I listened in on a CC with Hillary Clinton, and took a few notes. She's going to continue her campaign, undoubtedly, because she thinks she can win, or as she said: "I believe I will win; I believe my opponent could win."

The one thing that I was going to ask of Clinton, but didn't get my question in, was to ask that she push for reform of the primary process. I am fine with states choosing caucuses, but not if they are also having primaries. And if they do have caucuses, they should have less delegates, so the delegate to vote ratio is more closer.

Here was her message, and my extrapolation, in the call:

1) She's leading in the popular vote. Period. This isn't a procedural argument, but a moral one. Yes, they voted in FL and MI, that was their only chance at voted. It may not be what is used for distributing delegates, but no one can deny that there was a vote taken, those people count...

2) Count the delegates of MI & FL. This is a procedural argument. Whatever the committee decides, they decide. They better damn well not punt. I think it does signal a turn in the race, on June 1st, after they've been allocated in whatever fashion they determine. We will then have a clear marker on which both candidates agree, and the contest is decided.

3) Clinton makes the argument that she's won the states with the EV's that matter. The heart of this comes back to her claim that 'she will win, and Obama could win'. As she said: "Its the map not the math".

That was the gist of the argument, which I'm sure she's telling the SD's too.

I don't think either of them is a given against McCain, but that Clinton does have a better shot currently at winning the GE than does Obama. You can look at the EV maps here on MyDD, of the lastest poll in each state, to come to the same conclusion.

Paul Maslin has a good post that goes through Obama's chances.

To start, to grant Obama the states of Iowa, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin (only two of which Obama is leading in today) gets Obama to 255 EV's, according to Maslin.

For the last 15, Maslin includes Ohio & New Hampshire as toss-ups, which they don't seem to be at the moment. Ohio demographics make an uphill climb for Obama, and NH just marginally as McCain has some strong pull in the state historically; in my view, both are leaning McCain states.

So Obama is left with going out west, taking Colorado (9); Nevada (5); New Mexico (5); for a total of 274 EV's. Yes, Obama 'could' win, but lets not pretend that he's not a battleground candidate-- he's just changed the battleground states, given his weakness in Ohio/WV and in Florida.

I've said it many times, and it bears repeating. I'm not a Clinton fan by choice. I've come to support her through attrition, as the one left who I see could win. If or when she is out, I'll support Obama, and hope that the GOP's use his variety of gun stances and his proposal to raise the capital gains tax to 28 percent, doesn't work against Obama out west, and that somehow, Latino voters, whom didn't support Obama in the primaries, decide they will over McCain, whom is probably the most favorable Republican to Latinos at the moment, in the GE.

The odds of the Democratic nomination greatly favor Obama. Obama's odds in the GE are a toss-up.

This is not a diary to discuss the bullshit that is the "popular vote" metric. We all know that it underrepresents caucus states. Of course, on the Hillary-bastion that is myDD, popular vote is assumed to include FL and MI, but not IA, WA, NV, ME (simply because they didn't release the raw numbers). This is not the diary to dispute the popular vote metric.

It might have seemed unlikely on Tuesday following Hillary Clinton's crushing victory in West Virginia, but Obama dominated this week, displaying his growing political skill and ability to deflect attacks from his opponents.

Obama's enemies, whether diehard Hillary supporters or Karl Rove Republicans, were hoping for two things this week. First they had to hope that Hillary's landslide win in West Virginia would fundamentally change the momentum of the race and lead to several days of negative coverage for Obama.

Now, Obama clearly does have work to do with rural, white voters in some parts of the country, but talking about the problem ad nauseam on cable news does nothing to help the Obama campaign solve it. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Second, when George Bush launched his attack from the Knesset, there was clearly the chance that Obama would fumble the response, getting caught like a deer in the headlights. This would have validated the ailing GOP's last remaining line of attack - fearmongering. Clinton would have been emboldened in her long-shot bid, and the GOP would have smelled blood.

Instead, Obama outmanuevered his opponents. Clinton's victory in WV was knocked off the front page as Obama rolled out the endorsement of John Edwards in Michigan less than 24 hours later, cementing the idea that the Democratic party was coalescing around him as the nominee.

But the real genius was in Obama's response to Bush. He put McCain on the spot, forcing him to join Bush in his beyond-the-pale attack and allowing Obama to join them at the hip and brand both of them as negative, dishonest fearmongers. This was really the first time in the campaign McCain and Bush have spoken as one, and if the Obama campaign has their way, it won't be the last.

Most media pundits seemed to agree Obama had gotten the better of the exchange. Chuck Todd called Bush's attack a gift to Obama:

...it essentially kept Clinton on the sidelines just two days after her big West Virginia victory...Obama's opponent was no longer Clinton or McCain, but the man with the 27% job-approval rating....And this will all play out another day -- and will likely extend into the weekend -- as Obama will respond this afternoon to Bush at his rally with Tom Daschle in South Dakota, NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports. Obama will react to both what he considers Bush's politicization of foreign policy and the substance of Bush's attack.

Marc Ambinder agreed:

I've tried to understand, from the perspective of the McCain campaign, what yesterday was all about.

McCain spent the week putting distance between himself and President Bush.

On the day McCain gives a speech that breaks with many traditions and habits of the Bush Administration; On the day McCain preaches post-partisanship,

He ties himself very tightly to the President on a central and disputed element of Bush's foreign policy vision;

He allows -- or his campaign allowed -- the White House to step on his message.

Did the White House coordinate this day with the McCain campaign? Everyone would assume that they did. Did they?

Remember, this was supposed to be the week John McCain distanced himself from Bush, with a speech on the environment, and a newfound eagerness to get the troops home soon. So...how's that going?

Another encouraging sign..the media didn't seem to be having any part of Bush and McCain's BS. Nothing encapsulates it better than this timeless moment from Hardball, wherein Chris Matthews attacks, destroys, and then gleefully stomps on the bones of right-wing hack Kevin James:

Obama seemed to be saying, attack me, and I will wrap George Bush around your neck every single time.

I am curious.
What happens if Obama loses in Oregon?

I know the likelihood is small.  I know that Obama polls well in the West and poorly in Appalachia.  I know that ARG tends to overestimate Clinton's support.  But what happens?

So we know the nominating process is almost over, and Hillary Clinton won't be the nominee. There is a 90% chance it will be Barack Obama as the nominee this year. He may win this election, because not only do the current issues favor him, the issues which were once used to demean black people like him, and galvanize white support for the Republican party, like crime, welfare, and the death penalty have been neutralized and taken off the discourse table on the national political scale. The Democratic Party is now trusted on economics, after having its economic legacy near destroyed by Jimmy Carter, and while even tho the Bush economics are really bad, the American people are more likely to trust us not just because we can complain about Bush, but OUR party has had a President to show what good economics, like balancing the budget and keeping the dollar strong look like.

Peter Beinart wrote a great piece in Time which says what needs to be said:

...As it shows Clintonism the door, however, Obama Nation should remember something: without that pair from Arkansas, it wouldn't be here. The 1990s weren't always pretty, but for Democrats, they were deeply necessary. Because Bill Clinton threw his body into the line, wrecking the Republican Party's intricate defenses, Obama today has the political room to run.

For starters, Clinton deracialized American politics. He didn't deracialize it completely, of course. But knitting together a coalition of blacks and whites is easier today because Clinton restored the Democrats' credibility on economic issues and took three of the most racially toxic issues in U.S. politics--crime, welfare and affirmative action--off the table.

When Michael Dukakis ran for President in 1988, crime was perhaps the biggest issue in the campaign. It splintered his coalition, pitting blacks who saw the death penalty as racially unfair against blue-collar whites who demanded a hard line against crime and too often associated that crime with blacks. Today, by contrast, roughly 1% of Americans say crime is their top issue, and no one even knows what Obama's position on the death penalty is. For Obama, that's an enormous boon, and Bill Clinton deserves a lot of the credit. His policies--especially his bold proposal for 100,000 new cops--helped bring down the crime rate. And by embracing the death penalty, he eliminated one of the GOP's best wedge issues. That embrace was ugly at times, as when Clinton flew back to Arkansas during the 1992 campaign to oversee the execution of a mentally retarded man. But it was politically shrewd. And because Clinton did it then, Obama doesn't have to now.

Clinton also removed the word welfare from America's political lexicon. In the mid-1980s, when pollsters conducted focus groups with Reagan Democrats, they found that when they talked about government help for the needy, voters saw it as welfare: taking money from whites to give to undeserving blacks. That attitude was hugely unfair, but it was a political reality. Clinton changed that when he reformed welfare in 1996. By making it brutally clear that people who didn't work wouldn't get much help from Washington, he made it harder for Republicans to tag Democratic antipoverty programs as handouts to "welfare queens."

...The Clinton presidency restored the Democratic Party's reputation for economic management, which Jimmy Carter had nearly destroyed. By almost 20 points, according to the Pew Research Center, Americans today trust Democrats over Republicans to guide the economy--a huge boon to Obama in what looks like a recession election. Obama owes much of that advantage to George W. Bush, of course. But he owes some of it to Clintonism too.

If Clinton had been more principled, if he had been less of a panderer, if he had tried to be purer than his political opponents--if, in other words, he had been more like Obama--he might have opposed the death penalty, vetoed welfare reform and unambiguously defended affirmative action. He might also have gone with his liberal base, not Wall Street, and chosen economic stimulus over deficit reduction in 1993. And had he done those things, Barack Obama would probably not be in a commanding position to become the next President of the U.S. So as they bid Clintonism goodbye, Obama fans should show a little gratitude. If Bill weren't the person they revile, Barack couldn't be the person they love.

I hope you Obama supporters remember that. For all of Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton's faults, they restored our party's credibility that Carter destroyed, and neutralized the racebaiting issues like crime, welfare, and death penalty the GOP once was able to use. Those issues are no longer used against Democrats, which is why they fight now for elections, and had to steal an election in 2000 even after a bogus scandal, losing the popular vote. They only barely beat us in 2004 because Kerry didn't do what Clinton told him to do on gay marriage: triangulate, and he also ran a horrendous campaign. Yes, the third way was very necessary to getting elected in 1992 so we could take the GOP issues away and end the era of Republican landslide elections, because this is politics, and sometimes, one cannot stick to principle and win. We didn't need a repeat of 1988, with Willie Horton and being soft on crime. People voted for Bill because they didn't want Bush back, but didn't want another Jimmy Carter either. Triangulation was VERY necessary as it helped to ensure for future elections, and give Bill Clinton a commanding victory against Bob Dope. This is why no matter who you supported in this primary, we MUST honor the Clinton's political greatness.

PS: don't use the Perot myth, exit polls show the pro-abortion pro-gays anti-Nafta candidate took equally in both '92 and '96. And being moderate is not why we lost in 1994, those were congressional scandals, and the GOP only kept Congress past 2002 because of 9/11. Dems got back seats in 1996, 1998, and 2000, a record.

I'm a Hillary supporter.  I have been since I first hear her speak in 1992, and I will continue to be a supporter.  She'll have my money and my vote whenever she needs it.  And Hillary has made it clear that if Obama wins the nomination, she'll be out there supporting him, and so will I.

In that spirit, I made a trip over to Daily Kos this morning, wondering if the tide of unity was at least lapping the shores there yet.  It isn't.

If voters in Oregon and Kentucky show their good sense and pay no attention to the pundits, Hillary can still win the nomination; and she can lead the Democratic Party to victory in November!  Despite every effort by the Obama campaign and the media to push Hillary out of this race, the people are not flocking to Obama.  In fact, more and more of them are turning towards Hillary!

In spite of all his money, all of his endorsements, and all of his "hope", Obama cannot "close the deal" with long-time Democrats.

In spite of all the pressure for her to quit, all the media claims that she cannot win, and all the vicious attacks on her character and her family, according to ABC News, Hillary now holds the lead in the popular vote, and she has also moved ahead of Obama in the most recent daily Gallup Poll.