• The Ted Kennedy stuff has been tough. I vividly remember the day in 1992 that doctors told us, after my 50-year-old father suffered a seizure, that he had a brain tumor. A few days later, after the first biopsy, they confirmed it was a glioblastoma multiforme, with a life expectancy of about a year, tops.

  I parked myself in a medical library in Houston for a couple of days and read all the literature. I lost hope almost immediately. Not my father. He ended up lasting four months and fought that tumor every second he had left.

  I know exactly what the Kennedy family is going through right now, and it makes me sick to my stomach.

• As I've been saying for years, Bush doesn't speak Spanish. His brother Jeb speaks perfect Spanish. George does not. Yet that myth inexplicably persists.
• Speaking of myths, the Jewish vote remains one of the most loyal Democratic constituencies, and that hasn't changed in previous years, no matter how much Republicans and the media claim otherwise.
• Beware smear emails. It's the Swiftboat of 2008.
• Racist opposition to Obama isn't about racism, it's about:

  [...] blood equity, heritage and commitment to hard-won American values. And roots.

  Yup. Nothing racist about that.

• Rush Limbaugh explains why Obama won.

  LIMBAUGH: You know, the feminazis forgot one thing. Well, one of the objectives of the feminazis over the last 20, 25 years has been to dominate the public education system so as to remove the competitive nature of boys. You know, there's a crisis of young man-boy education in the schools. And they did this on purpose, to eliminate male competition in the work force. This is part of feminazi grand plan.

  They forgot affirmative action for black guys. And because of that, every bit of their plan has gone up in smoke now, because they -- if -- they had to come out in favor of affirmative action for black guys, and that's -- see, this is one of the things that really irritates the women. And there are women all over this country fit to be tied -- trust me on this. And it's -- one of the things is affirmative action is exactly -- it's, you know, liberals eventually are going to be devoured by their own policies. And it has happened here. Because Barack Obama is an affirmative action candidate [...]

  So, it's just -- they just forgot that one thing: affirmative action for black guys. And if they had remembered to oppose that, then they wouldn't face the situation they face today.

• Gallup:

  The only major demographic group still supporting Clinton to the tune of 51% or more is women aged 50 and older.

• Why do George Bush, John McCain, and so many other Republicans oppose Webb's GI Bill that offers full tuition scholarships to vets? Because they need warm bodies.

  [A]dministration officials fear that simply making the GI Bill more generous for service members could lead to an exodus of troops leaving the military to attend college [...]

  "Now, this is not indentured servitude," [Defense Department spokesman Geoff] Morrell added. "We’re not trying to, you know, keep people here forever. But we are trying to ... create a system in which troops see the benefit of making a career out of the military, out of being the beneficiaries of the training and the experience and the education that we provide them."

  And the only way for them to see the benefits of making a career out of the military is to deny them the means to attend college? Wow, that's offensive. And from my own personal experience, most soldiers are either the career types, or the non-career types. Illinois paid my college tuition as a vet, but that's not the reason I got out of the Army. In fact, the educational opportunities were a factor in me enlisting in the Army, since I didn't come from a family that could afford to help me with tuition. So you increase educational opportunities, it should help recruitment, which as we all know, hasn't been all that great in recent years.

• URGENT:  If you're a citizen of Michigan, call the office of Democratic Speaker of the House Andy Dillon and tell him NOT to bring to a vote a bill outlawing late term abortions.  No, you didn't misread that, it's the Democratic Speaker of the House willing to push forward an anti-choice bill.  Call Andy Dillon at 517-373-0857 and tell him not to bring SB 776 for a vote.  Learn more about SB 776 at ProgressMichigan. --DHinMI

Yesterday I mocked Clinton's assertion that her battle is somehow akin to the civil rights struggle (as well as suffrage, Zimbabwe, and Florida 2000.

Today, it doesn't seem so funny. John Cole notes the disgusting

co-option of the Civil Rights era after weeks of transparent appeals that whites won’t vote for the black guy which JUST SO COINCIDENTALLY took form during the Appalachian primaries (which conveniently occurred after North Carolina, the last state with a large black population) [...]

It really is disgusting, and yet another nail in the coffin of what used to be Bill and Hillary's positive legacy to the party. She is now being openly mocked across the media and political spectrum. But I'm sure mentioning that is "sexist", and that everyone criticizing the joke her campaign has become is sexist as well.

Steve Benen:

I’m 35, and have been following politics for quite a while, and I’ve never been so disappointed with a politician I’ve admired and respected. Yesterday’s tactics weren’t just wrong, they were offensive. For that matter, they seem to be part of a deliberate strategy to tear Democrats apart and ensure a defeat in November.

For several weeks, I’ve appreciated the fact that Clinton considers herself the superior candidate, and has kept her campaign going in the hopes, from her perspective, of saving the party from itself. But after yesterday, it’s become impossible for me to consider Clinton’s intentions honorable. Her conduct is not that of a leader [...]

Instead of trying to help bring the party together — Election Day is 24 weeks away — Clinton went to Florida to argue that if Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee, his nomination will be illegitimate. And if the DNC plays by the rules Clinton used to support, it’s guilty of vote-suppression — comparable to slavery, Jim Crow, and Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe.

TBogg:

My contempt for her has reached the Lieberman line.

There is one thing that I truly believe in and that is fairness. You may not like the rules, but once you agree to them, you play by them. Hillary Clinton can't even manage to do someting as simple as that.

Josh Marshall:

[Clinton] is embarking on a gambit that is uncertain in its result and simply breathtaking in its cynicism.

Clinton HAD de-escalated last week, but now she is going nuclear. Why? This is a theory:

Time magazine’s Karen Tumulty reports:

What will Clinton’s terms of surrender turn out to be? Her husband, for one, seems to have a pretty clear idea what he thinks she should get as a consolation prize. In Bill Clinton’s view, she has earned nothing short of an offer to be Obama’s running mate, according to some who are close to the former President. Bill “is pushing real hard for this to happen,” says a friend.

The Field can now confirm, based on multiple sources, something that both campaigns publicly deny: that Senator Clinton has directly told Senator Obama that she wants to be his vice presidential nominee, and that Senator Obama politely but straightforwardly and irrevocably said “no.” Obama is going to pick his own running mate based on his own criteria and vetting process.

In matters like these, I won't put much stock on anyone's secret sources -- whether it's Time or the always excellent Al Giordano-- since there's so much bullshit, misinformation, and rumors floating around that it would be impossible for anyone to sift between fact and fiction. There are probably only a handful of people who would know whether this is true, and they're not publicly dishing.

But as a theory, Clinton's over-the-top outbursts yesterday really would fit the pattern of someone scorned of a prize they felt they had rightfully earned. In the stages of grief, we may have gone from "bargaining" back to "anger".

SurveyUSA. 5/18-22. Likely voters. MoE 4.1% (4/11-13 results)

That's a 15-point swing in five weeks. You're starting to see the Obama victory bounce, even if Clinton won't finally admit she lost.

And that's with SUSA underpolling the black vote -- 18 percent, when in 2004 blacks were 21 percent of the Virginia general election voter pool. Who thinks African American turnout will be lower in 2008?

Also note that according to SUSA, women vote for Obama at a 54-38 clip, and Latinos (4 percent of the survey, 3 percent in 2004) select Obama at a healthy 64-32 clip.

Clinton wasn't polled. I wonder if there's bias in polls that poll both candidates, especially if the Clinton matchup is listed first.

That last SUSA poll included both matchups, and this one didn't. It could partly explain the huge 15-point swing.

This is a harbinger of what will happen across the nation soon after Clinton throws in the towel.

A new poll released today in California finds political momentum shifting dramatically toward Barack Obama—and away from both Hillary Clinton and John McCain—in the nation's most populous state. According to a survey conducted over the past 10 days by the Public Policy Institute of California, 59 percent of likely voters here now have a "favorable" impression of Democrat Obama, while a majority view both of the other candidates unfavorably. In a state whose Democratic primary Clinton won in February, 51 percent of voters now say they have an unfavorable opinion of her; 53 percent of voters feel the same way about Republican McCain.

Obama, meanwhile, seems to be making strides across nearly every constituency. If the general election were held today, 54 percent of Californians say they would vote for him, compared with 37 percent for McCain. That gap has widened by 8 points since March. Obama enjoys the support of more than 80 percent of Democrats here, along with over half (55 percent) of independents. He leads McCain among men and women and is viewed favorably by nearly 70 percent of Latinos—a powerful political group, experts note, not just in California but in several other western states, including Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada.

Those Latino number are big, and back up what Gallup is finding, that Obama's support among Latinos is surging. And yes, he even wins those "hard working, working class" whites:

While there has been an epidemic of hand-wringing among Democratic political analysts over Obama's inability to win over low-income white voters in states like Kentucky and West Virginia, where Clinton has dominated recent primaries, California seems to be a different story. Obama leads McCain by a double-digit margin here among likely voters, no matter what their incomes. He enjoys a 55-to-35 percent lead among those who make less than $40,000 a year, including whites; a 55-to-36 percent lead among those who make between $40,000 and $80,000; and a 53-to-37 percent lead among those who make $80,000 or more.

California, like most of the country, isn't Appalachia. You can see the full poll here (PDF).

McCain has made some noise about contesting California, but that's just b.s. to get big-money California Republicans to open up their wallets. McCain doesn't have the appeal, nor the money, to make even a cursory effort for California's 54 EVs.

Ruth Marcus:

More important than helping candidates figure out how to talk about gender, Clinton's candidacy has dispensed with damaging myths about women's capacity to compete in presidential politics. Not tough enough? If anything, Clinton came off as too tough. Too emotional? Clinton teared up in New Hampshire -- and, confounding male pundits, this display of vulnerability helped her win. Too fluffy? Clinton, perhaps to her detriment, out-wonked the competition.

Me, May 7, 2006:

In person, Clinton is one of the warmest politicians I've ever met, but her advisers have stripped what personality she has, hiding it from the public. Some of that may be a product of her team's legendary paranoia, somewhat understandable given the knives out for her. But what remains is a heartless, passionless machine [...]

So no, this "male pundit" was not surprised when a little glimpse into her real personality was well received by voters.

We've learned in recent months that it was Penn who decided to strip that personality from Clinton. When it accidentally poked through in New Hampshire, people loved it. And then she went back to being the same heartless, passionless machine -- yet another mistake in a long line of mistakes.

It was an ironic fear of sexism that simply (and maybe surprisingly) didn't materialize. Rather than let Hillary be Hillary, and risk looking too much like a woman (i.e. "weak" and "emotional"), they stripped her of the very qualities that may have very well clinched her the nomination. In fact, Team Clinton overcompensated in the other direction -- the imperative that likely decided not just her disastrous Iraq War vote, and not just her refusal to apologize for it, but also her inexplicably stupid Iran vote.

At a time when Obama mocks McCain's foreign policy as "I won’t talk to that guy. And I won’t talk to that guy. And I won’t talk to that guy," and refreshingly looks past the Villagers' demands for a Big Penis Stick, militaristic, and aggressive "with us or against us" foreign policy, Clinton is still stuck threatening to nuke Iran and making the same old tired threats

That, right there, was probably the difference this primary election.

Yesterday, the DNCC's Aaron Myers wrote on Daily Kos:

We didn't hand off this project to state party officials, as was rumored.  The DNCC published a list of requirements, we read applications, and we looked at lots of blogs.

I responded:

The rumor wasn't that it was "handed off", but that some state parties exercised veto power over the selections. I'd like to see Aaron deny that was the case, since the evidence to that effect is steadily mounting.

Well, here's what appears to have been the case:

As it turns out, I did talk to Matt Jerzyk of the credentialed blog Rhode Island Future, and he had a conversation with state party executive director Tim Grilo about the blog credentialing process.  He asked about the process of credentialing bloggers.  Grilo said that the DNCC called and asked for the party's input about each blog that applied, and the Rhode Island Democratic Party was told directly that their input would be valued and would be involved in the decision-making process about who to credential.  Grilo said that the party was not given veto power but he did get the strong sense that their input would be a valuable part of the credentialing process.

So the rumor that state parties had "veto power" appears wrong, but state parties did get a strong say in the selection.

Most states parties did the right thing and made sure that worthy blogs got selected to sit with their delegations on the convention floor. But state parties in several states including New Jersey and New York apparently decided otherwise.

Finally, I've now heard that Aaron Myers, who heads this operation at the DNCC, is a tech guy. The DNCC made the mistake -- much rarer this days -- to have a tech guy handle blogs because, you know, blogs are computer thingies. And however brilliant Aaron may be with his technology duties (and everyone I've talked to sing his praises in that regard), he has been ill equipped in dealing with the blogging question. Stoller says Aaron told him last year that he didn't have time to read blogs, which would seem to be a requirement for someone having to put together a blogger credentialling process.

I suspect that this isn't Aaron's fault. He likely got thrown into this because his boss(es) thought, "bloggers are computer things, so we'll have our techie handle it". These sorts of things happen, however unfortunate they may be.

The smart operations, and again, most of them these days are, use communications/media people to deal with bloggers because that's what we are -- media. I'm hopeful that saner heads will prevail in Denver, and this little dustup will be fixed soon enough so we can focus on better targets.

Okay, today we found out that counting the fake Florida primary is, according to Hillary Clinton, like:

It's also like the Big Bang, Jesus, and cute kittens.

Update: Just like Zimbabwe, circa 2000.

More than thirty people have been killed in the run-up to the poll, most of them supporters of the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change.

A motorcade taking the party leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, on a last day of campaigning in poor suburbs of the capital, Harare, was stoned by government supporters, but Mr Tsvangirai was not hurt.

Update II: Just like Birmingham:

Update III: Just like the suffragists:

On the night of November 15, 1917, the superintendent of the Occoquan Workhouse, W.H. Whittaker, ordered the nearly forty guards to brutalize the suffragists. They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head, then left her there for the night. They threw Dora Lewis into a dark cell and smashed her head against an iron bed, which knocked her out. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, who believed Lewis to be dead, suffered a heart attack. According to affidavits, guards grabbed, dragged, beat, choked, pinched, and kicked other women.

(Via AMERICAblog.)

So our favorite idiot is at it again, this time railing against GE for doing business with Iran. But according to Howie Kurtz, the root of his latest "outrage" has nothing to do with Iran, and everything to do with Keith Olbermann.

Ailes called Zucker on his cellphone last summer, clearly agitated over a slam against him by MSNBC host Keith Olbermann. According to sources familiar with the conversation, Ailes warned that if Olbermann didn't stop such attacks against Fox, he would unleash O'Reilly against NBC and would use the New York Post as well.

Now Ailes is a moron. Nothing is better for book sales or ratings than to have Bill O'Reilly "unleashed" on anything. Beyond being an endless source of amusement, O'Reilly's targets have seen their books top the best seller lists (Al Franken), shoot up in the ratings (Keith Olbermann), and enjoy sustained readership (Daily Kos). In fact, I have a whole section in my upcoming book, Taking on the System, on how fantastic it is for credibility purposes to have O'Reilly attack you. It's gold.

So Ailes thought he was threatening Zucker, when in reality, he was tantalizing him with the promise of future ratings boosts. It was money in the bank.

Asked about O'Reilly's motivation, [GE Spokesman Gary] Sheffer said that executives at Murdoch's News Corp. "tell us if the attacks on O'Reilly end, the attacks on GE will end. They've had conversations with our news executives saying, 'If you stop, we'll stop.' " An NBC spokeswoman confirmed the calls.

NBC doesn't want O'Reilly to stop. It's hilarious that Fox thinks that O'Reilly is a threat people actually fear.

SurveyUSA. 5/16-18. Likely voters. MoE 2.5% (No trend lines)

This is an open seat vacated by one-term Republican gubernatorial failure Matt Blunt. Jay Nixon's strength is not just good for Missouri (obviously), but has potential national implications.

The more I think about it, the best presidential picks are "chemistry" picks, those that put two nominees together who like each other and work well with each other (like Gore or Cheney). Veep nominees that attempt to compensate for a weakness only serve to highlight that weakness (like Lieberman or Bentsen). And very few veep nominees can deliver geography (like Bentsen or Edwards). But when the two candidates like each other and work well together in purpose and message, it's pretty powerful.

And on that front, while she's not my favorite veep pick (which is still Richardson), I think that Sen. Claire McCaskill would qualify brilliantly. She may be perhaps Obama's most loyal and hard-working surrogate, and she'd nicely complement Obama's message of change. And if you see them together, they are a great team.

Normally, I'd flat out oppose it, given that she'd cost us a Senate seat. But the Missouri Governor is sworn in before the President of the United States, meaning that if McCaskill was our vice presidential nominee, her replacement would be chosen by Gov. Jay Nixon.

Race tracker wiki: MO-Gov

The rules are the rules, so unlike the Clinton people, I won't try to change them in the middle of the contest. But I'm really confused as to why on Earth the DNC would create a system that gives a non-state like Puerto Rico more delegates to the party convention than more than half of our states?

That's 27 states that have fewer delegates than Puerto Rico does, even though Puerto Rico is not a state. Even if apportioned by population, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Alabama are larger than Puerto Rico. And, to top it all off, Puerto Rico doesn't even have Democratic and Republican parties on the island running for and holding political offices.

Now I'm not opposed to the territories have delegates, even though I honestly can't see the logic behind it. Then again, I can't see the logic behind commonwealth status either, as notions of colonialism seem to me quaint and obsolete.  

But if you're going to give them representation, it makes little sense to give them more representation at a national convention than over half the United States of America.

It's clear this mess of a nomination process the Democrats devised is in desperate need of a top-bottom overhaul. Throw this one on that list.  If Puerto Rico becomes a state (something I wholeheartedly support if the people of Puerto Rico want it), then by all means, let them have their due representation. Obviously.

Until then, there's no reason why in future nominating contests, any state in our union should take a back seat to a territory.

• Every day, Lieberman makes it harder for Democrats to keep him in their caucus.

  How did the Democratic Party get here? How did the party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy drift so far from the foreign policy and national security principles and policies that were at the core of its identity and its purpose?

  Keep it up Joe, keep it up. And how delicious is it to see Obama upending the Beltway's foreign policy and media establishments by running on a platform of tough diplomacy, rather than a "my dick is bigger than yours"

• Anyone notice that the GOP is in trouble?

  Politics is cyclical. The Republican brand is not what it was in 1994, due in large part to the unpopularity of President Bush. Last week, House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio said his party would reverse its losing streak in November by proving that it, not the Democratic Party, is the agent of change.

  Stranger things have happened, but it will be a feat worth watching. Congressional Republicans are in a pickle right now largely because they have faithfully supported a president who has one of the lowest job-approval
  ratings in history. Are they going to renounce him?

  No. They won't.

• Those previously nose-picking Mississippi Democrats are gearing up for more victories.

  For the first time in years, the Mississippi Democratic Party is enthusiastic about winning major elections.

  One reason for the enthusiasm is the recent victory of Travis Childers. Tuesday Childers was sworn in as the newest member of the U.S. House of Representatives. The former Prentiss County Democrat beat Southhaven Republican Mayor Greg Davis in a special election for the state's first district congressional seat.

  The GOP response:

  But Republicans disagree. They say Childers won by pretending to be one of them.

  "Every belief he espoused were those that we share and not those of the party that he carries their label," said Mississippi Republican Party Executive Director Brad White.

  Wow. Republicans now believe in pulling out of Iraq, supporting SCHIP, targeting price-gouging Big Oil, protecting social security, and opposing free trade deals? Who knew they had all become Democrats?

• Today's "talking points" for blog trolls at the McCain website are the same as yesterday's. I wonder if they'll mix them up?
• It's tough being a lobbyist.

  More than a few Republican lobbyists in Washington are scratching their heads these days, asking: So this is the thanks we get?

  It was a small band of loyal lobbyists who stood by presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain last August when his campaign went broke and his White House aspirations seemed doomed.

  They raised money for him under impossible odds and kept him company in budget hotels during his darkest days.

  Now they are under siege as McCain purges active lobbyists from his campaign team in a quest to wrest the reformist title from Democrat Barack Obama, his likely opponent in this fall's general election.

  This lobbyist, however, has a point:

  "If it was OK to have these people working for you in February, why is it not OK today?" asked one Republican lobbyist who counts a friend among the new McCain outcast class.

• Lou Dobbs, Bill O'Reilly, and Glenn Beck lie about immigration, repeatedly, on the air. Shocking!
• Man, those damn Negroes are so savage, with their riots and whatnot.
• Appalachian whites are different than whites elsewhere, no matter how much the media can't grasp that simple fact.

Archpundit has a recording from Rep. Mark Kirk:

In the last two months I think we’ve seen Barack Obama has unified the Kerry-Dukakis Coalition.
I think we hit Republican bottom in 2006 and I don’t know about you, but I feel stronger now.  I feel that the country was pretty shocked by what they saw about Senator Obama lately.  Our job is to move the focus beyond just him to other things the Democratic Party stands for.

I hope you begin to decide to work on Election Day. This will be a huge one. Dan Seals will have millions of dollars from Washington coming in, wants to join up with Nancy Pelosi, wants to back the Obama agenda.

Kirk is one of the few Republican House members to represent a House district that John Kerry won in 2004. One of six, to be exact. And despite representing a district that Kerry won 53-47, despite representing an Illinois district, the home state of our nominee, Kirk is going around talking about opposing the "Obama agenda" and Nancy Pelosi.

It's an interesting tactic in another way -- Kirk has survived by pretending to be a moderate. Yet as this recording shows, he's a wingnut at heart, and he's clearly out of touch with a district that will overwhelmingly support Obama this fall.

Dan Seals is going to win this seat.

On the web:
Dan Seals for Congress
Blue Majority ActBlue Page

Update: It wasn't clear, but I don't think this was meant for public consumption. In fact, it sounds like something you'd say at a Republican fundraiser. No way in hell he says this sort of thing publicly. But it got out.

Race tracker wiki: IL-10

Rasmussen. 5/19. Likely voters. MoE 4% (4/10 results)

Obama's recent gains follow the national trend -- Obama seems to be up a good five points in every new poll, as Obama's "Return of Wright" problems fade away. His biggest problem in such polls is the Democratic vote, which continues to be weak as Clinton supporters continue to hold out against Obama. In the crosstabs of this poll (subscription only), Clinton wins the female vote 48-40, while Obama loses it 47-41. And while Clinton gets 72 percent of the Democratic vote, Obama is getting just 57 percent. Some of that may be the racist vote, but I suspect that percentage is tiny. Mostly, it's Clinton supporters either wishing revenge on Obama for beating Clinton, or purposefully deceiving the pollsters to make their candidate look better in the head-to-head matchups (Clinton wins 47-41).

Either way, those people will ultimately have to choose between staying in Iraq for 100 years or getting out, and between a hard-right anti-choice Supreme Court or one that will, at the very least, hold its current ground (the most likely retirements on the court are currently two of its most liberal members).

Ultimately, most of the party will come together, and when it does, Obama's numbers will continue rising across the board. Enough to win Florida? I'd be surprised, but the state can certainly be competitive.

It's disappointing, truly, to see someone who works for the Democratic convention be so obtuse and blatantly dishonest as Aaron Myers (email: MyersA@demconvention.com).

Markos has implied that this forthcoming list of "General Pool" blogs will not have access to the state delegations at the Convention.  That’s incorrect.  At previous Democratic Conventions and again in Denver, state delegates spend much of their day meeting outside of the convention hall.  All bloggers and other members of the media will be aware of state gatherings.  They’ll have the same access to provide the same level of coverage.  And "General Pool" bloggers will be able to walk around and gather information on the convention floor via "floor passes."  Any credentialed blogger will have unparalleled access to their state delegation  -- and to this Convention as a whole.  It’s that simple.

Here's what I actually wrote:

The state blogger corps were a special program and a particularly coveted one since it allows those bloggers to sit with their delegations on the convention floor. Regular bloggers can't do that. They may "have access" to the state delegations, but they won't be sitting with them.

So first of all, I never implied lack of access. In fact, I explicitly stated that they'd have it. But second of all, the question isn't one of access. It's one of sitting with the delegation in the floor of the convention, being with them as events unfold and being able to capture the full flavor of the moment. That's different than being able to run out and talk to someone. It's a point that Aaron repeatedly pretended not to grasp as we desperately tried to resolve this issue quietly behind the scenes.

So that post by Aaron is not surprising. It's that level of dishonesty and obtuseness that has allowed what should've been a minor inconvenience, and one easily fixed, into a far bigger deal.

There's no justification for snubbing the Albany Project, Blue Jersey, Cotton Mouth, Left in Alabama, and Michigan Liberal. That they continue pretending that there's no problem at hand, and that regular blogger credentials are the same as the State Blogger Corps credentials betrays a lack of respect for bloggers and a gross insult to our intelligence.

It's high time the convention planners stepped in and fixed things.

Update: Aaron also says:

We didn’t hand off this project to state party officials, as was rumored.

The rumor wasn't that it was "handed off", but that some state parties exercised veto power over the selections. I'd like to see Aaron deny that was the case, since the evidence to that effect is steadily mounting.

Rasmussen Pres Sen. 5/19. Likely voters. MoE 4% (4/16 results)

One of the wonders of this primary season has been the ability of the Clinton campaign -- including Hillary herself -- and their supporters to engage in some of the most patently ridiculous and bald faced lies, knowing that everyone else knows they are engaging in patently ridiculous and bald faced lies.

Chief among those lies is the fiction that Clinton leads in the popular vote.

Aside from the idiocy of the argument itself -- 1) this is a delegate race, and 2) unlike the 2000 presidential election, you can't compare the popular vote from contest to contest since each state has different rules (caucus or primaries, open, closed, or hybrid -- the way the Clinton campaign and its supporters shamelessly stretch this argument is almost embarrassing.

Clinton is "leading" the meaningless popular vote, but only if:

1. You count the unsanctioned contests in Florida and Michigan, where candidates were not allowed to campaign;

2. You give Obama zero votes in Michigan's Soviet-style election, where Clinton was essentially the only name on the ballot; and

3. You don't count the caucuses in Iowa, Nevada, Maine, and Washington.

In reality, Obama leads by over half a million votes, for whatever that's worth (not much). But don't worry, the Clinton argument is so asinine, it has gotten little traction among super delegates.

In fact, it's so insulting to people's intelligence, that it's hurting the credibility of anyone stupid enough to use it.

55 percent of precincts reporting.

Update: John Cole:

Howard Fineman gave the most amazing analysis just a moment ago, which literally was “Everyone knows Obama has won, and it is only a matter of finding a way to let Clinton wrap it up without blowing up the party.”

In other words, my hostage metaphor remains accurate. Knowing the Clintons, they will probably keep fighting on, spreading bullshit, and whipping their supporters in a froth because, let’s face it. This is all about them.

Update II: Assuming Michigan and Florida get half their delegations seated, Obama should have enough pledged delegates to clinch the lead by the end of the night.

Obama needs 17 more pledged delegates to win a majority of the pledged delegates, INCLUDING splits favorable to Clinton in Michigan and Florida.

There are 32 delegates left to be allocated in Oregon. Obama has won 24 pledged delegates thus far tonight.

The 17 needed includes nine delegates from Edwards in Florida who have indicated they would vote for Obama. Without those Edwards delegates, Obama would need 26 more delegates. (The splits, which mirror the "beauty contest" primaries in Michigan and Florida, are how the Clinton campaign hopes they are eventually seated.

Those splits would be:
MI: Clinton 73-55
FL: Clinton 105-76 (w/ Edwards dels, 67 without)

That 17 was with a 10-10 delegate split in Oregon. It is now 21-14, which adds an extra 11 to that total. That leaves Obama with just six delegates needed to win with Michigan's and Florida's half-delegations.

35 delegates have been apportioned, and Obama will get at least six of the last 17 delegates left to be apportioned.

Obama has won the pledged delegate count.