MI, FL and superdelegates will matter.

Superdelegates are going to decide this thing; perhaps wins in electoral-rich Democratic-leaning states will matter to them.

No it isnt.  We have a lot of tough seats to defend that include lots of Republican leaning independents that will come out and droves to vote against Hillary and then vote against our downballot candidates.  

You don't care about losing the House?  Do you want John Boehner, who would be the most right wing speaker in US history controlling the House and passing Social Security Privitization?

I suppose you aren't a Democrat then.

I enjoy how you proceeded to counter my argument, with...an op-ed by someone else.  And you still haven't proven that, a primary season with the largest turnouts ever, that somehow Republican operatives have somehow sabotaged the vote. And I'm guessing no on else will.

Your assuming the super delegates are going to anoint Hillary. Which based on the events of the last couple of weeks is about as realistic a wish as Hillary anointing herself the "incumbent" and next in line.

If Hillary can't turn it around Mar 4 the super delegates will be the ones that force her out of the race on Mar 5th.

yes, exactly, that's what he is trying to say. They didn't get to know him. Mouthpieces can only do so much.

I don't understand your point. Your retort is to say that because Obama did not win CA and MA, that the commenter you responded to is wrong?

You DID NOT respond to the commenter. You did not respond to the fact that the longer Obama campaigns in most states, the better he does in the polls. He has done this in virtually every state - there are only a few exceptions. And yes, he did this in MA and CA by narrowing a huge gap in a matter of weeks.

and crushed Hillary by an average of 33 percent.

I would agree that the odds are as you say. All I was saying is that the SDs will choose, NOT who has the most pledged delegates, etc. My entire point was let's stop pretending either one wins this from the pledged delegates.

That is more what you wish than what will happen. Obviously Sen Obama is gaining, as well he should. He has been winning, he is ahead, he will get unpledged SDs.

But keep in mind this still may change. If Hillary wins on tuesday, and Obama runs into more fire anything may happens.

Not likely, but possible.

Im sorry, about 283 superdelagates.  

Really, what have I said that has been offensive? Because I can list the never ending bile and glee from Obama supporters if you'd like.

I agree wholeheartedly.

What puzzles me is why you want to toss away a Reagan of our own!

We have an honest-to-goodness liberal - a LIBERAL - who resonates all over America.  Just like Reagan "fooled" America and rebranded hope and optimism as Republican values, Obama will do the same for Democratic values.

Be cynic and say he's fooling America if you wish, but that's Rush Limbaugh's problem -- it sure shouldn't be ours.

Polls consistently show Obama doing better in Nov than Clinton.  Obama would win easily.  Clinton might win, might lose.  Why take a chance?

Detractors have been saying that Obama's appeal would plummet any day now for 12 months. It hasn't. A true testament to his talents.  He's the next leader of our party.  He's the one to lead us to victory in Nov. To tear him down unfairly now would be extraordinarily bad for the party.  We are at the point where you have to realize that what's best for the party is to end this primary by voting Obama and start focusing on the general election.  No question that the republicans have!

I try to stay out of a lot of this nonsense, but I have to take issue with the thought process by which Clinton is supposedly stronger in the general election than Obama because she has already had such negative attacks on her in the past. First, the result of those past attacks is that she has incredibly high negatives (sometimes polling in the mid- to high-40s in disapproval). It seems to me that all the GOP has to do is to reopen some old wounds and find a new attack or two, and her negatives creep up past 50%. At that point she is mathematically unelectable.

Compare that to Obama, whose negatives have been far lower (someone else can supply the recent data). That means that the GOP would have to perfect attacks against Obama effective enough to get another 10% to 20% of the voting population to change their views on Obama to be even close to where Clinton already stands in disapproval.

Second, the whole "battle-hardened" argument for Clinton assumes, I think, that she is as low as she possibly  can go. I see no evidence to support that assumption.

Third, as the obverse to number two, Clinton supporters seem to assume that because Obama is newer to the scene, that his positives are weaker than Clinton's. Again, what evidence is there that that is the case?

Fourth, which may just be a way of contradicting noumber three, from the evidence so far, it looks as if Obama is quite adept at defeating attacks, both from Clinton and from McCain. His campaign apparatus seems able to slap back at falsehoods almost instantly, and Obama personally has demonstrated a number of times that he is able to think well on his feet and graciously but firmly shove falsehoods back down the throat of the one uttering them.

In short, I just don't see the "battle-hardened Hillary" argument anymore, and I was one making that argument a couple of months ago.

She's lost, huh?

Interesting- I guess I missed the recent primaries where Obama secured enough pledged delegates to secure the nomination.

The voting that was done in both MI/FL is so blatantly, obviously biased, it's clearly unusable.  I'd love for MI/FL to vote.  They're important states.  But there's just no way that any rational, impartial human being can say that the votes that have been cast in those States should stand as-is

This is lovely rhetoric. But it's completely off base, imho. How could any rational person say that the the votes in MI/FL are "blatantly, obviously biased"?

A reality check for you:

1. Obama voluntarily took his name off the MI ballot. Clinton chose not to. He got what he asked for there.

2. Everyone's name was on the ballot in Florida. People got to vote. Hundreds of thousands of them. In fact, Obama even got to run ads there. And he still lost.

Just because you don't like the results of actual votes doesn't mean that it was some nefarious scenario.

The DNC's decision to disenfranchise the millions of people who voted in Michigan and Florida was unbelieveable. The Obama people's indignation at any notion that these delegates be seated as is entirely predictable, but tiresome nonetheless.

It's time to just forget about FL and MI.

They'll be seated.

This may very well not be over Tuesday.  Hillary Clinton may well stay in the race - and she has every right to fight on.

I'm at peace with the state of the race.   I've been watching politics for a fairly long time.  Obama is simply really damn good at this stuff.  He's got an answer for every attack on him.  In fact - the more he gets attacked, the more people grow to like him and more people like him period.

Hillary Clinton will do the right thing when she has to.

I don't buy into the 'megalomaniac' tag that some people toss onto her.  She's ambitious.  So is Barack Obama.   But they're both good Democrats and neither wants to destroy the party.

Where does Hillary close the gap?

Obama has a 15 point lead in Indiana.  The difference between Mississippi and Alabama is that all of Mississippi's Congressional districts have at least 20% black populations.  In Alabama there are three districts that are very white(AL-04, AL-05, and AL-06) and Clinton picked up a good number of delagates there.  

He has the Governor's endorsement and his keys to the political machine there.

Hillary won't get a single delegate from Puerto Rico.

When asked about his legislative record, Obama rattles off several bills he sponsored as an Illinois lawmaker.

He expanded children's health insurance; made the state Earned Income Tax Credit refundable for low-income families; required public bodies to tape closed-door meetings to make government more transparent; and required police to videotape interrogations of homicide suspects.

And the list goes on.

It's a lengthy record filled with core liberal issues. But what's interesting, and almost never discussed, is that he built his entire legislative record in Illinois in a single year.

Republicans controlled the Illinois General Assembly for six years of Obama's seven-year tenure. Each session, Obama backed legislation that went nowhere; bill after bill died in committee. During those six years, Obama, too, would have had difficulty naming any legislative achievements.

Several months before Obama announced his U.S. Senate bid, Jones called his old friend Cliff Kelley, a former Chicago alderman who now hosts the city's most popular black call-in radio program.

I called Kelley last week and he recollected the private conversation as follows:

"He said, 'Cliff, I'm gonna make me a U.S. Senator.'"

"Oh, you are? Who might that be?"

"Barack Obama."

Jones appointed Obama sponsor of virtually every high-profile piece of legislation, angering many rank-and-file state legislators who had more seniority than Obama and had spent years championing the bills.

"I took all the beatings and insults and endured all the racist comments over the years from nasty Republican committee chairmen," State Senator Rickey Hendon, the original sponsor of landmark racial profiling and videotaped confession legislation yanked away by Jones and given to Obama, complained to me at the time. "Barack didn't have to endure any of it, yet, in the end, he got all the credit.

"I don't consider it bill jacking," Hendon told me. "But no one wants to carry the ball 99 yards all the way to the one-yard line, and then give it to the halfback who gets all the credit and the stats in the record book."

During his seventh and final year in the state Senate, Obama's stats soared. He sponsored a whopping 26 bills passed into law, including many he now cites in his presidential campaign when attacked as inexperienced.