...But the Shouting (UPDATED)

The headline of the day (next to the BBC's GREAT TITS COPE WELL WITH WARMING--it's about the birds, of course, coping with global warming--what did you think it meant? ) is this one from Politico: CLINTON WON'T QUIT; OBAMA DOESN'T CARE.

While Clinton is off getting heckled in West Virginia and playing shock jock with her overtly racist analyses, Obama is mobbed by members of Congress of both parties on the House floor. With every day that passes, the Clinton candidacy recedes. She won Indiana by less than 1%, which means that Rush Limbaugh was her margin of victory. Depending on how many provisional ballots were cast and are still to be counted (Indiana voters without ID have 30 days to prove their residency so their ballot gets counted), her 11,000 vote margin could even disappear.

Hillary's claim that Obama can't win white working class votes created a firestorm in the blogosphere. The "pattern" she referred to isn't even true--Obama increased his share of white working class votes in Indiana and North Carolina from Ohio and PA. While a pollster pulls up numbers to show Obama has proportions of support among white, blue collar and black voters similiar to what John Kerry got in 2004. But the racist tone of Clinton's comments at this stage are not going to win her any friends among super-delegates.

She has no path to the nomination within the rules, let alone the rules of decency. Today there is still talk about her wanting and even demanding the v.p. spot, but that too will soon fade. The Clintons are yesterday. If they hadn't run such a mean-spirited campaign--and especially if they weren't still at it--there might be cause for some sadness in that. But not from me. By the time she wins West Virginia Tuesday, Hillary will be lucky if a cable network other than Fox carries her victory speech.

Meanwhile, the trickle of super-delegates endorsing Obama continues, and threatens to turn into a flood. There will be several more Friday. He may well pass Clinton in the number of super-delegate pledges next week.

Obama has turned his attention to the general election, while still showing respect for the voters in the remaining states with contests by campaigning there. His next victory is likely to be on May 20 in Oregon, when he almost certainly will have obtained the majority of total pledged delegates available from all the primaries and caucuses. If not by then, then soon after, party leaders in Michigan and Florida will have made deals to have delegations seated at the Convention, even if Hillary doesn't approve.

Obama doesn't have to mollify the Clintons or figure out what he has to give them in order for Hillary to drop out. He needs only to show her voters and supporters respect by allowing her to continue until the contests are over--respect that in many cases they didn't show him. And if she doesn't concede by mid June, the super-delegates will move en masse to Obama.

The Democrats are in great position to win the presidency and gain greater majorities in Congress. They aren't going to let that be messed up. The longer the Clintons stay in, the more obvious it becomes to Democrats that they've picked the right candidate, not only to run for President, but to be President.

So on August 28, the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech, Barack Obama will accept the nomination of the Democratic Party for the presidency of the United States.

Friday update: I don't want to do a new post, especially so I can leave that photo up for the weekend. With something like 9 super-delegates today, Obama has either gone ahead of Clinton or is near to doing so, according to who is counting. The New York Times, among others, notes this, relating it to Clinton's more subdued tone on the stump in Oregon. (I wouldn't trust that when she goes back to West Virginia, though.) Among the several Dem notables who today said that Obama was the presumptive nominee, House whip James Clyburn put a name to what's going on when he said that Obama has reached "the tipping point." Ted Kennedy shot down the Hillary for vp buzz.

One more interesting headline and view: Joe Klein on the Clinton campaign's progress through the stages of grief entitled "Paging Elizabeth Kubler-Ross". Two fascinating tidbits: a SUSA poll that shows that California, which went to Clinton by 10 points, would today go to Obama by 6. Does she really want re-votes? I mentioned above that Clinton's margin in Indiana has shrunk--and it's now about 11,000 votes. But there's no word on what hasn't been counted: military, and especially provisional ballots by people who didn't have proper ID but can bring proof of residence within ten days and get their ballot counted. If you think that's a long-shot, some numbers geeks have discovered in the final Ohio numbers that Clinton's lead declined from about 10 points to 8.8 or 8.7%. Obama got 26,000 more votes than were counted on election night (and figured into exit poll percentages.)

The Obama campaign's 50 state voter registration drive begins Saturday. He's campaigning in Bend, OR before returning to Chicago. Hillary will be back in New York.

Don't They Listen?

The pundits and political experts hear Barack Obama talking about changing Washington and ending the old politics, and say how inspirational he is. And then they demand that he act according to the old politics.

It's starting again on the questions of Hillary Clinton leaving the race, and the related question of who Obama will choose for vice president. I happen to believe that on both of these topics, the conventional wisdom will once again be wrong.

For example, there's an article by Dan Conley in Salon that Teagan Goddard's Political Wire calls a "must read," which suggests the kind of deal that Hillary might get in exchange for her support. His major suggestion is money--a bunch of Obama cash to retire her campaign debt.

There were similar discussions during the endless wait for the Indiana primary finish Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. Carl Bernstein said that a couple of Hillary staffers told him she wants the vice-presidential nomination.

I'm pretty skeptical on both specifics. First, the money. If the Obama campaign didn't want to pay Democratic Party people in the wards of Philadelphia to get out the vote, why would they spend their contributors' money on extortion for the Clintons?

Then the vice-president. There's a lot of misinformation about the process going around. The way presidential candidates choose vice-presidential candidates these days isn't the way the Kennedys picked Lyndon Johnson.
There's an elaborate and collaborative process of getting information--and specifically, of vetting. That process is only beginning in the Obama campaign, according to somebody's reporting the other night--it may have been Howard Fineman. In any case, no decision will be made for weeks or months. And in the end, only one person will make it: Barack Obama.

Hillary may or may not be on the initial list. If she is, the campaign will try to discover just what the Republicans will use on her to discredit the ticket. Then they will weigh carefully what she brings to the ticket versus how she weakens it. They will balance her appeal and power within the party against Billary's negative campaigning and above all, her real belief in the old politics, and her identification with the old politics in the mind of voters---especially Obama voters. And they will present all of this information and these views and evaluations to Barack Obama.

And then Obama will decide, on these and other considerations: can he work with her (and Bill)? Will they undermine him in the White House? Will she even be able to see transforming government in the way that he does? I doubt it. But it's his call.

My guess is that he will look most favorably on someone younger than Clinton, someone from his generation. This worked for Bill Clinton and Al Gore--it was a powerful visual and political message in 1992. I do think he'll consider women first.

The other conventional wisdom is that he'll have to pick someone who supported Hillary. (I saw Ed Rendell's name mentioned--I don't think there's a chance of that.) But Obama isn't going to make the conventional choice: he isn't going to choose on the basis of geographical balance, molifying Clinton or her supporters, going for a military/foreign policy figure, or a governor. If the person who interests him the most has any or all of those particular advantages, those will be ancilliary reasons, or just plain bonuses.

He's going to choose someone who identifies with his brand of new politics--someone who also represents the kind of change that was the moral center and the centerpiece of his primary campaign, and will be of his general election campaign.

And the factors that none of us can measure are his judgment of someone's fitness to be President--his kind of President--and of how they relate personally.
So while Gov. Kathleen Sibelius is often mentioned, she has to go through a vetting process (her son has apparently made some waves--how serious is that?) and we have no idea how they get along. On the other hand, Obama is said to be friends with Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano. (And she would break another barrier, though it's never mentioned: there has never been an Italian-American in the White House.)

And while Senator Jim Webb is seldom mentioned, he is Obama's generation, and though he has remained neutral so far, he may be an Obama kind of new politician. I don't know. The point is, no one does. It's a fun game but let's also be realistic. Obama is going to decide, and if he is true to his campaign so far, it isn't going to be a choice made chiefly by the old criteria. Hillary is not going to dictate the v.p. choice. If you believe that, you haven't been listening.

Plus, the premise of all this is questionable, and may become more questionable very soon. Because the party may force Hillary out, before she has to be bribed out. Consider this quote from another story in Salon:

And perhaps most dangerous for Clinton now is the fact that a number of superdelegates -- whom she needs to win over in large numbers to have any chance to emerge the victor -- are losing patience. West Virginia Democratic Party chairman Nick Casey told Salon in a phone interview Wednesday that he wouldn't be surprised if Clinton pulled the plug on her campaign before Tuesday.

Did you get that? The Chairman of the party in West Virginia, where the next primary is held, and where Clinton is supposed to have solid support, suggests that she'll drop out before that primary in his state. And that was only one of the examples.

It's pretty likely now that by as early as May 20 and as late as June 5, Barack Obama will be the presumptive nominee by virtue of having obtained the necessary number of delegates.

How important is Hillary's support in the general election? I don't think that's as obvious as it's being treated. Part of the drama in this campaign has been the loosening grip of the Clintons on the Democratic party, and the resentments that have surfaced. Hillary has strong appeal to constituencies of voters, but in the end, she is part of the old politics that Obama is campaigning against. It is more to her political advantage to be seen as supporting the party ticket, I believe, than it is for Obama to muddy the image of the kind of politics he wants to bring to Washington, by being seen to give in to her demands.

Yes, the party needs to be unified. But the leader of the party sets the tone and the conditions. And that's not Hillary Clinton. The leader is Barack Obama.

The Day After

Analysis from Chuck Todd: "One thing that jumps out at us is his [Obama's] performance in mostly white Indiana counties north of Indianapolis. He either won them or did much better than we expected. While he still struggled against Clinton in areas south of Indianapolis, his performance north of the city demonstrated his potential in the Midwest. Also, Obama improved with Catholics. After losing that group 70%-30% in Pennsylvania and 63%-36% in Ohio, Obama narrowed that margin to 59%-41% in Indiana; in fact, he won the county that includes South Bend. And the gas-tax debate also appears to have been a winner for Obama. Besides overshadowing (a bit) the Wright story over the days leading into last night’s contests, the debate played into Obama’s core message (that he will change the way Washington works) and played into Clinton’s chief negative (that she’ll say and do anything to win)." He notes that the Wright obsession--and these are my words because I'm tired of the "cultural differences" circumlocution--gave racists permission to express themselves, so "You have to wonder how much he would have WON Indiana by if 1) there was no Wright controversy or 2) he had more time."

Clinton lent her campaign another $6.5 million in May, including $450,000 in the past few days, indicating the campaign is really broke. She's also lent the equivalent of her personal earnings. The law allows her to donate half of her income to her campaign, but she's got the joint account to tap.

Lawrence O'Donnell says that Clinton will stay in the race until June 15. Hillary's campaign is still playing race. Score one for Rachel Madow.

Obama got four super-delegates so far today, including one switching from Hillary. The first party elder--George McGovern--has publicly urged Clinton to drop out. And there may be more to come. In a real warning, Senator Dianne Feinstein says she wants to talk to Hillary about her "strategy" for the rest of the campaign. Feinstein is a long-time Hillary supporter, and the California super-delegates are numerous. It's expected that the House members will follow Nancy Pelosi's lead. Now it will be interesting to see what Barbara Boxer does--whether she wants to take the lead in declaring for Obama.

Newspaper sentiment today mirrors the cable news pundits of last night is saying that the race is essentially over. Joan Vennochi writes in the Boston Globe:" It's decision time for Hillary Clinton. Will she accept reality and Barack Obama’s near-clinch of the Democratic nomination? Or will she embrace a “Sunset Boulevard” fantasy world, playing a political Norma Desmond who continues to dream of a triumphant return to the Oval Office? "

Scot Lehigh, another Globe columnist wrote: Last night, reality caught up with Hillary Clinton. The question now is how long it will take for that reality to sink in.Barack Obama's big win in North Carolina, combined with the late night/early morning drama that turned Indiana into only the narrowest of wins for Clinton, did three important things: It ended any sense of momentum she had generated with her sizable victory in Pennsylvania.
It demonstrated that, at least as far as the relevant Democratic primary voters were concerned, Obama has survived the controversy over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's incendiary remarks.
And in doing both those things, it obliterated the arguments Clinton hoped to use to sway the superdelegates.

Derrick Z. Jackson, Globe Columnist:

Wright flight stopped. Barack Obama came out of North Carolina and Indiana with renewed hopes of regentrification. It was another message that America is struggling toward a better self.

We have had nearly two months of unprecedented media trolling and pollster polling for the damage that Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, did to Obama with white voters. It was unprecedented in the sense that there never has been similar trolling and polling over the associations of white candidates with bigoted religious figures. It was as if a significant chunk of the media and pollsters were daring America to rear its ugliest head. White voters responded by saying, enough is enough."

How Sweet It Is!

It was not only what happened but how it happened. North Carolina was declared instantly for Obama, and the votes kept piling up all evening and (for East Coasters and Midwesterners) well into the night, until he entirely made up Clinton's popular vote margin in PA and added about 25,000 more.

Indiana, which was expected to be anywhere from 10 or even 12% to 6% for Clinton, was not finally declared until after 1 am eastern. Hillary finally won, though her margin may well have been provided by mischief-making Republicans who will vote for McCain.

But for all those hours in between, it became clearer and clearer that the Democratic primary race is over. After trying to maintain a semblance of balance, the cable gabbers began speculating on how Hillary gets out of the race. Tim Russert of NBC said, "We know who the Democratic nominee will be," and Chuck Todd presented the numbers to back this up: with Obama's N.C. victory, there is no conceivable scenario in which Hillary ends up with more delegates and popular votes, not even counting Michigan and Florida.

Or as Senator Obama writes in his email to me: "As of Tuesday morning, we needed just 273 delegates to clinch the nomination. When the votes are fully counted Wednesday morning, we will have gained more than a third of them in a single day."

Rachel Madow was the one voice of "unreason"--that is, she maintained that Hillary has been "post-rational" for awhile, and she will try to continue. But Hillary cancelled her morning talk show appearances--and that's a major move. The New York Times reports the Clinton campaign is "essentially broke."

But let's dwell on the Obama victories (because coming so close in Indiana has to be counted as a victory.) As several TV babblers pointed out, Hillary had her best couple of weeks while Obama had his worst, and at the end of it, he wins by 15 points in the biggest remaining state--and one of the 10 biggest in the nation--and nearly steals Indiana. Demographically, says one analyst, In Indiana, Obama improved his support across several key demographics, despite a bruising month of attacks on his pastor, patriotism and populism. Compared to Ohio and Pennsylvania, he generally drew more votes from white women, Catholics, gun owners, households earning under $50,000 annually, voters prioritizing the economy, and voters without a college degree."

In his N.C. victory speech, Obama said that he has faith in the American people to see past the distractions. These victories confirmed the correctness of that faith in Democratic voters at least, because clearly voters did not swallow the Rev. Wright cable TV obsession and Hillary's phony gas tax holiday proposal.

I'd hoped Obama was going to turn the corner with these elections, I felt he was going to, and he did.

Obama is now so close to a majority of elected delegates that he is almost certain to cross that threshold on May 20, when Oregon votes. The scenario that might shape up is this: enough super-delegates will declare for Obama between now and then to allow Oregon to put him over the top entirely with a majority of all delegates. With the nomination in his pocket, the May 31 credentials committee hearing becomes a formality accepting some close to 50-50 solution for Michigan and Florida.

But even if something that dramatic doesn't happen, the trickle of super-delegates could begin to become a flood very soon. Whether or not Clinton stays in the race long enough to win West Virginia, the May 20 elections in Kentucky (which Clinton is heavily favored to win) and Oregon (which Obama is very likely to win) may bring the process to a complete resolution. Even if super-delegates hold off until after the last contests in early June, the groundwork for what is now clearly going to happen can be built now.

And so it is the night I'd hoped for. The future has a chance. Barack Obama is going to be the Democratic nominee, one step closer to being President of the United States.

Results

730: I just lost everything I wrote--drat this blogger! So Indiana is now officially too close to call, Hillary is supposed to be speaking but what does she say? Obama gave his strong general election speech, and no matter what happens now in Indiana, it's Obama's night. It could be an hour or more before the last 300,000 votes come in from the Gary area. I thought that would be a crucial area of the state, but I never guessed this. However, the Obama people told Chuck Todd that they may have come up 10,000 votes short, while Polbano figures 23,000, which gives Clinton under a 2% victory.

450: A couple of interesting notes from exit polls. Some 60% of North Carolina voters made up their minds a month ago or more. So all this kerfluffle over the past 3 weeks was irrelevant to them. And some 7% of Hillary's voters in Indiana say they would be dissatisfied if she got the nomination, indicating these are the Operation Chaos Republicans, (plus people who misunderstood the question.) The numbers people online are seeing their models shattered in Indiana, though both ways. Indiana may all depend on the turnout and margins for Obama in Indianapolis and especially Gary (which has yet to report any votes.) It's still possible that Hillary will win by double digits, or Obama will squeak out a win.

4:32pm Pacific
Networks call North Carolina immediately for Obama, presaging a big win. Indiana is still not called, a half hour after polls closed in all parts of the state, and a hour and a half after most polls closed. So now the cable gab is about Obama.

2:55pmPacific
I'll just keep updating this without noting updates. The polls haven't yet closed but the first piece of exit poll data may be all that super-delegates need to know: Obama is getting 92% of the African American vote in Indiana, and 91% in North Carolina. If that bears out in the results, it shows an unswerving loyalty to Obama by the most important single voting bloc in the Democratic Party.

(Other People's) Tea Leaves

There are two basic numerical questions in the Indiana and North Carolina primaries: who wins the most votes, and how many more delegates does the winner get?

Realistically, Obama wins a draw, because the largest remaining bunch of delegates will be gone by tomorrow's results. Clinton will likely go on if she gets a split in popular vote wins. But her chances of getting the nomination diminish.

So on to the tea-leavers. This post will be updated throughout Monday and early Tuesday with whatever new predictions there are.

Final SUSA polls show Obama up by 5 in NC. Key comment: There is no foreseeable outcome in North Carolina, regardless of which candidate wins the popular vote, where one candidate collects significantly more convention delegates than the other. CQ Politics concurs--on the district level, they see Obama gaining only 3 more delegates. However, the blogger Poblano, whose PA predictions based on math models I don't pretend to understand were just about dead-on, predicts a much bigger victory for Obama, of 17 points and a 66-49 spread in delegates. He emphasizes that polls significantly underestimated Obama's totals in southern states with big African American populations.

Another wonky online analyst with a good record, PsiFighter37, touts Obama winning 63 delegates in North Carolina to Clinton's 52. He also sees a double digit popular vote margin.

Poblano's analysis of Indiana is a Clinton win by 51-49%, with an even split in delegates. PsiFighter37 says Clinton wins 4 more delegates, with a a Clinton advantage of 6.4% in the popular vote. Most late polls show Clinton ahead, although the margins vary from 6 points to more than 10. Zogby is holding firm with a slight margin for Obama.

And here's a summary of where things stand on Wednesday. The major point: there will be more undeclared super-delegates than delegates at stake in the final contests. Chuck Todd on Keith underlined this point by saying that tomorrow is the last really significant election day of the primaries, and unless Clinton wins North Carolina and Indiana both, she has almost no chance of getting the nomination, either by delegates won or by convincing super-delegates that the momentum has shifted to her.

Update1: Latest PPP poll in Indiana shows Hillary ahead but it's Obama who has the last minute momentum.

Update2: Al G. at The Field has posted his predictions. He gives Clinton a big 10.8 win in Indiana gaining 8 more delegates, and Obama a 6.8% victory in North Carolina, gaining 7 more delegates. So Clinton ends up with one delegate more--far, far fewer than she needs to change the dynamics of the race. Al obviously feels that Clinton's pandering, the TV obsession with Rev. Wright and the rabid right interest in derailing Obama are going to take their toll. It's also worth mentioning that he turned out to overestimate Obama's vote in PA, so there may be a little compensation in this prediction. He also points out, as I did at the top, that a draw is a win for Obama, at least technically.

Update3: Booman at Booman Tribune has posted his Indiana district by district predictions. The outcome he sees is Clinton winning the popular by 51-49 and gaining 4 delegates. Meanwhile, Election Projection has its North Carolina projections: Obama 58.5% to Clinton 39.7%, giving Obama 15 more delegates.

So these are numbers analyses. I've also obsessively read a number of campaign reports. I'm always looking for signs favorable to Obama, and two particular ones stick in my mind: for the recent Jackson-Jefferson Day dinner in North Carolina, equal numbers of tickets were sold to Obama and Clinton supporters. However, fewer--apparently far fewer--Clinton people showed up. The immediate consequence was that Clinton's speech was swamped by Obama chants, but the greater indication is--what? Bill Clinton has been hitting the rural areas, and this could pay off in votes. But will that do much to dampen enthusiasm in the bigger places? Also, North Carolina saw massive early voting, with over 40% by blacks, and--one can surmise--a lot of the white vote by students, who may have voted where they go to school even if they won't be there on election day. Big schools in Indiana won't be in session, so students in Bloomington, etc., had to early vote. I haven't seen numbers on that.

In Indiana, the momentum seemed to be going towards Hillary until this weekend, and if it continues moving toward Obama, that 3% a lot of these folks are giving as Hillary's margin could swing. Here's what tantalized me: a reporter's observation that Gary is solid Obama, not leaning that way. Demographically, that doesn't compute. But could a reporter's instincts suggest something out of the ordinary--white working class voters going for Obama?

I was glad to see a story saying that the Obama people were energized, motivated and optimistic in Indiana. That's his secret weapon there: the Obama faithful from Illinois who can work with mayors backing Obama and counteract the Evan Bayh regulars.

Okay, I'll say it: I'm looking for a double digit win in North Carolina, with double digit delegate gains, and a single digit loss or a victory in Indiana. I have this feeling he's turned the corner. (Okay, I've had it before.)

Update5: the final update in this thread is the Kos predictions: he has Clinton in Indiana 51.1 to 48.9 (which would mean it will be the late late show before the networks can name the winner) and Obama by 12 pts. in North Carolina (which means the cable gab will be about Obama's resurgence.) But I thought it was most appropriate to end this thread with Kos explaining his "system": "If my system sounds stupid, it's because it is. They all are. Ultimately, no one predicts every race accurately, not even the pollsters who actually ask people who they're going to vote for." Amen.

Mo

In what appear to be close elections, it seems to come down to who's got the momentum going into that Tuesday. Could be as much an illusion as everything else, but it gives us something to talk about. Early last week I suggested the polls would go against Obama last weekend, but if by this weekend they were bouncing back, he'd have a shot at carrying Indiana and more confidence in North Carolina.

I hadn't figured on the Wright controversy which extended into mid-week, but the polls and other info suggest that Obama indeed has some momentum this weekend, and may actually have the mo going into Tuesday. The most important poll might be the CBS/New York Times survey that found that a majority are unaffected by the Wright mess, half think TV overdid it, and 60% approve of how Obama handled it. Plus "an overwhelming majority of voters said candidates calling for the suspension of the federal gasoline tax this summer were acting to help themselves politically, rather than to help ordinary Americans." This has been Hillary's main issue in I and NC. Obama's overall margin over Clinton actually increased 4 points, to 50%-38%. This survey was taken this past weekend, May 1-3.

On the macro level, all during this week when cable babble was fixated on Wright, the slow march of super-delegates and powerful endorsements were going much more to Obama than Clinton. Including those who used to be for Clinton. On the micro, Obama has found his themes and his methods of campaigning in Indiana. I remember his "closing argument" two minute ad for Ohio, and I wasn't very impressed. But his two-minute ad for Indiana and North Carolina is a gem.

I spent a few days this weekend in Ashland and Medford, Oregon (that state's primary is coming up), wearing my Obama cap, which got lots of smiles and some conversation. Several people were very troubled by what the Clinton campaign revealed to them about the Clintons, and they were worried that it's damaging the Democrats' chances in November. If that response is widespread, beyond Oregon--and it might be--then there may be sentiment that affects voting at last to end this thing sooner rather than later.

It seems that Hillary's "obliterate Iran" comment has been remembered and remains an issue (it came up in Obama's Meet the Press interview Sunday), and Frank Rich at least has pushed back on the racism involved in the media's attention to Rev. Wright while ignoring the comments of white right wing preachers supporting McCain, particularly Hagee. As an adjunct to Rich's comments, there's these quotations from Hagee's book which doesn't say Goddamn America--it says God has already damned America.

For what they're worth, the state polls in Indiana and North Carolina are still all over the place, though most have Obama ahead in North Carolina and competitive (Zogby even has him ahead) in Indiana. And of course, he won Guam!

Meanwhile, if you're an Obama and Star Wars fan, have some fun with this on YouTube.

Hope V. Fear, the Future V. the Past

It should be pretty clear, Indiana and North Carolina. Above and beyond the crazed distractions, this is still what it's about: hope versus fear, the future versus the past, and reality versus the old politics.

According to Howard Fineman and others, Hillary thinks she has a winner with her advocacy for a gas tax holiday this summer. It fits right in with her new image as the working class girl (even if she can't figure out how to work the 7/11 coffee machine.) So the question now becomes: are people going to choose someone for President of the United States for the next four years on the basis of the slim chance that they'll save maybe thirty bucks this summer?

Obama has all the arguments why it's a bad idea, and most economists agree with him. Plus the fact that it has no support in Congress, and it ain't going to happen. So what can Hillary do about it anyway? It's May. Summer starts in a month. She's a candidate for a presidency that begins in January. If she is so sure this is a wonderful thing, why isn't she back in Washington fighting like hell in the Senate to get it done?

Well, because she doesn't care if it gets done or not. Pandering is one thing. Cynical manipulation of voters' desperation takes it to a new level of scum behavior.

Will people buy it? As Obama says about the possible effect of the Wright drama, "we'll see." The TV pundits are sure it will. For me, it adds to the theme of the week around here: if Indiana and North Carolina don't repudiate this kind of politics, and this kind of media concentration to the exclusion of real problems for real people on the Rev. Wright--especially since they haven't made a peep about the white right wing nutcase preacher Hillary (a white person) prays with, or the very white, very right wing very nutcase preacher who writes that America is under God's curse, whose political support John McCain (a white person) sought and got---if Indiana and North Carolina doesn't repudiate all this by voting heavily for Obama, then this country is screwed. And so is this planet.

Yes, Obama can still win the nomination, and he can still win the election, and he would still have a chance at gaining the mandate he needs to go forward with real change. But it gets more difficult and more contentious if North Carolina and Indiana don't come through.

It's an important moment, and a tense one. I saw a story about morale problems in the Obama campaign, and less than overwhelming efforts in Indiana and North Carolina. I got so many appeals for contributions in the last couple of days that I'm really worried about the Obama campaign's April take. And it looks like Obama's schedule is in flux, with possibly more attention being paid to North Carolina, which should be in the bag by now. It seems Clinton is concentrating on Indiana.

Yet if you watched the YouTube excerpt I linked yesterday, you'll see that Obama has never been sharper. If you watch this one, you'll hear him talk informally with voters (in Indianapolis Thursday) about real ways to make real change--the idea I hadn't heard before was a new level of transparency and involvement for everyone via the Internet. So here's what I think about this: we couldn't ask for a better candidate who would be a better President, nor could we really ask for a better campaign in terms of focus, intelligence and eloquence. We couldn't ask for a better additional voice for it than Michelle Obama's. So if we go down, I'm satisfied it couldn't have been presented better.

The people who go to see him are getting that. It's the people who aren't that need to experience it. Maybe this round of media he's doing will help. Although he has to wade through these absurd questions. What about the flag pin? Are you wearing a flag pin, Mr. or Ms. Questioner? Was Hillary wearing one at the last debate? Was McCain? Does this question make any sense at all?

Yes, it's true that super-delegates are still moving towards Obama, but he needs a big win in North Carolina and a win or a very close loss in the popular vote in Indiana to get this campaign back to reality.

I'm going up to Oregon tomorrow, where I'll be giving visible support to Obama in advance of the primary there, and if I get time from other business, maybe some canvassing. But I probably won't be posting for a few days. Which is okay because I've said it. Indiana. North Carolina. It comes down to them.

Update: Just before I close my computer, this breaking news: that a former Democratic National Committee chair appointed by Bill Clinton, who endorsed Hillary on the day she announced, is switching to Obama Thursday, and urging other super-delegates to join him to bring the race to a close because it is becoming destructive. And he's doing it in--get this!--Indianapolis. He's urging Indiana to vote for Obama. This might even get the media's attention...And it may account for some of that scheduling change. Happy Thursday!

Divorcing Mr. Wright

Barack Obama divorced himself and his campaign from Rev. Wright due to Wright's performance yesterday, an invitation to the National Press Club arranged by a Hillary supporter. If you watch Obama make his statement and answer questions (which you can here) you will see his anger and sadness, and you will know why. He is eloquent and forceful, and this should end the Wright watch for statements Obama has to answer.

The unfairness--and the racism-- of this controversy vs. McCain's free ride with the preacher whose political support he sought and accepts, is the subject of this New York Times editorial. But there it is. However, it presents voters in Indiana and North Carolina with an opportunity. For years it's been clear that at least some voters are more interested in substantive issues and questions than they are in this distracting exploitation. But politicians who have exploited these distractions have often won votes. Voters can bring this campaign back to reality by not voting for Hillary, and by voting for Obama. If Obama wins both contests, then reality wins.

As predicted, Clinton has moved up in the national and state polls, but she is not clearly in the lead anywhere. Because of Wright it may take several more days before we know whether Obama recovers from PA and Wright. By the weekend, those polls should tell us more, although in fact the polls that came out today and yesterday are all over the place in both states.

Following up on yesterday, it seems the North Carolina gov is pretty toothless--a lame duck who is characterized as lazy--and his statement of support was graceless at best, and borderline offensive. Meanwhile, an interview with Elizabeth Edwards confirmed that at the moment her husband has no plans to endorse anyone before the North Carolina primary.

What surprises me is that the Clintons haven't done anything outrageous lately. They always follow perceived victories with some sort of arrogant mistake. But the week is young. (Of course both Clintons continue to be shameless scum. But they aren't attracting so much attention for it.)

Meanwhile, Obama is stronger than ever on the stump. "This campaign isn't about me. It isn't about Hillary Clinton. It isn't about John McCain. This campaign is about you." This is a great appearance.

Here's another, a shorter clip on a specific issue. Obama on the McCain/Clinton gas tax proposal: it will mean at best saving $30 total over the course of the summer, and may cost 7,000 jobs in construction just in North Carolina, which would have been paid for by the tax. "This isn't an idea designed to get you through the summer, it's an idea designed to get them through an election."

Meanwhile, there's been a certain pushback on the latest "elitist" argument, seeing much of it for what it is: what used to be called anti-intellectualism, but which is actually anti-intelligence and pro-stupidity, as well as misplaced romanticism about salt of the earth beer drinking NASCAR loving folks by talking head millionaires in suits, and the political consultants who love them. So for some sort of antidote, try this and this.

Terse Monday

Obama got it from the right--thanks to Rev. Wright--and from the left today, both Daily Kos and MoveOn.org pissed that he did an interview Sunday on Faux News.

If the widely quoted sentences from the Times story I referenced earlier are accurate, the Obama campaign may believe it is losing in Indiana. Why else say that they expect the primary campaign to go on past June 3?

Rachel Madow on Keith tonight provided Obama with a brilliant strategy for responding to the latest Wright appearances, which I will now mesh with my add-on: Obama can delineate the church-state separation, the spiritual and political, reaffirming the JFK position, stating that Wright was a spiritual pastor and not a political advisor, while noticing that John McCain is politically embracing preachers whose political positions are terrible, and could affect foreign policy, i.e. the U.S. was founded to wage holy war on Islam.

Clinton is getting the endorsement of the North Carolina governor tomorrow. That's not good news. How bad it is--how politically powerful he is-- nobody seems to know. But it makes him virtually the only officeholder in the state to endorse Hillary.

Former North Carolina Senator and presidential candidate John Edwards has not endorsed, and people are wondering if he will now. I doubt it. If he endorses Clinton, his political career will be over, even as an advocate for his causes of fighting poverty, etc., because in this polarized situation, black voters in North Carolina and elsewhere will never forgive him. And if he endorses Obama--I noted in a poll awhile back that his endorsement would actually make people less likely to vote for Obama. So if he's smart, he keeps quiet.

The Day of Decision

Next Tuesday, May 6, may turn out to be the most fateful day so far in this fateful election year. North Carolina and Indiana hold primaries, and among the possibilities for their outcomes are several that could go a long way in determining who the next President will be.

Because Barack Obama lost the Pennsylvania primary, he needs to win a big state to silence doubts about the current state of his candidacy. Hillary Clinton has to win at least one of these two states to stay even marginally credible as a candidate. If Obama wins both, he will clearly be the nominee, and Clinton may well drop out. If Clinton wins both, it will devastate the Obama candidacy, perhaps beyond repair. At the moment, Obama is expected to win North Carolina, and Indiana is about even. Clinton has media momentum and has won more of the "working class white" vote in the past several contests. Obama has his base constitutency, plus some other advantages in each state.

I expect the polls coming out this week to be stronger for Clinton, as a result of the PA vote and the subsequent media coverage. If the polls continue to go that way by next weekend, then Obama is in trouble, but I don't expect that to happen. In any case what happens this week on the ground in both states will prove or disprove whatever the polls show. The situation is further complicated by the fact that both states are in the midst of early voting right now.

These are fateful contests for this election and therefore for the future. They may be fateful in a much smaller sense for me. Because I realized this week, for various reasons but most recently and particularly Hillary's reckless statements about "totally obliterating" Iran, that I can never vote for Hillary Clinton. So if Barack Obama doesn't get the Democratic nomination, I won't be voting in November 2008. (I voted for Obama in the CA primary.) And if I don't, it wouldn't surprise me if I never voted again. Because after 2008 I don't think there will be much point, at least in my lifetime.

Barring one of the candidates dropping out, the decision on the nominee will ultimately, formally belong to the super-delegates. I believe they are waiting for May 6. If Obama wins big in North Carolina and even comes close in Indiana--and a victory there allows Clinton to stay in the race--then more super-delegates will feel comfortable in declaring for Obama. I don't think there are many super-delegates who actually favor Clinton. There are some, perhaps many, who are afraid of her and Bill. And there are others who may be heeding the media CW and worry about Obama as a candidate. But they are all only waiting for Obama to win again. That's my guess.

Right now both these contests are utterly mysterious. Obama looked stronger in PA than a 9 point loss, so his crowds and the polls may not be saying anything dependable. On the other hand, Hillary's campaign may be mostly smoke and mirrors at this point. It's entirely possible that Obama will win both states big. But at the moment it is just barely possible that Hillary will squeak out a victory in North Carolina, and win Indiana by 5 points or so.

It could be that Hillary has all that just folks appeal. Or it could be that without mayors and governors delivering voters for her, she can't compete. At last look, Obama has most of the Democratic officeholders in North Carolina, including mayors. In Indiana he's been endorsed by the mayors of Gary, South Bend, Evansville and Bloomington; Hillary has the mayors of Hammond and Anderson, but she's not going to get Indianapolis, Muncie or Terre Haute because those are all Republicans. Senator Evan Bayh is for Hillary, and his is a respected family in the state. But so was Bob Casey's in PA.

So I'm staying away from tea leaves for these contests. I just hope PA didn't cut into the enthusiasm of Obama's on the ground forces because everything could depend on these two elections in just eight days.

Meanwhile, the super-delegates may want to examine the latest article about how Hillary's disorganized campaign presages her approach to the presidency, and this suggestion that contrary to her campaign theme, "...Hillary Clinton has not, in fact, survived the worst that the Republican attack machine (and its pilotless drones online and on talk radio) can dish out. We will learn what the worst really means if she is nominated."

Among the small but steady stream of super-delegate and other Obama endorsements comes this intriguing one: from the Oregon coalition of Latino leaders. For a partisan overview, there's this diary at Kos, which also has the video of Obama's 3-on-3 basketball game in Indiana--and here's the direct link. He's got game.

Interesting that there are two articles this morning, one in the Washington Post, one in the New York Times, about how Obama is relating his basic argument to economic issues in Indiana.

Bright Lines and End Games

When Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, the #3 Democrat in the House, began speaking to reporters this week (here's one article in the New York Times) he added some important factors to the public evaluation and conduct of the Democratic campaign. He spoke for African American voters, who increasingly feel discounted in the dialogue. He told the Washington Post: "I am very concerned that if we keep talking as if it doesn't matter ... that Obama gets 92 percent of the black vote ... since he only got 35 percent of the white vote, he's in trouble. Well, Hillary Clinton only got 8 percent of black vote. [That's] like saying that 92 percent, they don't matter....I think that the way everybody has been reporting this Pennsylvania thing, it's almost saying black people don't matter. Only thing that matters is how white people respond. And that's what bothered me. I think I matter."

This is a powerful argument. The white privilege component of media coverage can't be discounted either. But in terms of super-delegates (and Clyburn is one--so far uncommitted) this message is crystal clear: ignore black voters at your electoral peril. If they feel overlooked or cheated, it could cripple the Democratic party in every election this year, and for years to come.

But that's only one of Clyburn's messages. The other is the recklessly negative campaign being run by the Clintons. On Keith Friday, Clyburn defined the bright line: keep it positive and on issues for the rest of the contests, or there will be consequences. Everybody wonders how this campaign will end--who will step up to keep the party from destroying itself? If Hillary goes on the attack again, it could very well be the African American Democratic officeholders who force the issue.

Hillary's negative campaign already lost her an important supporter: one of her fundraisers and a Puerto Rican leader, Gabriel Guerra-Mondragon. He not only has left the Hillary campaign--he's switched to Obama. Both Clyburn's statements and Guerra-Mondragon's defection are major developments, given the timing, and they will reverberate for some time.

These are movements against the solid backdrop described by Elizabeth Drew, one of the most experienced and distinguished political journalists in America: "The torrent of speculation about the end game of the Democratic nomination contest is creating a false sense of suspense – and wasting a lot of time of the multitudes who are anxious to know how this contest is going to turn out." How it's going to turn out is that Obama is going to be the nominee because he will have the most delegates when the voting is over, and (as JedReport points out) he will have won the majority of delegates available by contest (all delegates except supes and add-ons) by May 20. And the nomination is won by delegates--nothing else.

Drew also underscores the importance of what Clyburn said in 2 of the 3 reasons she cites as why the supes will go to Obama: a. Hillary is so polarizing that down-ticket Dems will have little chance of picking up Indies and Republicans, b. to deny Obama the nomination if he is ahead would alienate African American voters for generations, and would lose young voters, Is and Rs who switched parties; and c: Because the black vote can make the decisive difference in numerous congressional districts, discarding Obama could cost the Democrats numerous seats."

These delegates aren't worried about the PA results, she writes, because Obama attracts the I's and R's that Hillary won't, while retaining most of the Democratic base, which is her strength.

I'd go further than that: Hillary won among the non-black Democratic base in states where she had the muscle of the political establishment: the governor and especially the mayors. Without the mayor of Los Angeles, she would have lost California. Without the mayors of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, she might well have lost PA. (I don't think she won PA anyway--the memory of Bill did.) With that kind of muscle behind Obama, plus the constituencies he brings to the election, the Democrats could win all across the country--and Democratic officeholders and political operatives know it.

There have been rumors since before Texas that a large group of supers are ready to endorse Obama en masse. He's been getting a slow but steady succession of them, but if he wins North Carolina big and comes close or wins Indiana, it would make sense that it will finally happen then.

Cooler Heads

Cooler heads prevailed Wednesday, even within the excitable CW. For instance:

The Pennsylvania Primary was Hillary Clinton's last chance to deliver a game changing blow to Obama's campaign for the nomination. She failed to deliver.
Pennsylvania provided her with her final real opportunity to knock the wheels off the Obama campaign. She needed a crushing victory of 18% to 25% to have any real chance of altering the math or the psychology. Demographically, Pennsylvania was made for Hillary: the second oldest state in the nation, heavily blue collar, Catholic and rural -- Hillary's voter profile. She started with a lead of almost 20 points. But her final margin -- which the Pennsylvania Secretary of State says was only 9.2% -- fell far short of what was needed to stop Obama's nomination."

According to CBS News, Hillary won 9 more delegates than Obama did in PA. Other estimates go as high as 12. Obama won 25 net in Virginia.

Chuck Todd, the numbers impressario at NBC, says that Clinton's chances have diminished, not increased. Even if she is to attract super-delegates, she will have to win where she is not expected to win, and that's North Carolina.

And after a pretty hot rebuke to Hillary (see below), the New York Times coolly dismantles her electability argument in Thursday's paper:

Yet for all of her primary night celebrations in the populous states, exit polling and independent political analysts offer evidence that Mr. Obama could do just as well as Mrs. Clinton among blocs of voters with whom he now runs behind. Obama advisers say he also appears well-positioned to win swing states and believe he would have a strong shot at winning traditional Republican states like Virginia.

According to surveys of Pennsylvania voters leaving the polls on Tuesday, Mr. Obama would draw majorities of support from lower-income voters and less-educated ones — just as Mrs. Clinton would against Mr. McCain, even though those voters have favored her over Mr. Obama in the primaries.

And national polls suggest Mr. Obama would also do slightly better among groups that have gravitated to Republican in the past, like men, the more affluent and independents, while she would do slightly better among women."

The rebuke came in an Wednesday editorial, which began:

The Pennsylvania campaign, which produced yet another inconclusive result on Tuesday, was even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it.

Voters are getting tired of it; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work. It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election."

This from a newspaper that editorially endorsed Hillary. While Obama is criticized as well, the bulk of their ire falls on Hillary, fingering especially that last-day TV ad that threw 9-11 and Osama bin Laden with the rest of the kitchen sink. The harm this is doing, plus the demonstrably false electability argument, should hasten the super-delegates to Obama. Word is that there's one supe or endorsement a day scheduled until North Carolina and Indiana. (There were two today, plus endorsements from 29 North Carolina legislators.) If he wins one or both, it could become a flood.

But what Hillary won in PA was apparently donations. It's not clear how much but maybe enough to keep up the attack, requiring Obama to raise more. And so the obscene waste of money continues. Practically the only beneficiaries of this are media companies, so naturally they hype this at every opportunity.

Heartbreak

The first hour was dour for Hillary, because it was "too close to call." There was talk of Hillary's campaign going broke and being unable to go on. But then, suddenly, it wasn't too close, she was declared the winner, and the next hour was about how Obama couldn't close her out. At about 10 pm eastern she supposedly peaked at 8% ahead. But by 11p she's hovering around a ten point spread.

Now the future of the Democratic Party and perhaps the future itself, may well be decided in Indiana in two more weeks.

Inside the numbers and the final delegate tally is all for later. Right now I remember why I left Pennsylvania, several times. Could it be any clearer, since my own demographic--white older working class outside big cities, and raised Catholic yet--turned away from the future so decisively? There is a core of intolerance that showed itself in so many places in the state. It's more than racism, although there is plenty of that. It's resistance to anything not within the highly conflicted, self-contradictory and self-destructive white working class culture. It's why young people have left PA and are leaving PA still. And most ironically, it's a powerful but unstated reason there aren't better jobs. Innovation and imagination are as unimaginable as a black man running for President.

So the campaign leaves PA behind. If it made any history today, it was to continue the sorry march to self-destruction. Until today, or maybe yesterday, my head told me that Clinton was going to win by 14. Then I started to let myself be persuaded than PA could be better. And as usual, PA broke my heart.

Meanwhile, here's the way less invested folks see it--or spin it...from the Obama campaign:


To: Interested Parties
Fr: The Obama Campaign
Re: A fundamentally unchanged race
Da: 4/22/08
Tonight, Hillary Clinton lost her last, best chance to make significant inroads in the pledged delegate count.

The only surprising result from Pennsylvania is that in a state considered tailor-made for Hillary Clinton that she was expected to win, Barack Obama was able to improve his standing among key voter groups since the Ohio primary. For example, among white voters, Obama narrowed the gap with Clinton by six points. Among voters over 60, he nearly cut the gap in half, from 41 points to 24 points. And Independent voters – the group that will decide the general election and a group Obama is particularly strong with – were not able to vote in Not surprisingly, she led by as much as 25 points in the weeks leading up to the election.

As he has done in every state, Barack Obama campaigned hard to pick up as much support and as many delegates as possible and was able to stave off Clinton from achieving a significant pledged delegate gain from Pennsylvania.
The bottom line is that the Pennsylvania outcome does not change dynamic of this lengthy primary. While there were 158 delegates at stake there, there are fully 157 up for grabs in the Indiana and North Carolina primaries on May 6.

And Andrew Sullivan:

It's worth recalling what this primary came to be about, because of a self-conscious decision by the Clintons to adopt the tactics and politics of the people who persecuted and hounded them in the 1990s. It was indeed in the end about smearing and labeling Obama as a far-left, atheist, elite, pansy Godless snob fraud. That was almost all it came to be about. It was the Clintons' core message and core belief. And if anywhere would have proved its salience, it would surely have been beleaguered and depressed central and western Pennsylvania; and it would surely have worked with white ethnic voters over 50.

It did work, it seems to me. It will work, to some extent. It's valid in the sense that Rove is not stupid. But it works less and less the younger the vote is; and it is obviously losing some of its divisive salience even among the older generation. It is fading as a tool. Used by Democrats, legitimized by Democrats, embraced by Democrats, the Rove-Atwater gambits have been paid the highest compliment by the Clintons these past few weeks. But a single digit win against a young black man in a polarized race suggests that this compliment was past its sell-by date. It was an act of desperation, and one last grab back to the past. It didn't quite do what it was supposed to do. Nearly, but not quite.

The past is receding; but the future has yet to be born. This is hard labor. Necessary labor. But the direction of this country is clear, it seems to me. And heartening.

History

Pennsylvania could make history today. It could essentially make Barack Obama the 2008 Democratic nominee, by providing him with a victory that no one (almost) is predicting or expecting. Or it could simply make his nomination inevitable, by providing him with enough votes to drain the Clinton campaign of any last chance.

At this point, hours after the candidates have wrapped up their campaign and hours before the voting starts, it's all possible. Even what Hillary needs--a 25 point win--is possible. But the last polls show a much tighter result. The most respected--SUSA-- has Hillary with a six point lead. The poll with the best record in the primaries--PPP--actually gives Obama a 3 point lead, the only poll to show him ahead. The last poll, the not-so-respected Zogby, shows Clinton with a ten point lead. (Meanwhile, the Tuesday national tracking poll from Gallup shows Obama has regained his 10 point lead.)

Anecdotal analysis from actual PA pols suggest it is very tight, and that turnout is the absolute key--not only the size of it, but who turns out. For much of Monday, the CW was centered on the 300,000 plus new registrants (slightly more than half being former Indies and GOPers), and the buzz in the Philly area. There was talk of Obama's strength in places like York and Lancaster, and the impression that it's about 50-50 in Clinton's stronghold of the Scranton area.

One optimist is Booman of the Booman Tribune, who lives in PA, based partly on his analysis of where the new registrants are. But even he picks Clinton at between 5 and 10 points. Al G. at the Field predicts Clinton by a bit more than 5%, but his district by district analysis shows she'll pick up only 4 more delegates. (This is the place to go, by the way, for numbers; he links to other such analyses as well.)

If anything changed anything in Clinton's favor today, nobody's talking about it yet. There were new ads, and robocalls, but Clinton ended her day in Philadelphia with a crowd of 5,000 (Obama got at least 35,000 and maybe double that). Obama ended his day with a town hall meeting in McKeesport for capacity 2500 and at the University of Pittsburgh rally for a capacity 10,000, easily topping her crowd earlier in the day.

So anything (just about) is possible: a ten point Hillary win to an Obama victory. There are just so many Pennsylvanias--and not only the condescending portraits painted by TV. MSNBC even polled to see who is ahead with gun owners, beer drinkers and bowlers. To them it's simple: working class conservatives in the West, liberals in the East and "Alabama" in between. All of those stereotypes correspond to some reality, but they are too simplistic to explain this Commonwealth. It's a lot more than that.

When the PA Governor's office of Bob Casey, Sr. was my client, I produced a document called "The New Pennsylvania: A Commonwealth That Works." Today will show which Pennsylvania shows up--the new or the old.

As for how to spend the day, I'm going to try to stay away from leaked exit poll information and turnout estimates for as long as I can. Ohio and Texas looked real good for Obama until the returns started coming in, and I'm not going to make that mistake again.

But once the TV blather really gets started and the returns do start coming in, here's the spin I expect. First of all, if these last polls and the buzz today are in the ball park, it's going to be awhile before a "winner" is projected, and even longer until the popular vote percentages settle down. (And of course, longer still until the most meaningful numbers: the delegates.)

But some of the campaign and media spinmeisters have tipped their hand. Obama said in Pittsburgh today that he wasn't predicting a win, but he thinks it will be closer than many people think. The Clinton campaign emphasizes that a win is a win by any margin, and Hillary is absolutely counting on it, because she's staying in Philadelphia election night (while Obama will be in Indiana. He's spending Monday night in Pittsburgh and returns to Philly before his evening rally in Indiana.)

The media chooses its own reality, and the CW in chief, Mark Halperin says Clinton must win by 10.5 to claim a meaningful victory. The Mouth of MSNBC, Chris Matthews, gave his over/under number as 8 points--the percentage she needs to change the game. (He was predicting a 14 point Clinton victory just the other day.) These are really cheesy numbers, because in that range they change nothing. Hillary will get pretty much the same number of delegates if she wins by 8 or 10 or 12 points. And none of them is enough to make a substantial difference in delegates or the popular vote. Hillary was ahead by 20 points just six weeks ago. I really wonder whether any of them are honest enough to say that. I guess we'll see.

Hillary herself may have tipped her hand a bit in her interview with Larry King, no longer claiming she'll fight all the way to the convention. More signals came Monday that June is when the Democrats want it all to be done. There's no real possibility that Hillary will be in position to be the nominee in June.

And Obama got another super-delegate Monday. From Ohio.

Reality Check

Obama held what sounds like a great rally in Scranton Sunday night. Some 4800 enthusiastic people saw not only Obama and Caroline Kennedy, and the ever-present Bob Casey, Jr., but several other Caseys--all from Scranton--including Senator Casey's mother, Eleanor, wife of the former Governor Bob Casey. (I met Eleanor once--charming, intelligent woman.) The three paragraph summary in this Time story is a pretty good excerpt, and tells you that Obama is really on his game now, despite the widely reported throwaway line about even McCain being better than Bush.

The Obama campaign has worked hard for votes in Scranton, according to this article in the Washington Post, even though they've had to deal with racial slurs and threats. And even though they would consider losing by anything under 30 points there a victory. (I've posted a bunch of photos from the PA weekend campaign at Captain Future's Dreaming Up Daily.)

Final election forecasts will be everywhere Monday, and will influence the spin as the actual results come in on Tuesday night. I'll save my predictions of what that spin will be like until I summarize the predictions. But at the close of Sunday, some reality checks emerged that ought to be part of how the PA vote is evaluated.

There has been plenty written about how it will become nearly impossible for Clinton to pull even with Obama in delegates gained as the result of contests, without a blowout win in Pennsylvania that leads to one blowout win after another through to the last in June. But Bloomberg evaluated her chances of catching Obama in the popular vote, which some in her campaign have held out as her last hope. And their story on this is devastating:

"Even if the New York senator wins by more than 20 percentage points tomorrow -- a landslide few experts expect -- she would still have a hard time catching him."

The story goes into excruciating detail of what that means: Clinton would need a 25-point victory in Pennsylvania, plus 20-point wins in later contests in West Virginia, Kentucky and Puerto Rico. Even that scenario assumes Clinton, 60, would break even in Indiana, North Carolina, South Dakota, Montana and Oregon -- a prospect that's not at all certain.

More than just big margins, Clinton would need record voter turnout too. In Pennsylvania, she would need a turnout of 2 million, about half the state's registered Democrats; in the 2004 primary, about 800,000 voted. She would also need turnout to almost double in other states where she leads, and reach some 1 million in Puerto Rico, which is about how many Democratic- leaning voters went to the polls in a 2004 gubernatorial election.

That's more than a mountain to climb--that's walking to the moon. And maybe without shoes--because the one bit of news Sunday night was the fundraising numbers the campaigns had to file by midnight. According to official numbers, Obama started April with $42.5 million cash for the primaries (and another 9.5 for the general.) Although the filing deadline came and went without an official announcement from the Clinton camp, a spokesperson there said the Clinton campaign started April with about $8 million it could spend on primaries.

So what are the pundits going to say Monday and Tuesday? That she needs a 10 point victory, or any victory to stay in? Or are they going to say that realistically she needs a 25 point victory in PA?

Last Days Before PA Votes

Today Barack Obama did a town hall in Reading that filled the space with 2500 people. Tonight there's an "On Track for Change" rally in Scranton, with Caroline Kennedy as well as Bob Casey, who has been with him through this last swing. That should be interesting, as it is Clinton turf to the max.

Tomorrow, the day before the election, he has two scheduled stops, a town hall in McKeesport and finally a rally in Pittsburgh. Clinton will hit the big spots in every region of the state Monday: Scranton, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

Sunday showed what Obama is up against. Not only is he battling against two Clintons campaigning simultaneously in different places (the Billary factor) but he is being attacked by McCain as well as the Clintons.

The Obama campaign is making some strange moves--they've reignited health care as an issue very late in the game, they're going negative more than in the past. Obama may have hurt himself by splitting hairs in Reading--he offhandedly said that all three candidates would be better than Bush. Media and Clinton jumped on it immediately. Things are frantic out there.

This blogger, who is an on the ground canvasser, mentioned some of the new wrinkles in the Obama campaign (including differences in the ground game), and like me wonders if it reflects internal polling. He says it just doesn't feel like Ohio, and suspects the Obama campaign thinks it is close. One could reach another conclusion, of course.

The latest polls show Hillary hovering around 50% with Obama closing in. Most polls are showing about a five point spread. Add five for late deciders and Hillary may still get her double digit win, but it could also drop down below that. At this moment, and at this distance, I'd say the best Obama could hope for is 7. But that's without knowing what no one knows: turn out, who will turn out and who won't; whether the Republicans who switched to Democratic registration are overwhelmingly for Obama or split (with generous dollups of Rush Limbaugh subverters); which way the Independents who registered D will go, and by how much.

PA is an expected win for Clinton, and a must win. How the results will be spun is another question. But what seems likely at this point is that she won't get many more delegates than Obama will, and unless she gets 60% of the vote and this translates into major victories in North Carolina and Indiana in two weeks, it won't mean much.

In the meantime, there's this smart and entertaining piece on the ABC debate by Frank Rich. My favorite sentences: "The trashiest ads often bumped directly into an ABC announcer’s periodic recitations of quotations from the Constitution. Such defacing of American values is to be expected, I guess, from a network whose debate moderators refuse to wear flag pins."

What's satisfying to me about Obama's final argument is that fundamentally it hasn't changed--he's talked specifics and so on, but he is making his basic argument, as in this two and a half minute clip from his rally in Harrisburg Saturday night.

He's getting good crowds everywhere, and it will be interesting to see how they turn out for him in Scranton and Pittsburgh. Good crowds don't guarantee or even necessarily indicate victory in any election, but what they are telling me is that Clinton is unlikely to pile up the popular vote margin she needs to make PA a game changer.