Now there's just Hawaii in 20 minutes.  I've got a good feeling about Hawaii--so maybe I can go to sleep.

Ben,
Here is another (more in depth) comparison of Clinton and Obama's senate records
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/ … /36/458633

I'm guessing that Hillary will win 2 or 3, at least one of them a big state.  She won't win by any large margins, and it will be pretty clear the nominee will be Obama.

However, Hillary will try very hard to make it look like a victory.  She'll emphasize "win" and gloss over "not winning by enough."  She'll stay in the race for another 5 weeks suffering several losses until she realizes that the polls in Pennsylvania don't give her the lead she'd need.

While the results look disappointing for Obama, I did a little math.  I counted CNN's assigned delegates and divvied up the remaining ones based on percentage of popular vote (which seems to be a bad strategy in this system).

According to my calculations, Obama needed 644 delegates before and now needs 464.  Hillary needed 767 but now needs 549.

So before yeasterday she needed to win 54.3% of the remaining delegates to win.  Yesterday she captured 54.7% of the vote, so she now only needs to win 54.3% of the vote.  It seems to me that shes much in the same place she was before.  If this surprises you, remember that her number of delegates has grown, but the remaining pool of delegates has shrunk considerably.

I do see two advantages for Hillary--she's not suffering from 11 straight defeats and a greater percentage of the remaining pool is made of stupid delegates instead of pledged delegates.

However, she's now facing another unfriendly month and the two states she's been pinning her hopes on are gone.

It looks to me like Hilary needs around  60% of the remaining delegates.  After the next two weeks, I expect that to jump to over 70%. So long, Hillary!

. . . but holding on long enough to make the race much more expensive and hurt the democratic side, whatever that turns out to be.

But all of the news coverage is bad.

Keep in mind that the media is significantly responsible for keeping Hillary in the race. No major TV news outlet has really called for Hillary to accept her loss and drop out. If anything, they continue to mislead people by suggesting that she has more of a chance to win legitimately.

It's not hard to see why: television commercials are the target of the most campaign money by far, so it's in the TV stations' best interest to prolong this.

I'm convinced that Hillary would rather see President McCain than President Obama, the same way the Clintons ensured the re-election of W. Bush instead of allowing President Howard Dean, for the same reason: so she can run again in 4 years.

Whether it's arrogance or simply a fatal character flaw, she's convinced that she deserves the presidency. She has assumed that she is rightfully the next president. Sound familiar? Sounds like W., doesn't it?

And she has run a downright shameful campaign, like W., in an attempt to cheat the system and assume her rightful seat, even with the population voting differently.

I'm pessimistic on this... while Obama has clearly won the nomination by all legitimate measures, I still think Clinton is going to end up being the nominee. I'm not sure how she'll do it, but I bet she will.

I'm tired of supporting her Democratic party. They haven't represented me and my priorities for over a decade, and I'm tired of supporting the second-worst.

Obama has been so successful because he doesn't represent that. He's as much of a Democrat as Ron Paul is a Republican. Obama has reinvigorated hope and interest from people like me who the current Democratic party has lost.

If Clinton wedges her way into the nomination, I won't vote for her. I can't vote for her. I'd rather "throw my vote away" on some random third-party candidate than live with the knowledge that I supported that.

Possibly.  But Obama's been hit by about four things.  One was the "bitter" comment.  The other three were 1) Wright, 2) Rezko, and 3) Ayers.  Rezko wasn't a very interesting story.  Wright is guilt by association.  And blaming Obama for the Weathermen is about the most ridiculous story yet.

I'd known about these three things for months--and I think they're about all that's out there.  (Excluding the drugs--but I doubt McNasty will put spotlights on youthful indiscretions.)  Clinton's stolen so many pages from Karl Rove's playbook that there's nothing left for Rove to use in November.  Except that "unpatriotic" thing, which itself is risky because in execution it will sound a whole lot like "not white enough."

Obama will do extremely well among the young and educated--both on the Republican and Democratic side.  It's not clear to me that Clinton is doing that much damage, even with all the attacks.  She might cost him in enthusiasm.  Some of her supporters might not donate to him or go out and canvas for him--but he's not hurting for money or volunteers.  Much of Clinton's support is from the solidly Democratic group.  She has the second generation feminists--but they're not going to vote for pro-life McCain.  She has a lot of union support which will also tow the party line.  I don't think she has as much Hispanic support considering the numbers there reflect roughly what you'd expect from the proportion of union and no-college voters.  And the Republicans with their xenophobia aren't in a great position to claim Hispanic votes.  Then she has the old people.  In Pennsylvania, race was a factor for a lot of them.  But party affiliation is (hopefully) a larger factor.

There's been a lot of talk about whether Obama can win the "Reagan Democrats."  I don't think this group flipped because of Reagan's policies.   I think it was the star appeal.  I think this is the same group that made Jessie Ventura governor of Minnesota.  They won't switch for McCain.

It sucks that Obama has run a really positive campaign and lots of voters have responded to its stark contrast to politics as typical, but he's been muddied up a bit of late, and he still is valiant in his responses (even when answering the Wright nonsense).

It poses a thorny dilemma for him:

A) Does he continue to take pummeling and dignify it, but while doing so, gives credence to his foes and their ridiculous charges?

or

B) Get dirty himself (or his campaign management, I should say) and start flinging it back, as there is a lot of dirt that can be flung at Clintons and McCain. It would soil him as bad as the other candidates in the eyes of many though.

Get used to the 527 style attacks. I predict its going to be a long and plentiful string of outrageous racist type attacks like the recent NC Republican TV ad — done by 3rd parties and McCain can play the "good cop" and everyone thinks he's above the fray, whereas you know for certain his campaign management strategists are in touch and planning with the "extremists" he publicly decries. And in the meantime, the subservient corporate MSM (who already love McCain and openly confess they are his "base") give free play to those wild charges.

Us that get our news via internet know better, but there still is predominant majority in America (especially in flyover country) that receive it all from TV news…

McCain will probably run a pretty clean campaign--but McCain can only control so much of the party.  And the party can only control the 527s to a limited extent.  Swift Boat Veterans, or whatever this year's equivalent is, will do their schtick.  So will MoveOn.org.