the number is, he'll be able to meet it on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning at the latest.

Second, I think it's clear the Clinton campaign is going to push back against the Obama campaign hard, and they will focus on their opinion of the so-called popular vote. The Obama campaign is going to need be ready to push back against the Clinton popular vote nonsense even harder. I keep on saying this, but the key reason why the popular vote isn't meaningful is simply that every state has a different mechanism for selecting delegates. You can't just total up all these different contests with different rules and call it democratic.

Third, no matter what the RBC decides, and no matter where Obama is on Tuesday night with total delegates, he needs to get to 2,210 as quickly as possible. Having 2,210 delegates will allow him to say that no matter what happens with FL/MI, he's got the nomination wrapped up; that at this point, it's an RBC thing, and it won't effect the nomination, and for Clinton to continue beating the Florida and Michigan drum divisive and nothing more.

Here's James Carville, from a little-noticed interview this morning on ABC's Good Morning America:

I would say it would probably be decided by the convention. It was a very big setback, I thought, when Senator Obama had his campaign try to hype this idiotic story out of South Dakota [Clinton's RFK comments]. I thought that set things back.

...I'm saying this. On this date [June 3], I don't know if it's going to happen. There's a chance she's going to be the winner in the popular vote. Already, we're seeing emerging a pattern in the polls that she is the stronger, and looks like by more than a little bit, general election candidate

Well, no one said it would be easy.

Update 1: Looking at the transcript again, I realize Carville's language is ambiguous. I read it to mean that the convention would decide the nominee, as in "the bottle of wine was opened BY the waiter." But it is possible that he means it would be settled "by the time the convention rolls around." I'm going to err on the side of caution and change my title from "Clinton taking it to convention" to "Clinton taking it past June 3."

Update 2: Assuming Carville meant "by the time of the convention" as opposed to "by the convention itself," what kind of timeframe might we be looking at? Well, if she is negotiating for something, then it would be resolved as soon as that negotiation is resolved. (Of course, if the negotiation isn't resolved, then things would drag on.) If her main goal is appealing whatever decision the RBC makes on Saturday, than the earliest conceivable timeframe in which she would give up is when the credentials committee meets. I've read that the credentials committee meets in July, but I don't know if that is a hard and fast date -- perhaps they could meet earlier.

Update 3: Nancy Pelosi is stepping up to the plate to put the kibosh on Carville's nonsense. Hurray for the Speaker! This is key -- Pelosi can't force Clinton to quit, but she can quickly rally enough delegates to make it clear that there is no hope for Clinton winning the nomination under any scenario; once that happens, if Clinton stays in, she'll just be doing it to divide the party, and people will start jumping from her campaign in droves.

Yesterday, The Daily Show was at its finest, so damn accurate that it almost wasn't even funny. I've posted the two clips below the fold (Comedy Central embeds slow down the home page).

To give you a flavor, here's how Jon Stewart frames it:

"The Clintons, simple people, who want but one thing: to leave peacefully in a country that they themselves run."

The second clip is particularly amazing -- it shows everything that was wrong about the RFK comment, even though the MSM is afraid to discuss it now that the Clinton camp has blamed Obama.

Interesting result from the latest SurveyUSA VP pairings poll, this one in Michigan: an Obama-Edwards pairing would provide a small boost to Obama while an Obama-Clinton pairing would a small negative. Without VPs, Obama loses to McCain by 4; against a McCain-Romney ticket, Obama-Edwards loses by 3 and Obama-Clinton loses by 5.

This might not be enough to prove that Edwards would give a bigger boost to Obama than Clinton, but it should help knock back the idea that Obama needs Clinton in any way.

The difference seems to mostly be gender-related. While the Obama-Clinton ticket does 2 points better than the Obama-Edwards ticket among women, it does 7 points worse among men.

Another advantage Edwards would provide over Clinton is his spouse: I think Elizabeth Edwards would be a tremendous asset, whereas Bill would be more...complicated.

SUSA also tested tickets with Richardson, Clark, Sebelius, Rendell, Kaine, Biden, and Webb. All lost to McCain-Romney by between 14 and 19 points. The big difference of course is that John Edwards is better known than any of the other people. It may be an unfair advantage, and it might be a surmountable one, but it is real -- Edwards, who is already pretty well-defined, could hit the ground running. Most of the other candidates would need to be introduced to the public, a process that can take several weeks.

The two names I'd like to know more about on that list are Sebelius and Kaine, mostly because I keep on hearing such good things about them, particularly Sebelius. The other candidates on that list, for various reasons, don't excite me.

A little over a year ago, Scott McClellan was a guest on Real Time and sat through one of Bill Maher's best "New Rules" segments ever -- the one one elitism.

About 1:15 into the Clip, Maher calls Bush "President Shit-for-Brains." I remember thinking McClellan was a good sport about Maher's line -- he laughed good naturedly -- but now I'm thinking he actually agreed with Maher.

On another note, Keith Olbermann raised a good question -- now that McClellan has raised these allegations, will Colin Powell step forward?

And finally, on the same topic but somewhat tangential: I know there is a wide range of opinion on the political consequences of impeachment, and whether or not they should be taken in to account. One important thing to remember is that it's really impossible to predict the political consequences of impeachment without knowing what the evidence for impeachment was.

For sake of argument, if the evidence for impeachment were a report by Henry Waxman -- well, that's probably going to lead to a politically disastrous impeachment trial. On the other hand, if both McClellan and Powell step forward with evidence that Bush lied about WMD -- not hearsay, but actual documents -- then wouldn't the country demand impeachment?

Andrew Sullivan highlights some of the key passages relating to the Iraq War from Scott McClellans' new book. McClellan's basic points:

1. He says Bush's real motivation for the war in Iraq was the desire to transform the Middle East -- not to protect America from Iraqi WMD
2. He claims Bush was guilty of "intentionally ignoring" data that did not support the case for WMD
3. He concludes: "President Bush managed the crisis in a way that almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option."

Sullivan notes an important implication:

If this is true, if the president intentionally ignored data refuting the existence of Saddam's WMDs, he should be impeached.

I agree with Sullivan, though I think if any of the three points are true, Bush should be impeached. Practically, however, the "deliberate deception" standard is the probably the only one that could muster the political support an impeachment proceeding would require.

McClellan's claims certainly demand further investigation by Congress, a point made today by Robert Wexler. I know that impeachment would be political tricky, but if that investigation results in hard, irrefutable evidence that Bush intentionally deceived the country into war, we have an obligation to impeach him, no matter political consequences.

From the third paragraph of Hillary Clinton's memo to superdelegates (emphasis added):

"Indeed, since March 1st, she has won over a half million more votes than Senator Obama (difference: + 517,748)."

The problem? The Clinton memo overstates the gap by 36,761 votes -- 8% more than the actual difference.

Now this might not seem like the biggest deal in the world, but consider that 36,761 is bigger than the final margin in 21 different contests (including 17 states). More importantly, it calls into question all the other "key metrics" Clinton cites in her memo.

Hillary Clinton, last night: “Who is the stronger candidate against John McCain? We have not gone through this exciting, unprecedented, historic election, only to lose."

Hillary Clinton, last month saying that Obama can win (turn the volume down a bit if you're at work!):

Sorry about that...but you've been yes-rolled. :)

A certain presidential candidate is making some rather extravagant claims about leading in every single poll taken here on planet earth, so let's just look at the numbers.

This chart shows, by month, the average net margin of victory or defeat for Obama and Clinton versus McCain. It relies on every single poll aggregated by pollster.com except for those polls in which only one candidate appeared. In other words, this is a true apples-to-apples test.

As you can see, even though Hillary Clinton has made significant strides relative to Obama, he still outperforms her on average. Sure, you can cherry pick whatever results Karl Rove may want by taking a selective look at state-by-state polling, but there's no ambiguity: Hillary Clinton does not do any better than Barack Obama versus John McCain.

It's also worth noting that one of the reasons for the tightening is that since March, the GOP attack machine has focused almost exclusively on Barack Obama. Simultaneously, he's faced withering attacks from Hillary Clinton and had to deal with two Jeremiah Wright flareups, not to mention ABC's assault on his patriotism. And yet he's still more than held his own.

From the concluding paragraph of Hillary Clinton's memo to super delegates:

The race will be decided by automatic delegates, with no candidate getting the majority of total delegates needed.

So after all her talk about the importance of the letting every state vote and respecting the will of the people...Hillary Clinton settled on her final answer: screw the democratic process, it doesn't matter.

Ah, won't it be fun when this stuff is over?

Every state has a different way of electing delegates. Some use open primaries, some closed, some semi-open, and some semi-closed. The ones that are closed or semi-closed have different registration deadlines. Some states have caucuses. Some of the state that have caucuses record votes. Some don't. Some states have huge numbers of registered Democrats who probably won't vote Democratic in the fall. And in some states, there's even a primary and a caucus hybrid.

The point is that under the Democratic system, for better or for worse, you simply can't add up all the various contests and end up with a meaningful number. If all the states used the same mechanism, the results would mean something. But that's not our current system, for better or for worse.

Maybe someone from DCW can help me figure out how Mark Halperin makes this a net gain of 2 for Clinton (you can see a screen capture here):

Tuesday’s Super Battle
Net gain: Obama 0, Clinton 2*
CLINTON GETS: Virgin Islands DNC super Kevin Rodriquez, who switches back to Clinton after previously moving to Obama. Read release.
OBAMA GETS: Wyoming party vice chair Nancy Drummond. Read release.
*Rodriquez’s switch takes one away from Obama, gives Clinton back an additional super. Permalink

So...Obama -1 (Rodriguez), Clinton +1 (Rodriguez), Obama +1 (Drummond). Obama nets 0, Clinton 1.

I would say it was just a typo, but the fact that Halperin used an asterisk to explain his math tells me he actually put some thought into this one. And that's...scary. I guess now we know why some folks in the media still think the popular vote is a meaningful metric.

(Halperin also didn't mention that Obama picked up Ben Pangelinan of Guam, so on the day, each candidate actually netted 1 superdelegate.)

Tim Russert, May 27, 2008 on NBC Nightly News:

The Obama campaign will claim a mathematical lock on the nomination one week from tonight [after South Dakota and Montana], Wednesday morning at the latest...and then Hillary Clinton will have to, I believe, acknowledge that reality and make some very difficult decisions for her campaign. 

Russert's report puts an exclamation point on Ambinder's post from earlier this morning that Obama had three dozen superdelegates sitting in the wings, ready to put Obama over the top depending on what the Rules and Bylaws Committee decides on Saturday. If you're interested in a detailed overview on why what the RBC decides won't make a difference in the nomination battle, read Al Giordano's post on the subject last week.

I hope when Michelle is running for president, Barack remembers this video clip.

Update: On Sunday, David Axelrod said: “By any calculation, we’re within striking distance of getting the absolute number that we need and I’m confident — I’m confident that we will [right after South Dakota and Montana].”

I have a feeling I'm a little late to the party on this one, but just in case I'm not, here's Marc Ambinder (via Avi Zenilman):

The Obama campaign has, for the first time, really, begun to bank delegates. Sources close to the campaign estimate that as many as three dozen Democratic superdelegates have privately pledged to announce their support for Obama on June 4 or 5. The campaign is determined that Obama not end the first week in June without securing the support of delegates numbering 2026 -- or 2210, as the case may be.

Emphasis added.

On Countdown, Keith Olbermann is reporting that Phil Gramm -- John McCain's campaign general co-chair and economic policy guru -- was a lobbyist for UBS and lobbied Congress on the mortage crisis at the same time that he helped McCain develop his housing policy.

Bill Clinton, on Sunday: "I have never seen anything like it. I have never seen a candidate treated so disrespectfully just for running. ... I can't believe it. It is just frantic the way they are trying to push and pressure and bully all these superdelegates to come out."

:: ::

Without editorial comment, here's a list of quotes and statements about the 1992 Democratic nomination battle from March and April of that year. (Links after the jump.)

"Things I see happening in the Brown campaign lead me to believe something destructive is happening. I'd say it's time for Democrats to link arms, dig in our heels, set our sights and work together to put Bill Clinton in the White House in 1992."
-- Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin (NYT, 3/27/92)

"In an interview, Ronald H. Brown, the party chairman, said he wanted to maintain his neutrality but was compelled to speak out against what he described as the former California Governor's 'scorched-earth policy' of verbal assault on Mr. Clinton's record and character. "
-- NYT, 3/27/92

"It's mathematically impossible for Brown to get the nomination."
-- Clinton spokesman George Stephanopoulos on Clinton's last foe (NYT, 4/8/92)

"In the future, people will look back upon this week and this campaign as a turning point, not for Bill Clinton,  but for the Democratic Party and for America."
-- Bill Clinton, after winning New York's primary (NYT, 4/8/92)

"People are starting to rally around the flag."
-- Dee Dee Myers, Clinton Press Sec'y (NYT, 4/10/92)

"It's time to close ranks. We cannot wait until July when we already know who has earned the right to be our nominee and who will be our nominee."
-- West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller (NYT, 4/11/92)

"Indeed, reports circulating on Capitol Hill said the Clinton campaign was mounting a strong campaign to swing uncommitted senators behind the Arkansas Governor, and that Ronald H. Brown, the party chairman, was taking part in them."
-- NYT, 4/29/92

"I cannot imagine a set of circumstances that would keep Bill Clinton from having a majority of the delegates by the end of the primary season."
-- Democratic Party Chairman Ronald H. Brown (NYT, 4/29/92)

"Mr. Brown added that he had long hoped for an early nominee 'so we can focus our time and attention on George Bush.'"
-- NYT, 4/29/92

I'm going to blame the inspiration for this on Joe Sudbay.

Yeah, I'm ashamed of myself for taking such an easy shot..

(The real ad is here.)

Vets for Freedom is a swiftboating group now attacking Barack Obama with a nasty smear ad suggesting that he would put America's enemies first. Apparently, John McCain approves -- he calls the group a "wonderful organization."

In addition four of his campaign officials are connected with the group: Senators Lindsay Graham and Joe Lieberman, both campaign co-chairman, also both sit on the Vets for Freedom board of advisors. The group's executive director, Pete Hegseth, is on McCain's Virginia steering committee along with the group's treasurer, Wade Zirkle. (Update: Hegseth says the McCain campaign's announcement of his role on the steering committee was in error, though the McCain website has not been updated since the announcement in January. In addition, Max Boot, McCain's foreign policy adviser, also sits on the Vets for Freedom advisory board.)

All four men are in violation of McCain's recently announced conflict of interest policy, which states: "No person with a McCain Campaign title or position may participate in a 527 or other independent entity that makes public communications that support or oppose any presidential candidate."

Earlier this month, the campaign asked GOP consultant Craig Shirley to leave the campaign because of the same sort of conflict. If McCain also asks these four men to leave the campaign, the challenge for him will be to explain he lavishly praised as a "wonderful organization" as recently as April 8.

McCain's praise for Vets for Freedom came at a rally staged for the media. At the rally, McCain was introduced by David Bellavia, a Vets for Freedom co-founder and candidate for Congress in New York's 26th district. In his introduction, Bellavia likened Barack Obama to Tiger Words, bringing a big smile to McCain's face.

Take action:

• Call John McCain at (703) 418-2008 and ask him tell his swiftboating pals to stop their smears

For more background:

• Lieberman, Graham Violating McCain Campaign's Ethics Rules? (Pitney and Stein, HuffPo)
• Busted: McCain Message Coordination w/Anti-Obama VFF (Steven R, Daily Kos)
• Joe & Lindsey Violate McCain's "Ethics" "Rule" (TeddySanFran, Firedoglake)
• McCain advisers on independent group attacking Obama (Mark Silva, The Swamp)

Note: All the video of McCain, Lieberman, and Graham was made possible by the Democratic Party's  Flipper TV project which collects and makes available raw video of McCain available for YouTubes like this.

So John McCain is trotting out a familiar argument today, slapping Barack Obama with the "surrender" label for supporting a timetable in Iraq:

For him to talk about dates for withdrawal, which basically is surrender in Iraq after we're succeeding so well is, I think, really inexcusable.

This is the same John McCain who supports a timetable of his own. In a speech describing what America would be like at the end of his first term, he said:

By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom

McCain says that the problem with Obama's appoach to Iraq is that if we withdraw our combat forces, the country would descend into chaos, and we would be forced to return.

But if he believes that, wouldn't his plan present same problem? Like Obama, he plans on leaving some troops in the country, but not in combat roles.

For some inexplicable reason, John McCain has chosen Memorial Day to defend his opposition to Jim Webb's new G.I. Bill -- opposition that he shares with George W. Bush and a handful of other right-wing Republicans.

The Bush-McCain argument against the new bill is hardly inspiring -- if G.I. benefits are expanded, they say, military reenlistment rates will plummet. The New York Times responds:

They would prefer that college benefits for service members remain just mediocre enough that people in uniform are more likely to stay put.

They have seized on a prediction by the Congressional Budget Office that new, better benefits would decrease re-enlistments by 16 percent, which sounds ominous if you are trying — as Mr. Bush and Mr. McCain are — to defend a never-ending war at a time when extended tours of duty have sapped morale and strained recruiting to the breaking point.

Their reasoning is flawed since the C.B.O. has also predicted that the bill would offset the re-enlistment decline by increasing new recruits — by 16 percent. The chance of a real shot at a college education turns out to be as strong a lure as ever. This is good news for our punishingly overburdened volunteer army, which needs all the smart, ambitious strivers it can get.

This isn't really a partisan argument. It's more like Bush-McCain versus the world.

Webb's legislation passed with 75 votes. And last month, John Warner, the former Republican Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee joined in the criticism of McCain's argument:

“I think this argument that it’s going to hurt retention is very thin and tenuous, very thin and tenuous,” said the former chairman. “The flip side of that is, putting a big piece of cheese out there will induce more qualified people to join just to get this. It should be a tremendous incentive for recruitment.”

McCain's opposition to the expansion of G.I. benefits is oddly stubborn. Then again, given McCain's fabulous wealth -- he owns ten homes and flies around the country in his wife's private jet -- it might just be that John McCain is out of touch with normal Americans.

From Recount, here's the unfolding of Joe Lieberman's capitulation to Bush lawyers on counting unpostmarked, undated, unsigned overseas ballots received after election day:

Overall, overseas ballots received after election day boosted Bush's total by 739 votes. (Gore actually lead Bush by 202 votes in the ballots cast and received on or before election day.) Of the 2,411 late ballots, 680 were later determined to have been illegally counted by The New York Times.

An analysis by Princeton and Harvard researchers found that if these 680 illegal ballots hadn't been counted, Bush's final margin would have been closer to 251 votes. That probably wouldn't have been a big enough difference to swing the election even if SCOTUS hadn't stopped the recount and nothing else had changed, but it does make it all the more clear that Al Gore actually received more votes than George Bush on election day -- even when you ignore GOP voter supression tactics or the butterfly ballot.

And in the context of the recount, it pretty much killed Gore's chances of winning. As Kevin Spacey says sarcastically at the end of the scene: "Thank you Joe Lieberman."

(As an aside, Barack Obama once called Lieberman his "mentor." It's proof that he's not perfect, and hopefully he learned from that mistake!)

In poll after poll, more voters say they would vote for Barack Obama than Hillary Clinton against John McCain.

Why is this? What is his problem with voters?

If he's not careful, he might actually get elected president.

(Note: The dataset for this chart includes every poll on pollster.com that featured both an Obama-McCain matchup and a Clinton-McCain matchup. In other words: no cherry-picking. Obama's advantage is real.)

File this under the category of "no shit":

Seriously, who doesn't know this? It's like the MSM hasn't been beating this into our brains every single day of the week since March. And now TPM -- without offering any fresh analysis of its own -- is not only pimping the meme, but embracing it's ties to Newsweek, another MSM creature?

Lame.  And don't give me that arrogant "Well, if you think Obama is the nominee, why should we cover Hillary?" response. It doesn't matter what I think -- you're still covering the primary, so you should do a fair job of it.

Yes, he's kinda' sorta' dancing at the beginning of the clip...for about 5 seconds.

I'm going to sleep now. Hopefully when I wake up Paul Krugman will have gotten some sense knocked into him. He could start by reading this article by John Harwood:

Ruy Teixeira, a Democratic analyst of voting trends, wrote the book on the core issue in the endgame of the party’s nomination fight. Its title is “America’s Forgotten Majority: Why the White Working Class Still Matters.”

One might conclude that Mr. Teixeira is troubled by Senator Barack Obama’s performance in recent primaries against Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton among the voters known by nicknames like Joe Sixpack or Nascar Dad or Waitress Mom.

Actually, he is not.

Mr. Obama, who leads the delegate count, “is clocking in where he needs to be” with white, working-class voters to win the White House in November, Mr. Teixeira said.

Happy Memorial Day (or whatever it is we're supposed to say on Memorial Day)!

I just finished watching Recount on HBO. I thought it was a pretty good movie, especially if you're a political junkie.

It's impossible to watch it and not think about what would have happened if so many voters hadn't been purged from the rolls, if the butterfly ballot had been designed better, if Al Gore had pursued statewide recounts from the beginning, if the SCOTUS hadn't ruled they way they had, if the networks hadn't called the state while the panhandle was still voting, etc.

After the election, a consortium of media organizations took a look at some of those issues, and released the results of their study in November, 2001. Although the study found that under the most inclusive standard (and, indeed, under most standards) Al Gore received more votes than George W. Bush, most journalists followed The New York Times' lead and focused on what the results would have been had the SCOTUS allowed the recount to continue.

By that standard, Bush received more votes, but to determine what that standard was, the consortium relied on on county canvassing boards to declare how they would have counted ballots. So it's not ultimately clear what really would have happened.

More importantly though, that's not the real issue -- the issue is that even leaving aside things like the butterfly ballot (which hurt Gore) or voting in the panhandle (which likely hurt Bush), Gore almost certainly received more actual votes than Bush in Florida. I wonder if the media would have covered their results differently if it hadn't been after 9/11; I suspect that the coverage would have been very different.

The NYT has a cool "what if" scenario calculator if you'd like to play around with the possibilities.

My biggest complaint about the movie had nothing to do with the movie itself -- I was hoping to see a preview for Entourage. I'm seriously in need of some new episodes, especially now that the Sopranos are gone. When is their next season?

This is pretty funny--Jake Tapper decides to take whack at Barack Obama, calling him a "one-man gaffe machine." He lists as evidence a couple of trivial items:

• Obama inadvertantly said Sioux City instead of Sioux Falls (Obama corrected himsef quickly)
• Obama called Sunrise, Florida Sunshine instead.

Next, Tapper links to this report by David Wright with the headline "Obama Gaffes on Iraq and Afghanistan." Sounds promising, but I can only assume Tapper saw the headline and read no further. When you actually read the updates to Wright's original story, you realize Obama never gaffed and Wright essentially retracted most of the story.

Tapper then launches into his own supposed Obama-gaffe (about FARC). It sounds like gaffe alright, but then in two separate updates Tapper is forced to walk significant parts of it back. Maybe if he had just talked to the Obama camp in the first place (I thought that is what reporters did?) then he wouldn't have gotten so much wrong.

Still, despite all that, I like Tapper's blog. I mean, he's wrong an awful lot, but he's entertaining, and sometimes he does some really great reporting.

Two of John McCain's campaign co-chairs, Senators Lindsay Graham and Joe Lieberman, turn out to be advisers to an anti-Obama 527. There's nothing illegal about this, but it does violate McCain's stated policy of not not having members of his campaign team also work with 527s involved in the presidential campaign.

It should be fun to torment him over this inconsistency, but the thing that really caught my attention was the ad itself. It closes with a loaded rhetorical question: "If Barack Obama won't listen to us, who will he listen to?" Nothing surprising about that kind of attack coming from the GOP, but the funny thing is that John McCain is the one listening to terrorists and quoting them on the campaign trail. For example:

General Petraeus is correct when he says that the central battle ground in the struggle against Al Qaeda is Iraq and Osama Bin Laden just confirmed that. So General Petraeus and I and Osama Bin Laden are in agreement. It is hard to understand why Senator Clinton and Senator Obama do not understand that. I don’t know if its naïveté or what the problem is, but it’s obvious that they are dead wrong.

Can you imagine if Barack Obama had said he agreed with bin Laden on something, especially if he then used it in a political attack against McCain? It's amazing what the press let's Teflon John get away with.

Daily Kos diarist IAmNobody conducts a brilliant analysis:

This is what IAmNobody found:

• Daily Kos: The 100,000 posts were made by 8,939 users. The top 20 users posted 8% of all posts. 1,219 had posted at least 20 times accounting for 68% of all posts.
• H44: The 100,000 posts were made by 310 users. The top 20 users posted 45% of all posts. 171 had posted at least 20 times accounting for 99% of all posts.

Hillary Clinton, defending her remarks:

I was making the simple point that given our history, the length of this year's primary contest is nothing unusual.

There's a lot of things you could say about 2008, but making the claim that it's length is "nothing unusual" is not one of them.

First, take a look at the number of days that lapsed between the first competitive contest and June 1:

• 1968 -- 81 days (first contest was NH on Mar 12).
• 1992 -- 104 days (first competitive contest was NH on Feb 18 due to Harkin).
• 2008 -- 150 days (first contest was IA on Jan 3).

Second, look at the number of days that elapsed between the candidate's campaign kickoff announcement and June 1?

• 1968 -- RFK had been a candidate for 76 days (announced March 16).
• 1992 -- Bill Clinton had been a candidate for 242 days (October 3, 1991).
• 2008 -- Hillary Clinton will have been a candidate for 498 days (January 20, 2007).

I'm getting so sick of Hillary Clinton's bull.

Bill Clinton today:

Clinton also spoke against bullying superdelegates to make up their minds, saying, "I cant believe it. It is just frantic the way they are trying to push and pressure and bully all these superdelegates to come out. 'Oh, this is so terrible: The people they want her. Oh, this is so terrible: She is winning the general election, and he is not. Oh my goodness, we have to cover this up.'"

Give me a freaking break -- this false claim about electability is based on an analysis by Karl Rove. Is Bill Clinton really asking superdelegates to trust that criminal with an unbiased analysis?

When you actually look at all the national polls with both candidates, it's obvious that Barack Obama is stronger than Hillary Clinton. Here's a chart based on data I posted yesterday:

Every single month this year Barack Obama has done better against John McCain than Hillary Clinton. It's true, he took a big hit in March as McCain wrapped up the nomination and the Jeremiah Wright issue flared up.

But despite that, Barack Obama still did better than Hillary Clinton. Even if you think he's a weak general election candidate, you have to conclude from this data that Hillary Clinton is weaker.

More importantly, this data shows that except for the possible exception of the month of April, it's virtually impossible that Barack Obama has any meaningful problem with whites, at least relative to Clinton.

So when Bill Clinton tells superdelegates that his wife is doing better than Barack Obama in general election polls, it's just not true. So now the question is: how much longer are the undeclared superdelegates going to sit there and keep on taking Bill Clinton's lies?

Even if you set aside Clinton's RFK remarks, her historical analogies were absurd. Bill Clinton had the nomination wrapped up long before June of 1992, and it wasn't a secret. Here's Tim Russert on April 8, 1992:

As Russert says, even if Jerry Brown had won every single remaining delegate at that point, he still could not have secured the nomination. Surely, Hillary Clinton is aware of this fact.

I wonder if there are any Hillary quotes from before June 1992 indicating she felt that Bill had won the nomination? That would really complete the circle -- and I don't think anyone smart would bet against the existence of such a statement in the public record.

Whether its the Iowa caucuses, when the campaign would end, or whether the voters or superdelegates should have final say, the only unifying theme of Hillary Clinton's arguments about how the process should work is her breathtaking cynicism. Here's a new video showing two of her biggest flip-flops:

Clinton's arguments about the nomination process are transparent. It's obvious what she 's up to: taking one last shot at winning the nomination.

Here's Barack breaking it down on his plane ride back from Puerto Rico:

He's only half-right when he says Michigan and Florida are Hillary Clinton's "last slender hope." The truth is she can't win the nomination, but Michigan and Florida are her only hope for extending the campaign.

You've got to be kidding me:

1. Hillary Clinton is claiming that she is the victim of her remarks
2. Terry McAuliffe is blaming Barack Obama on FOX News Sunday.
3. Howard Wolfson is supporting both Clinton and McAuliffe on Face the Nation and calling Obama's response to the situation 'inflammatory.'

Unreal. Remember this is what Barack said:

"I have learned that when you are campaigning for as many months as Senator Clinton and I have been campaigning, sometimes you get careless in terms of the statements that you make, and I think that is what happened here," he said in an interview with Radio ISLA. "Senator Clinton says that she did not intend any offense by it, and I will take her at her word on that."

And this is what the Clinton campaign calls 'inflammatory'? What assholes.

Here he is at the Wesleyan Commencement Cermony, speaking in Teddy Kennedy's place:

I've been away from the computer and all sources of news until just a few minutes, so I'm getting back up to speed on the goings on since early this morning.

Anything major happen since then? I did notice on MTP, Tim Russert disproved Hillary Clinton's claim about Bill Clinton and 1992 with a clip of...himself, from spring 1992. Tim Russert must love his job: he may be the only person in America who can play a clip of himself to prove a point about political history.

You may never again hear Barack Obama talk about somebody's "last slender hope," and if he does, there's almost no chance it will get you as fired up as this will. From CNN:

 Sen. Barack Obama accused Sen. Hillary Clinton of stoking anger in Florida and Michigan over the Democratic Party's decision not to recognize the states' primary votes.

"They weren't stirring it up when they didn't need the delegates," he said. "Let's not sort of pretend that we don't know what's going on. This is, from their perspective, their last slender hope to make arguments about how they can win."

On what the Rules and Bylaws Committee should do (Bloomberg):

"I just want them to decide how to approach this in a way in which the Florida and Michigan delegates are seated and they are happy," Obama said yesterday. "I want to be looking at them when I'm standing on stage in Denver in August," he said, referring to the Democratic National Convention.

Reuters reports that he is looking forward:

He said on Saturday he would need to "pivot quickly" in June, if he obtains the number of delegates to secure the nomination, to engage in a search for a vice presidential running mate.

Barack is operating from a position of strength, and it's clear that he's decided now is the time to bring this process to a close. Finally -- enough is enough. Time to move on.

Update: Jimmy Carter weighs in:

"I'm a superdelegate," Carter said. "I think a lot of the superdelegates will make a decision quite, announced quite rapidly, after the final primary on June 3...I have not yet announced publicly, but I think at that point it will be time for her to give it up."

Carter was asked if Clinton was achieving anything by continuing in the race.

"I think not," he said. "But of course she has the perfect right to do so."

From what I know about 1968, I can't imagine having been involved in both Democratic and Republican politics. It turns out that it wasn't much of a problem for Hillary Clinton though (and it hasn't seemed like much of a problem for her in 2008 either, I might add). The more you learn, the stranger it gets:

[Hillary Clinton] might have been the only 20-year-old in America who worked on the antiwar presidential campaign of Senator Eugene McCarthy in New Hampshire that winter and for the hawkish Republican congressman Melvin Laird in Washington that summer.

The passage comes from a September 2007 NYT profile of Clinton's 1968. (In light of her claim to have found her voice after winning New Hampshire, its title is pretty funny:  "In Turmoil of ’68, Clinton Found a New Voice.")

For all her leftward movement, Ms. Rodham still kept a toe in the Republican Party, working as an intern in Washington that summer. Mr. Schechter, who supervised the Wellesley internship program, sent her to work for the House Republican Conference, then headed by Mr. Laird, the Wisconsin congressman who would later become President Richard Nixon’s defense secretary. ... At the end of the internship, Ms. Rodham proudly posed for a photo with House Republican leaders, including Representative Gerald R. Ford of Michigan. The photo hung in her father’s bedroom when he died in 1993.  

According to the profile, Clinton also attended the 1968 Republican National Convention as a supporter of Nelson Rockefeller, and watched Richard Nixon's acceptance speech from the floor, which she now says ended her commitment to the Republican Party.

Another interesting note: although she didn't participate in the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, she did witness the riots there, making her RFK comment all the more bizarre -- she saw with her own eyes that 1968 is a horrible example of party unity.