Results

Clinton won Kentucky roughly 65-30. Kos pulled out the SUSA polls there from March till now, and Obama never got more than 30%, and Clinton hovered around 62%. Add to that the exit poll stat showing that 21% of Kentucky voters admitted race was important, and they voted by 81% for Clinton. That's more than the 16% who said gender was important, and they voted by about the same proportion for Clinton. So those hard-working racists won another one for her.

So we got the predictable babble about Obama's white working class problem, even though he was later to do very well with white working class voters in Oregon, where he's winning by 16%. Some commentators also tried to point out that Kentucky is a solid Republican state while Oregon is a swing state leaning Democratic, so there goes Hillary's electability argument. (Her hubbie did win Kentucky, though.) What these primaries have shown is that racism is still a factor among uneducated whites in Appalachia, but fortunately, not many other places.

The AP chimed in with a dose of reality early, calling Hillary's win in Kentucky" a victory with scant political value in a race moving inexorably in Obama's direction." Obama spoke in Des Moines, claiming an absolute majority in elected delegates and calling the nomination "within reach." Otherwise, it was a formidable general election speech, both eloquent and issue-oriented. Here's a transcript. Here's the video.

It took Rachel Madow joining the MSNBC panel late to point out that the latest national Gallup poll shows Obama gaining in nearly all demographic categories, including women and the white working class. Older women are the only ones holding for Hillary.

Howard Fineman also reported on what's likely to happen next, and it all depends on how things go in that meeting on May 31 about Michigan and Florida, which is likely to result in some sort of 50-50. If Hillary's forces play nice and accept the compromise, super-delegates will hold off providing Obama with his absolute majority of all delegates until just after the final primary on June 3, so she has time to get out gracefully. If her campaign won't play ball and threaten to make a fight of the Michigan and Florida situation, those super-delegates will declare sooner. But it's not IF those supes will declare for Obama, it's WHEN.

The campaigns made their obligatory reports on campaign donations from April, but the Hillaryites in particular were playing it coy, so it's not clear what their numbers mean. Maybe later today it'll get clearer, along with some better idea of delegate allocation from these two states. I wouldn't be surprised however if there isn't a major super-delegate announcement too.