A balanced diary. Nice one.

There is zero reason to be pessimistic.  Obama is just about tied with McCain according to Poblano's charts and thats with him fighting McCain and Hillary AND he's leading nationally.  Combine that with a better turnout machine and much more money and i see little reason to be pessimistic.

Jerome, love you like my luggage, but if she is going to be seen as leading the popular vote, it has to be without MI and FL.  You send Obama supporters into a screaming rage by including them, and they won't listen to anything after that.

I think that WV voters voted on economic issues, and they went with Hillary, and worth noting is that Obama got more votes than McSame in WV.

has something to say about your pessimistic attitude:

Wait until the general has started and McCain gets hit with the corn belt, his war stance, and he policy on government entitlements (SS, Medicare, Medicaid), and we'll see how he does.

"There's clearly someting happening though, in regards of support for Obama

There's something happening, alright!

► Hillary is 20,000,000 dollars in the red (Bankrupt)

► Obama leads Hill, 53% to 41% in Monday's ABC/WaPo Poll.

► James "Richardson is a Judas" Carville now concedes Obama is the presumptive nominee (NYT).

There's something happening, alright!

I have a serious question for Jerome, Alegre, and every other Clinton supporter clinging to "the popular vote" as some sort meaningful or even logical metric.

If different states have different standards for who can vote (caucuses, open primaries, closed primaries, etc.), how can there be such a thing as a national popular vote?

Put MI and FL aside for a sec (or include them, if you like...don't matter); Even Barack's "lead" in "the popular vote" is nonsense because there's no fair and equitable way to account for those votes. People who were allowed to vote in some states (Republicans, Independents) were not allowed to vote in others.

So how is it fair?

The pessimism comes naturally with your realization that Clinton has lost. But don't worry, its all a product of those "Obama is doomed" folks here. It just aint true.

Obama is winning in head-to-head matchups, despite being at his floor during a heated primary battle and mccain being at his ceiling, untouched, unvetted, and unframed.

Obama and Hillary are both losing working class whites by the same margin, but they are doing much better than either Gore or Kerry did.

And the fundamentals are not only with us, but almost universally so. We could've run kerry, or someone even weaker, and won pretty easily. But instead we're going to run one of the strongest and most resilient candidates we've had in a long time.

Keep your head up, Jerome, we are going to beat John McCain and bring in a huge Democratic wave.

"There's clearly someting happening though, in regards of support for Obama,"

Not really.  I think comments like that, as well as discussions about "momentum" are really inaccurate.  The is a very close race, with demographics that favor each candidate.  If we were to have redos in each state, I doubt anything would be different.  Obama would win some, Clinton would win some.

Nothing is happening.  It is a close race that Obama is winning overall.  We need to get let go of the myth that Obama is losing ground because he gets trounced in some states.  Hillary gets trounced in some states too, and I would never say she is losing ground or "clearly something is happening" to her support.

Obama gave WV to Hillary... he did not compete there at all.  It was on purpose.  He was trying to be nice to Hillary, give her a chance to exit on a winning note...

...and what happens, the exact opposite.  I hope that the Obama campaign has learned their lesson.  You cannot be nice to the Hillary campaign.  They will not return the favor.

Please wake me up when you decide to rejoin the reality based community.

you're being "disingenuous."

Obama doesn't yet appeal to poor, white, uneducated people from Appalachia.  That's it.  Not "There's clearly something happening..."  (He does have work to do with this group.  I trust he'll do it.)

And to count some ridiculous parody of a "popular vote" that leaves out the non-activists in the caucus states is similarly deceptive.

I do hope we can all work together after the nomination is settled.  There's serious work to be done, and it's not about maintaining the illusion that Clinton is viable.  

The nomination race is over, and the next phase is even more critical, whomever one's backed thus far.  McCain is not an option the country or world can live with.  

Or is it Clintonball?

I'd appreciate it if Clinton's supporters would do us all a favor and decide, once and for all, which contests and which rules "really" count for the purpose of deciding the nomination.  

Granted, it would have been nice for them to have decided before almost every state had voted, so that the voters themselves could have some say.  But better late than never; maybe this way, voters in South Dakota will know that if they want their vote to count, they should vote in the primary or the straw poll at the next Sioux Falls Hillary 2008 mixer.

Really, those who attended the Nebraska Caucuses clearly believed it was the caucuses that determined the nominee, yet here we see that the Nebraska Primary is the "real" contest.  Wouldn't it have been nice for all those voters who wasted their time at the Nebraska caucuses to know that their efforts were meaningless?

I suggest a blog (hey, maybe it could be MyDD! maybe it already is!), so that the rules can be changed as needed to reflect the evolving definition of "real" contests.

After a huge victory in PA and WV, the supers reward Obama.

This election is 100 % BS.

because some are still trying to push B O at the top with his delegate lead and you and I both know he won't win in the GE.  Now, if things do change as we are hoping and seem realistic for Hillary, that changes everything.

"Onto Kentucky & Oregon. Clinton could win in KY by 30 percent, and Obama is expected to win in OR by double-digits. There's clearly someting happening though, in regards of support for Obama, as he failed mightily at GOTV in WV, despite outspending Clinton, and as I noted yesterday, with voting underway in OR, SUSA has it tied among those whom have voted. Then we have the NE primary results, which, while merely a beauty contest, ended with Obama winning by a narrow 49 - 47 margin over Clinton."

How about the SUSA poll that shows Clinton now losing CA if the vote were held today to Obama?

Surely something is happening to Clinton's support right? C'mon......

Sigh.

in MI huh? That's real will of the people stuff right there!

Dumbfounded that any fair minded person would even consider including MI result that gives him him zero votes or delegates.  

A vote is supposed to be a contest to measure voter preference.  You simply cannot use 328k to 0 as an accurate representation of voter intent.  It's a morally corrupt position to even consider, even worse for democrats.  

I have no issue, no enjoy fair minded advocacy for candidates.  I make a conscious effort to post here instead of using my account at KOS, I enjoy debating as an underdog here.  

I am disappointed that so many would abandon basic principals in an effort to say "we have more" irrespective of if their position was a true reflection of voter sentiment.  

On another note, can I have back my post feedback ability back that was taken away for no apparent reason?

John Edwards got just over 7% of the vote!   :)

Hillary Rodham Clinton       239,062       67.0%       20     
Barack Obama       91,652     25.7        8    
John Edwards       26,076     7.3        0

100% reporting

http://politics.nytimes.com/election-gui de/2008/results/states/WV.html

Progressive Blue

"I'm currently pessimistic on our chances."

Thanks for your 'concern' - all this worrying will be amusing to read when our party overwhelms the GOP in NOV.

I also think your pessimism is misplaced. What tea leaves are you reading to come to this conclusion? If the GOP couldn't win in MS1 by trying to hang Jeremiah Wright on the Dem candidate, I don't think these kinds of tactics are going to win nationwide. SO what gives with your pessimism?

Thanks for a nice, balanced, and realistic post though.

Nicely done, Jerome. As for the GE, it's simple. If Obama were to be the nominee, we have a good chance of losing. If it's Hillary, we have an excellent chance of winning, and winning big.

Among me and a bunch of other people in my neighborhood.  Obama won overwhelmingly.  I demand those votes be counted in the popular vote total!  Don't ignore the will of the people!!

I just LOVE the incessant carping that Obama is being "pushed" to the top by elites, or the party elders, or the Masons, or whoever.

Folks, Obama won and is winning ELECTIONS. He has been winning in pledged delegates since the beginning. He has never NOT led in pledged delegates.

You are not BESTOWED pledged delegates. You get them by getting people in states to vote for you. These votes can't be bought. They cannot be gifted. You must earn them. He has. He wins.

In tabulating primary elections that count, Obama is up 2% nationally (Obama +703,832).

But OK, let's not rehash that silly argument.  

You know what's sweet?  Over 30 million voters have turned out to vote for Democrats in this primary season.  I was curious how that compared to the GE in '04 .. well, 59 million people voted for Kerry.  I'd be curious to hear more analysis on how typical or atypical this year is for a hotly contested primary.  Kerry had under 10 million "popular votes" in the '04 primaries, but they were decided early so many stayed home, for sure.  My vote here for Kerry in the Texas primaries was purely token.

Let's keep our eyes on the prize.  Winning the White House and big gains in Congress.  AS DEMOCRATS.

Party unity didn't help in '04.  We'll get it together in time to beat McCain.

   for Clinton are pathetic. So is your reworking of the math. Obama is up by far more than 80,000.

  Clinton had a good win last night, but she's way behind, and she's not going to catch up.

Obama cannot win in the GE... The WV result is an embarrasing rejection by the voters of Obama and his style of as-usual politics.

His politics is about automatic complaining and whining of racism whenever anyone points out his weaknesses.

The pessimism in this diary is likely a function of the authors choice of candidate in the primary , and not reflective of any real general election prospects.

The polling that is being done for McCain, et. al. is being done in a kind of vaccuum where he is breezing through every state with his name on the ballot and all others greyed out. Those who are being polled are filling in their answers on the basis of their ideas about a party where the leader is decided, versus a party where the leader will be named by the 31st.

That leader will be Barack Obama.  

It is nice however, to see one state where Hillary Inspires voters. I think if I were stoked about a candidate that rallied a state like WV, I would be slightly pessimistic as well. After all, whatever happened in West Virginia, its base electorate is republican / its general election outlook is strong republican.

I think the reason why large numbers of superdelegates have moved dramatically over to Obama's side (literally erasing an almost 100 point lead, from Clinton's camp) - is that the party is on the verge of deciding when to gracefully wind down the contest.

For better or worse, the party can say enough is enough between these two and begin the pressure on one of the candidates to unwind their effort.

But the whole idea that Obama actually threw alot of money into this last contest (WV)  - needs at least one clarification.  

Obama's campaign has almost triple the money that the Clinton Campaign has - this excludes loans, which are not salient. West Virginia's victory did not seriously boost the campaign's coffers.

So all Obama has to do is essentially spend
150% less in any given district, and he's still outspending Clinton by a huge margin.  

The Obama camp walked away from the table in West Virginia, they didn't really try.  People in conservative circles just don't "get" Obama.

The shift in focus however, is not towards a General Election from the Obama campaign.  Rather it is to one  of unity. This is clear from almost any speech given post - NC , where a huge delegate prize was won by the Obama camp.

If you check, you will find that most of the Democratic party now rallies to those calls for unity.

As I wrote earlier, the race is over. Obama won.
If Clinton wins the slot as VP, then states like WV will still be out of play for the General Election, unless McCain chooses Huckabee as his VP - at which point I think Clinton will bring her game up a notch and actually start sniping territory from the GOP.  She's probably the strongest VP candidate I have ever seen.

Obama and Clinton both refused to campaign in Michigan AND FLORIDA.  The Florida numbers are just as bogus, even though the names were on the ballot.  In virtually every state Obama has closed from the initial baseline numbers and there's no reason to believe that FL and MI would have been different (I'm pretty sure, given the polling in the national trial heats, that he would win MI in June if they both contested it).  So you have to throw those numbers out for both states, if you want to be considered even slightly fair.  Not to mention that all of this is a moot point.  The rules committee will favor Obama as the pledged delegate leader.  There is no path to getting MI and FL seated for Clinton by playing hardball.  2025 is going to be the number unless she agrees to a fair compromise, end of story.  And you are smoking some paranoia-inducing weed if you look at MS-01 and the recent senate polls in TX and NC, let alone the Paul, Barr, Huckabee triple whammy that McCain took this week, and think that we're in trouble.  Your concern-trolling is just so obvious and tired at this point.  I can't wait until she finally concedes so I can stop coming here to watch this parade of silliness.

He was handed a HUMILIATING defeat last night.

I like that "Yes, Obama took his name off the ballot in Michigan, we know.".  And don't care.  The rules don't matter, what a candidate says from one day to the next doesn't matter, and if this mindset ends up destroying the party's chances in November (and perhaps the Party itself, I wouldn't be surprised), I guess that doesn't matter to you either.

I say Hillary can't get the nomination without a floor fight that will kill the party in November.  It doesn't matter that she is seems the stronger candidate right now, as she surely does.

Hillary has a strong hand right now, but no path to the nomination.  Why not insist on a VP slot and the adoption of her UHC plan (under her leadership in an Obabma Admin)?  It's the best you WE are going to get.

A pox on both Kos and Jerome.  We need a path out of this, instead of forming a circular firing squad.

Isn't it obvious what Jerome is doing?  DKos is the dominant pro-Obama blog, and once BO takes the nomination, DKos becomes the dominant Democratic blog.  That's bad for Jerome's business, as it is for all media outlets that lose readership/viewership.

If HRC wins, Jerome wins somewhat.  But if HRC loses, Jerome loses big time.

POLITICAL QUIZ----

Going back to 1864:

(a) What did John Kerry, Al Gore, Walter Mondale, George McGovern, Adlai Stevenson, Al Smith, John Davis, James Cox, William J. Bryan (3 times), Alton Parker, Horace Greeley, Horatio Seymour and George McClellan have in common?   

(b) What did Bill Clinton (twice), Jimmy Carter, LBJ, JFK, Harry Truman, FDR (four times), Woodrow Wilson, Grover Cleveland have in common?

The answer to b: They were all Democratic winners who won West Virginia.  I think you know the answer to (a).

is hurting the party. Continued anguish on what can be done to salvage her nomination. The utter contempt the Hillary Supporters are showing to the likely nominee. The anger of the Obama supporters over Hillary's unwillingness to abide by the will of the voters. This prolonged bitterness is frustrating Hillary supporters because just like the Obama supporters they know its not impossible for her to win but everyday it gets a little worse and that is what I see. Rather than losing outright she continues a slow long prolonged defeat.

HRC's defeat continues slowly but inexorably and all this talk about Fl and Mi is about prolonging the death spiral of a doomed campaign. Keeping the  argument  about popular votes about electablity about superdelegates because  is just a way of denying that her campaign will probably be over in the next few weeks. If she chooses to take it further to the convention my belief is that will kill her standing in the party.

So at this point its hard not to feel sad for all the HRC who have daeir hearts broken little by little every day.

We are one day closer to Jerome jumping on the Obama bandwagon.  

That's the way it is looking.  I remember hearing on CNN last week, that it is highly unlikely that the RBC seats the delegates in anyway that would negate Obama's leads, meaning they aren't going to hand the electino to Clinton.

"I was against counting MI and FL before I was for counting them."

Yep. This is my dream candidate for President. I just don't get how any democrat can accept the lack of ethics after 8 years of Bush. Party doesn't make right.

I guess these are baby steps Jerome. Instead of discounting the caucuses that didn't count presidential preference, you lump their estimated numbers with Hillary's 328,309 to 0 win in Michigan. That Obama is still winning even with the straw polls included should say something about how Clinton's reliance on this argument has been unsuccessful.

Edwards' 7 percent from West Virginia is as instructive of anything as Hillary's win there. Either voters were really that enthusiastic about a candidate that dropped out 3 months ago(when no other state has shown a similar disposition), or a lot of those 7 percenters weren't gonna vote a black guy or a woman. If skin tone or sexual organs is a major criterion for this state to vote on in November, then this state is going to have to be written off.

You give away your own sense of yourself with the invocation of the royal "we": "Yes, Obama took his name off the ballot in Michigan, we know."

Frankly, I stick to speaking for yourself.

You win the nomination by having the most delegates.

Keeping track of the popular vote totals only matters if it can influence who a superdelegate endorses. But since we're talking about a metric that tries to combine votes from caucuses and primaries; from closed, semi-open and open primaries; from caucuses that kept totals of the number of people that showed up and those that didn't; and from two states where none of the candidates campaigned, it seems to me to be a pretty flawed number. And that doesn't get to the point that trying to project votes in the general election from the results of a Democratic primary has huge problems as well.

In the end, there are a number of better metrics and arguments that can be used to influence superdelegate endorsements.

The pattern I see emerging is that, as people get to know Obama more, they realize they actually don't know him and are getting skittish or having buyer's remorse if they've already voted for him. I think serious questions have arisen about his electibility in November. Remember, we're dealing with an electorate that put this most horrible of presidents and vice presidents in office...TWICE!

Another is this absolutely insanity of SDs saying they switched from Clinton to Obama either because Obama can unite the country (on what do they base that???  The Democratic PARTY is more divided than ever over this race!) or that they spoke to their 10 yr. old, who likes Obama.

Keerist, Dems know how to lose!

It's not to be wondered that some people are pessimistic about November since their preferred candidate lost. Obama has a big enough base of his own to kick McCain to the curb with money and voluteers. But he will need the disappointeds to at least realize what's at stake and turn out to vote Democratic since Bush's third term is not a rational option.

I sure didn't like Kerry nor Edwards in 2004 and was bitter about what was done to Dean but I voted logically when the time came.

Maybe you wouldn't be so pessimistic of our chances, if actually got on board with the Democratic nominee.  That's not too much to ask from someone who runs a Democratic blog, is it?

Here's the total from last night:

Obama: 91,613
McCain: 89,661

So tell me again what your worry is for the General Election?

I have to agree with you wholeheartedly as do many democratic voters across the country. We are pessimistic for good reason. Half of the Democratic electorate don't like him and indicate that they will not vote for him, which spells real trouble for Obama. If he doesn't win this election for the party, his career in politics will be finished. In contrast, Hillary will have said "I told you so" and will enter the race in 2012.  

http://thepage.time.com/2008/05/14/naral -pro-choice-america-endorses-obama/

you see pessimism with Obama in the lead where most of us see optimism. I actually felt a load come off my shoulders once I realized that the national media has moved on to the GE. Hillary supporters can go on trying to paint a gloom and doom fall but regular people who see clearly see a historic political tsunami coming with Obama augmenting our chances in the fall. Stop drinking the fucking Kool-Aid!! Get off the ledge and join the rest of us and ENJOY our historic opportunity.

Or go vote for McCain, either way, we are motivated to finally see Dems as winners, not Clinton sycophants.

Its only that low if you give every advantage to Hillary.

You have to exclude every caucus state. You have include Florida and Michigan AND you have to pretend that nobody who voted uncommitted would have voted for Obama.

If you are trying to use popular vote to argue about the will of the people than it doesn't matter that he took his name off the ballot. If you are only using it to try and justify Hillary's continued candidacy (which is absurd because it means you feel that you need to justify it in some way,) than by all means pretend that all of these things are fair.

However, if you want to use it as an accurate gauge of how people feel about these candidates than you need to be more reasonable than the Clinton campaign's arguments are in this regard.

Uh....the vote totasl from the 48 contests that were done in compliance of the rules, whcih both HRC and BHO agreed, will not give HRC the most votes.  HRC and BHO both agreed that MI and FL would nor count at all.....

However;judging from the results in Oregon in previous years will mail in ballots and the facts that BHO has been ahead in polls there, this likely to be a non-issue

BARF!

I'm a bit pessimistic too. You can blame HRC's descent into Republican land for it.

It's always interesting to come on this site and see what the HRCs are talking trash about.  As always its either (i) elect HRC or she or I will kill myself or somebody else or (b) justification of hate speech against Obama by reference to the commentary on the Daily Kos. The one thing I haven't figured out so far is how this site turned so HRC-chauvinistic in the first place.  It's a good Democratic site on most things.  Why all the angst and sore loser talk.  Obama has run a better campaign and he's going to win the nomination.  

West Virginia is a desirable state to try to win, but not if it requires pandering to racism. The racist undercurrent in HRC's celebration of "hard working" "blue collar" (ie white) voters as opposed to lazy "blue collar" (ie black) voters is not acceptable.  Maybe I'm an "elitist", but I find absurd all this draping of the banner of "middle class" values over the retrograde attitudes of the citizens of the least economically dynamic section of the country.   It  really is time to turn the page in the country as a whole, and progress will eventually reach West Virginia too.  

I am more pessimistic than Jerome. If Obama had beaten Hillary in NH it would have been a different matter. He could have been an unsullied knight. I am not even concerned about wright ayers muslim farrakhan etc.(these people endorsed him not the other way around) Unfortunately since NH Obama has told several verifiably untrue stories which go to the heart of his candidacy-Selma, Kennedy, food stamps,raised by a single mom,  racial healer and overall charmer. He is not good at answering questions that are not scripted. I just dont see how he makes it. good if he does- if he loses then the party undergoes a total purge.