Out of the 81 representatives and 29 senators of the Democratic Party that voted to authorize military force against Iraq, only two can truly be said to have prospered.  Rep. Rod Blagojevich was elected as Governor of Illinois and Sen. Harry Reid was promoted to Majority Leader.  Some other members have since acquired chairmanships or (in Chuck Schumer and Steny Hoyer's cases) leadership positions, but no other pro-war voters have advanced to higher office.  In fact, they have all (save Blagojevich) lost in every single attempt to advance their careers.  Here is the sad state of the pro-war caucus in the House:

[From the Frog Pond]

E.J. Dionne, one of my favorite bigfoot columnists, does another of these columns about the disappointment many women feel about how the Democratic primary turned out.  Dionne focuses on female politicians, especially those that were the first to hold certain offices.  And there are two main complaints he elicits.  The first is that Barack Obama never would have been able to win this nomination with his thin resume if he were a woman.  And the second is anger with how the media (particularly men in the media) has treated Clinton throughout this campaign.  And, to be honest, I basically agree with their gripes.  I can quibble a bit on both scores, but I basically agree.

[From the Frog Pond]

It's somewhat sad to see what is happening to Scottie McClellan.  Even when he was spinning like an Iranian uranium-enrichment centrifuge, I always felt a strange kind of sympathy for Scottie.  Now I know why.  I recognized a sliver of humanity in him that is lacking in all other Bushite sycophants.  McClellan has come (oh, I don't know...) 60% clean in his new tell-part book and the White House and their apologists are calling him 'Benedict Arnold', 'a traitor', 'a turncoat', a 'Hamas apologist' (???), and "probably the worst White House press secretary in recent memory."

I want to tackle this RFK thing from a slightly different angle.  Let's for the moment put aside all talk of assassination and look at this from the perspective of what she was asked.  She was asked why people are asking her to drop out.  We need to remind ourselves that she was attempting to answer that question.  It's a question that asks her to step into a non-supporter's shoes and look at things from their perspective for a moment.  Now, her answer to this question was that she didn't know why people were asking her to drop out and that she found it somewhat mystifying given the history of long primaries in the past.  She chose two poor examples to make her point, as the 1968 contest started and ended later than this one, and her husband's 1992 campaign was effectively (if not mathematically) over in March.  But it's not so important that her examples were bad...what's important is that she seems not to understand why she is being asked to drop out.  So, I'll explain it for her...real slow.

[From the Frog Pond]

For three years I have dedicated my life to combating 'the stupid', by which I mean, for example, the asinine pronouncements of people like Clifford May, who famously declared that everyone in Washington DC knew that Valerie Wilson was employed by the CIA.  This stuff isn't really 'stupid', it's deadly serious and it is perpetrated by people that know full well that what they are saying is not true.

[From the Frog Pond]

It's fairly rare for Americans to be united behind any particular president.  Is some sense we have never been truly united politically.  We certainly were not united under Abraham Lincoln.  But there have been times when the nation was relatively united.  The country was fairly united behind Franklin Roosevelt even before Pearl Harbor, although there were great internal debates.  The country was certainly united as never before or since after Pearl Harbor.  

[From the Frog Pond]

I've noticed this new common acronym that keeps getting repeated on Hillblogs: WWTSBJQ.  Presumably, this stands for 'Why Won't the Stupid B*tch Just Quit'.  Today, it's in use to suggest that John Edwards is part of a network of 'boiz' that are conspiring to push Clinton out of the race before all the people get to vote.  I guess I'm part of that network, and so is Markos and John Aravosis, and a bunch of other male pro-Obama bloggers.  

[From the Frog Pond]

There is an article in this morning's Washington Post about some of the racial resistance volunteers for Barack Obama have encountered on the campaign trail. It depressing, and somewhat misleading, as out in the field racist responses are few and far in between.  But they do happen, and they happen more often in some regions than in others.  A big part of the Post article focuses on Kokomo, Indiana, and it's no big surprise that there is lingering racism there.

As Obama surveys the Electoral College map, he needs to take several things into consideration.  First, he needs to look at defending the Kerry states.  That means he must make sure he is running strong in the Mid-Atlantic states of Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, where John McCain is actually quite popular and familiar, due to his constant media presence on shows like Imus in the Morning over the last fifteen years.  He also needs to check his strength in New Hampshire (where McCain has twice won important primaries) and Maine.  Obama also needs to shore up his position in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Oregon.  If he feels like he is holding the line in all these Kerry states, then he is free to go on offense.

Dear Jeralyn, Armando (Big Tent Democrat), Jerome Armstrong, Taylor Marsh, etc.:

I'm confused about something.  You all keep saying that it is vitally important that we count every vote before determining who the nominee should be.  It's a fine principle, and one that is familiar to all Democrats from the last two presidential elections.  So, if we agree to count all the votes from Michigan and Florida and to seat all the delegates based on those votes, and Hillary Clinton is still behind in the pledged delegates (as she would inevitably be), it is my understanding that you then expect the superdelegates to vote overwhelmingly in the opposite direction, thereby not only countering, but reversing the will of the voters.  

[From the Frog Pond]

Just so you know, there are 217 pledged delegates left to win in the Democratic nominating process. Let me use the somewhat imprecise Slate Delegate Calculator to give you and idea of how those delegates might break.  Clinton has a 55-27 edge in Pollster.com's poll of polls for West Virginia.  Let's round that up to a nice 64-36 outcome: Clinton 18-10, +8 pledged delegates.  Clinton has a 62-28 advantage in Kentucky.  Let's round that up to a 67-33 outcome: Clinton 34-17, +17 Delegates.  Recent polls in Oregon give Obama a lead of about 51-42.  Let's round that up to a 55-45 outcome: Obama 29-23, Obama +6.

[From the Frog Pond]

Far too much attention has been paid to race, gender, and class in this election process, but it has exposed certain fault lines, as well as winners and losers, within the Democratic coalition.  FDR built his ruling majority on the backs of the segregationist South, blacks and ethnic voters in the North, and academics/classic liberals.  The most uncomfortable fit, and the easiest to carve out, was the segregationist South, which Nixon did starting back in 1968.  Reagan made further inroads by exploiting lower-class white resentment/fear of busing, affirmative-action, urban crime, and government assistance to the black community.  The two coalitions that have remained most loyal to the Democratic Party (blacks and liberals) are also the two groups that have suffered the brunt of Republican attacks since the Republicans first adopted the Southern Strategy.  We have been marginalized to the point that even our own side sees us as little more than a danger to the party's electoral prospects.  

[From the Frog Pond]

I haven't written it up in detail yet, but my prediction for North Carolina is that Obama will win 54%-46% and get a 40-37 advantage out of the congressional district splits, a 21-17 split on the proportional splits, and a 61-54 overall delegate win.  

Indiana, however, is a different kettle of fish.  And based on my predictions, Obama will lose the overall delegate battle 38-34.  Yet, just a .06% change in District 8 could make it 37-35, and a .06 change in both District 8 and 9 would make it a 36-36 tie, even if he loses the popular vote.  So, man those phones for Southern Indiana!!

Even bloggers get tired.  I'm tired of writing about the sins of the Clinton campaign.  Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow all filled with new energy, but much like the way I feel about the Bush administration, I feel like my point has been made.  I came out early on, much earlier than most bloggers, and said that the Clintons were not acceptable, that they were the figureheads of a faction within the party that hates the blogosphere, the anti-war movement, the anti-free trade movement, and that thinks the answer is to out-hawk and out-smear the Republicans. Their foreign policy sucks, has always sucked, and is largely responsible for setting the predicates for the Bush foreign policy.  I could go on, but everyone either knows this stuff by now or has entered into late-stage advanced dementia.  

[From the Frog Pond]

One of the things that the media and, often, the political elite do is to try to put our political discourse in a straitjacket. I've always thought that it was a sign of weakness that America created the House Un-American Activities Committee and other like committees.  It showed a certain lack of confidence in the superiority of American political and economic institutions to shut down people's ability to advocate for other systems.

[From the Frog Pond]

Let's talk running mates.

We're in an unusual situation, with a party split quite evenly between two candidates.  In the past, we've seen the nominees select running mates as party reunification gestures.  Kennedy did this with Johnson.  Ford did it by dropping Nelson Rockefeller in favor of Bob Dole.  Ronald Reagan did it with George Bush.  With the exception of LBJ, these picks were not made with regional balance in mind, so much as ideological balance.  

One of the running narratives of this campaign has been that there isn't a whole lot of daylight between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on policy.  This is another way of saying that there really isn't much of a difference between their ideologies.  And that's true on a very superficial level.  If all you do is compare and contrast their position papers, you won't find much beyond minutiae that distinguishes them from each other.  

Does Clinton have a chance to win the popular vote?  Let's find out.  But first, let's deal with some preliminaries.  Real Clear Politics (RCP) has six ways of counting the popular vote, none of which are entirely fair.  But, then, the popular vote isn't a fair measure in any case.  If it were, Obama would have spent all his time in cities (where the votes are) rather than campaigning in Alaska and Idaho.  RCP has the announced popular vote from every state that has provided those numbers.  Obama leads by this measure by 500,000 votes.  RCP also estimates that Obama won the combined contests in Iowa, Nevada, Maine, and Washington by about 110,000 votes.  So, excluding Michigan and Florida, Obama has a popular vote lead of 610,000 votes.

[From the Frog Pond]

These are my observations on the Pennsylvania primary.  

Obama did slightly less well in Philadelphia than expected.  He pulled in 65% of the vote and got a net of about 140,000 votes out of Philadelphia County.  I expected him to get closer to 70%.  His underperformance cost him about 20,000 votes.  In the greater scheme of things, this was not hugely significant, but it cost him a chance to narrow the margin.