Time for the Monday OTB Caption Contest^TM

(AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

Winners will be announced Thursday PM

Last Thursday Contest winners will be announced Tuesday PM

Time for the Monday OTB Caption Contest^TM

REUTERS/Heino Kalis (SPAIN SOCIETY FOOD)

Winners will be announced Thursday PM

Time for the Monday OTB Caption Contest^TM

REUTERS/Heino Kalis (SPAIN SOCIETY FOOD)

Winners will be announced Thursday PM

I’ve been waiting to hand out recognition for correctly predicting the Electoral map until all states have been decided.  Missouri still hasn’t been called, although it’s likely to fall into McCain’s camp.  North Carolina has been called for Obama, who also picked up one elector in Nebraska, the first time either Maine or Nebraska has actually split its delegation despite  rules allowing it for decades.   The final tally, then, should be Obama 365, McCain 173.

Nate Silver is drawing praise from all corners for his prediction that Obama would get 349 electors and McCain 189 but several others did better than that.

Congrats to Steven Taylor, who was the closest:  Obama 364, McCain 174.  In addition to not forecasting the Nebraska split, he incorrectly gave Missouri to Obama and Indiana to McCain; since both have 11 Electors, though, it was a wash.

Among the OTB gang, Alex Knapp came closest:  350 – 188.   He correctly called the Nebraska 2nd going to Obama but thought (as I did) that McCain would edge him in North Carolina and Indiana while Obama would take Missouri.  He also got Virginia right.

My own prediction of  Obama 325, McCain 213 wasn’t great.  Percentagewise, calling 48 out of 51 contests correctly isn’t bad.  But I missed on 3 of 8 Battlegrounds, which were the real calls. (No, I don’t count Pennylvania as a battleground; it’s a blue state that Obama was leading by 9 points going into election day. So no extra credit to me for getting it right.)

I correctly gave Obama Ohio and Florida and predicted McCain would hold onto Montana, North Dakota, and Missouri.   I was wrong, though, on North Carolina and Indiana, both of which went very narrowly to Obama.  That’s not so bad, really; they were the closest of tossups in the aggregate polls and I both picked in the direction the polls pointed me to and went with history.

Most spectacularly, I made a reach in my home state of Virginia, predicting it would stay Red and confound the polls.  Instead, Obama won by 200,000 votes out of over 3.6 million cast — almost exactly what the RealClearPolitics average said would happen.  The Commonwealth has now elected, in consecutive elections, a Democratic governor, two new Democratic Senators, and a Democratic president.   Virginia is no longer a Red state.  It is, at best, a swing state, and probably a Blue state.   I’ve been predicting that would happen for years but thought it would take a wee bit longer to happen.

Time for the Monday OTB Caption Contest^TM

I’m baaaaaaccckk!…. Happy Bash Steel Day! Thanks to Dodd for providing a couple excellent contests over the last couple of weeks.

REUTERS/Eloy Alonso (SPAIN)

Winners will be announced Thursday PM

The Spin Cycle Edition OTB Caption Contest^TM is now over.

REUTERS/Vincent West (SPAIN)

✰ THE WINNERS ✰

First: William d’Inger – With the last U.S. sword factory having moved to Mexico, American pacifists are reduced to beating washers into plowshares.

Second: Gollum Stop! – - Hammer time!

Third: Charles Austin Entry 3367 of the rejected Peter Gabriel music video themes.

HONORABLE MENTION

Rodney Dill – The Sock Puppet Liberation Army stages its first operation in preparation for Denver.

RODNEY’S BOTTOM OF THE BARREL

Citing appliances as the devils means of giving women to much time around the house, Islamic youth take a righteous stand against western values. – yetanotherjohn

Well, that was a fun little nostalgic romp. Rodney returns (per Charles Austin’s submission) on Bash Steel day with your regularly scheduled Caption Contests.

Newsweek has released a new poll and is excited by the huge change: “Glow Fading? The latest NEWSWEEK Poll shows Barack Obama leading John McCain by only 3 points. What a difference a few weeks can make.” This is quite amusing in that pretty much everyone agreed that the June 20th Newsweek poll was an outlier.

No matter. In a Newsweek Web Exclusive, Jonathan Darman explains,

Obama’s rapid drop comes at a strategically challenging moment for the Democratic candidate. Having vanquished Hillary Clinton in early June, Obama quickly went about repositioning himself for a general-election audience–an unpleasant task for any nominee emerging from the pander-heavy primary contests and particularly for a candidate who’d slogged through a vigorous primary challenge in most every contest from January until June. Obama’s reversal on FISA legislation, his support of faith-based initiatives and his decision to opt out of the campaign public-financing system left him open to charges he was a flip-flopper. In the new poll, 53 percent of voters (and 50 percent of former Hillary Clinton supporters) believe that Obama has changed his position on key issues in order to gain political advantage.

More seriously, some Obama supporters worry that the spectacle of their candidate eagerly embracing his old rival, Hillary Clinton, and traveling the country courting big donors at lavish fund-raisers, may have done lasting damage to his image as an arbiter of a new kind of politics. This is a major concern since Obama’s outsider credentials, have, in the past, played a large part in his appeal to moderate, swing voters. In the new poll, McCain leads Obama among independents 41 percent to 34 percent, with 25 percent favoring neither candidate. In June’s NEWSWEEK Poll, Obama bested McCain among independent voters, 48 percent to 36 percent.

He makes a nod toward reality with this:

Obama’s overall decline from the last NEWSWEEK Poll, published June 20, is hard to explain. Many critics questioned whether the Democrat’s advantage over McCain was actually as great as the poll suggested, even though a survey taken during a similar time frame by the Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg showed a similarly large margin. Princeton Survey Research Associates, which conducted the poll for NEWSWEEK, says some of the discrepancy between the two most recent polls may be explained by sampling error.

This is followed by a blithe return to pretending that both Newsweek (or is that NEWSWEEK?) polls are accurate and must reflect real movement. As OTB readers know, the previous poll showed an Obama advantage that was 14.5 percent higher than a RealClearPolitics average that included the outlier poll. How about now?

Well, surprise, surprise! It’s now perfectly in line with what the other polls — only 1.8 percent off the average but right in the flow of the other July polls.

Is the “glow” off of Obama? I’d love to see it. The data, unfortunately, don’t seem to support that conclusion. Here’s a graph of RCP’s McCain-Obama numbers since January:

McCain’s numbers are down slightly since Hillary Clinton’s concession while Obama’s are up a smidgen. (Note: The scale makes the variation look more substantial than it is.) McCain’s numbers have been as high as 47 and as low as 40 whereas Obama’s have fluctuated between 43 and 49. The gap between the two has never exceeded 4 points. So, we’ve got a very close race with very little movement that Obama has been leading, with brief exceptions, for months.

Beyond that, the usual caveats apply: We don’t elect presidents by national vote but state-by-state. We vote in November, not July. Registered voter polls such as Newsweek’s and CNN’s are less reliable than likely voter polls like Rasmussen’s. There’s a possibility that Obama’s numbers are somewhat inflated because people don’t like to admit that they don’t support the black candidate (although recent evidence for that phenomenon is scant).

Elsewhere:

• Ed Morrissey notes that the difference is likely that the previous poll grossly oversampled Democrats.

• Stacy McCain’s reaction mirrors mine: “The ‘rapid drop’ never happened, because Obama’s purported 15-point June lead never existed.”

• Digby believes Obama’s drop is real and offers this analysis:

Many people assumed those values were their own, and without a detailed analysis of his policies and his books, they were unlikely to think they were anything but orthodox liberal. This was, after all, a Democratic primary. So, when Obama did the predictable (although surprisingly clumsy) turn to the right and began to speak in somewhat unprogressive terms on things like the death penalty and faith based programs and FISA and abortion, they felt betrayed. The campaign had actually encouraged them not to know but rather to place their faith in Obama on a personal level.

I’ve been predicting that would happen for, oh, eighteen months now.  But I just don’t see any evidence for it.

Memeorandum has many more reactions: Chicago Tribune, Real Clear Politics,  NO QUARTER, American Power, Bucks Right, TalkLeft, Open Left, PoliGazette, Flopping Aces, THE GUN TOTING LIBERAL™, Wake up America, The Jed Report, Power Line, Hullabaloo, Eunomia, Lawyers, Guns and Money, TPM Election Central, THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS, Gateway Pundit, Hotline On Call, Comedy Central, MyDD, Newshoggers.com, Blue Girl, Red State, Taylor Marsh, Macsmind, TIME.com, and Donklephant

John McCain has proposed a series of debates with Barack Obama in the format that he thinks best suits his skills as a candidate. Naturally, Obama has responded in kind. Taegan Goddard:

According to NBC News, Sen. John McCain proposed a series of ten joint town hall meetings with Sen. Barack Obama beginning June 12 in New York City.

Said McCain: “I suggest the town hall meeting format, because I think it’s the best way… I even propose we travel together on the same plane.”

The Obama campaign responds: “As Barack Obama has said before, the idea of joint town halls is appealing and one that would allow a great conversation to take place about the need to change the direction of this country. We would recommend a format that is less structured and lengthier than the McCain campaign suggests, one that more closely resembles the historic debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas.”

McCain’s in great shape for a 71-year-old who spent five years getting tortured by the Viet Cong but ten multi-hour debates might be a little much for him. And, if not him, certainly the viewing public.

I continue to believe, perhaps naively, that the Obama-McCain fall matchup will be relatively issue oriented compared to recent contests. While surrogates and 527s and others will ratchet up the noise and vitriol, both candidates seem to have a natural aversion to mud-slinging.

More debates rather than fewer and less scripted rather than more would be my preference and, it seems, that of both candidates. If their campaigns don’t talk them out of it.

Photo: ABC News (Getty Images/ Reuters )

Barack Obama has ostensibly* passed the magic number of delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination. The media have declared him the winner. He’s declared himself the nominee. Hillary Clinton hasn’t acknowledged either reality, yet, but seems resigned to it.

Obama Claims Victory

Sen. Barack Obama achieved the 2,118 needed to clinch the Democratic nomination for president last night and made history by becoming the first African American to win a major party’s presidential nomination, according to the ABC News scorecard.

The presumptive Democratic nominee locked up the nomination even before the votes were counted in the party’s final two primaries in South Dakota and Montana last night. Obama went on to easily win Montana last night by a margin of 57 percent to Sent. Hillary Clinton’s 42 percent. But Clinton, D-NY, snatched one last upset victory in South Dakota, with a 55-44 percent win. Nevertheless, Obama picked up enough delegates from those states to pad his margin of victory and was expected see additional superdelegates rally to his side today.

Making history by becoming the nation’s first African-American presidential nominee, Obama, D-Ill., emerges victorious from one of the longest and most closely fought Democratic nomination fights in recent history.

“Tonight we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another — a journey that will bring a new and better day to America. Because of you, tonight I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States,” Obama told cheering supporters at an arena in St. Paul, Minn.

He graciously praised Clinton, despite the sometimes bitter exchanges the two had during the campaign. “Senator Hillary Clinton has made history in this campaign, not just because she’s a woman who has done what no woman has done before, but because she’s a leader who inspires millions of Americans with her strength, her courage, and her commitment to the causes that brought us here tonight,” Obama said. “Our party and our country are better off because of her, and I am a better candidate for having had the honor to compete” with her, he said.

Were I a lit major, I’d find lots of symbolism in this:

Later, the candidates played some phone tag, ABC’s Sunlen Miller reports. A little after 11 pm, Obama left Clinton a message on an aide’s cell phone, congratulating Clinton on her South Dakota win and asking that she return the call. ABC’s Eloise Harper reports that some time later, Clinton returned Obama’s call. The two spoke very briefly and then the cell phone call dropped out. Clinton called him back and got his voice mail.

Clinton Keeping Options Open

For her part, Clinton refused to concede the race tonight. “This has been a long campaign, and I will be making no decisions tonight,” she told supporters in New York.

She does her best decision-making at 3 a.m., as we all know.

“In the coming days, I’ll be consulting with supporters and party leaders to determine how to move forward with the best interests of our party and our country guiding my way,” she said as supporters chanted “Denver, Denver!” pointing to the party’s convention in August.

Bringing the Party Back Together

Divisive as this race has been, mostly because Clinton continued a scorched earth campaign months after it was all but certain that Obama would prevail, I continue to believe that most Democrats will rally behind their nominee. It’s going to be a long five months to Election Day.

Still, let’s just say that white, religious folk in Appalachia aren’t the only ones who are bitter. Armando, one of the blogosphere’s most die-hard Clinton supporters, has graciously thrown in the towel. His commenters? Not so much.

From the other side, both Andrew Sullivan and Matt Yglesias have some harsh words for the Clintons.

More so than getting the Clintonistas on board, Obama’s biggest problem may be ridiculously high expectations. Sober journalists are asking questions like, “Can Obama make [the] American dream come true?” That’s a bit much to ask, methinks.

On the the General Election

Barack Obama is ever-so-slightly ahead in the national head-to-head polls with John McCain and should get a big bounce from last night. Barring major developments, that lead will grow as Hillary supporters make their way through the stages of grief and reach Acceptance.

Clinton’s dogged campaign provides something of a roadmap for Team McCain. Certainly, she’s provided plenty of footage for Republican television spots. It may well be that the weak points Clinton identified, which didn’t quite work with a Democratic nominating electorate, will go over better in a general election campaign.

It’s worth noting, too, that Clinton continued to win states right up until the last night despite the media having (rightfully) declared her campaign dead weeks ago. For all his oratorical skill, he’s a flawed candidate.

So, of course, is McCain. McCain publicly admitted that he would be too old to run for president in 2008 and yet here he is. The contrasts with the young, vigorous Obama will be stark. And any Democrat would be favored over any Republican this year, given the unpopularity of President Bush and the Iraq War. High gas and food prices, while having virtually nothing to do with Bush, let alone McCain, will also make things harder.

Still, McCain has a puncher’s chance. He’s not the orator Obama is but he’s good in debates and in front of crowds. His geezerly fifty years of public service is an asset as well as a liability. He’s got five months to convince people that he’s the better choice.

________________

*I have no doubt that Obama will win this thing and should win it given that he is ahead by any reasonable, objective measure. I merely note that, while Obama is leading Clinton among pledged delegates with no more contests remaining, he is only past the 2118 threshold by virtue of the inclusion of 394 superdelegates whose promise to vote for Obama is absolutely unbinding. Indeed, a handful of that number had previously pledged to vote for Clinton.

Hillary Clinton continues to provide ample evidence that she has no intention of going quietly into that good night.

As Barack Obama turns to concentrate on his general election challenge, his rival Hillary Rodham Clinton is mounting a last ditch campaign to stay relevant in what is left of the Democratic presidential contest.

The former first lady enters this week with an insurgent strategy not only to win over undecided superdelegates but to peel away Obama’s support from those party leaders and elected officials who already have committed to back him for the nomination.

“One thing about superdelegates is that they can change their minds,” she told reporters aboard her campaign plane Sunday night.

This is true. After all, plenty of former Hillary superdelegates are now “committed” to Obama. It’s unfathomable to me that she’ll peel off many — if any — officials at this stage of the game with her lame “I’ve won more popular votes if you don’t count caucuses but do count beauty contests and non-states” argument. But I continue to believe that she’s going to fight on to the bitter end.

UPDATE (Dodd): Clinton Summons Top Donors, Supporters For Tuesday Speech:

Hillary Clinton has summoned top donors and backers to attend her New York speech tomorrow night in an unusual move that is being widely interpreted to mean she plans to suspend her campaign and endorse Barack Obama.

Obama and Clinton spoke Sunday night and agreed that their staffs should begin negotiations over post-primary activities, according to reliable sources. In addition to seeking Obama’s help in raising money to pay off some $20 million-plus in debts, Clinton is known to want Obama to assist black officials who endorsed her and who are now taking constituent heat, including, in some cases, primary challenges from pro-Obama politicians

I’ll believe it when I see it. And what, exactly, does it mean to “suspend” one’s campaign. Isn’t that the word Romney used, too? Is that the face-saving way of dropping out now?

AP’s Stephen Ohlemacher explains why Barack Obama, the young upstart, is going to be the Democratic Party nominee for president while Hillary Rodham Clinton, the hands-down favorite, is getting a set of steak knives.

Unlike Hillary Rodham Clinton, rival Barack Obama planned for the long haul. Clinton hinged her whole campaign on an early knockout blow on Super Tuesday, while Obama’s staff researched congressional districts in states with primaries that were months away. What they found were opportunities to win delegates, even in states they would eventually lose.

Obama’s campaign mastered some of the most arcane rules in politics, and then used them to foil a front-runner who seemed to have every advantage—money, fame and a husband who had essentially run the Democratic Party for eight years as president. “Without a doubt, their understanding of the nominating process was one of the keys to their success,” said Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist not aligned with either candidate. “They understood the nuances of it and approached it at a strategic level that the Clinton campaign did not.”

Careful planning is one reason why Obama is emerging as the nominee as the Democratic Party prepares for its final three primaries, Puerto Rico on Sunday and Montana and South Dakota on Tuesday. Attributing his success only to soaring speeches and prodigious fundraising ignores a critical part of contest. Obama used the Democrats’ system of awarding delegates to limit his losses in states won by Clinton while maximizing gains in states he carried. Clinton, meanwhile, conserved her resources by essentially conceding states that favored Obama, including many states that held caucuses instead of primaries. In a stark example, Obama’s victory in Kansas wiped out the gains made by Clinton for winning New Jersey, even though New Jersey had three times as many delegates at stake. Obama did it by winning big in Kansas while keeping the vote relatively close in New Jersey.

[...]

The system enables strong second-place candidates to stay competitive and extend the race—as long as they don’t run out of campaign money. “For people who want a campaign to end quickly, proportional allocation is a bad system,” Devine said. “For people who want a system that is fair and reflective of the voters, it’s a much better system.”

[...]

A more subtle change was the distribution of delegates within each state. As part of the proportional system, Democrats award delegates based on statewide vote totals as well as results in individual congressional districts. The delegates, however, are not distributed evenly within a state, like they are in the Republican system. Under Democratic rules, congressional districts with a history of strong support for Democratic candidates are rewarded with more delegates than districts that are more Republican. Some districts packed with Democratic voters can have as many as eight or nine delegates up for grabs, while more Republican districts in the same state have three or four.

The system is designed to benefit candidates who do well among loyal Democratic constituencies, and none is more loyal than black voters. Obama, who would be the first black candidate nominated by a major political party, has been winning 80 percent to 90 percent of the black vote in most primaries, according to exit polls. “Black districts always have a large number of delegates because they are the highest performers for the Democratic Party,” said Elaine Kamarck, a Harvard University professor who is writing a book about the Democratic nominating process. “Once you had a black candidate you knew that he would be winning large numbers of delegates because of this phenomenon,” said Kamarck, who is also a superdelegate supporting Clinton.

In states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, Clinton won the statewide vote but Obama won enough delegates to limit her gains. In states Obama carried, like Georgia and Virginia, he maximized the number of delegates he won. “The Obama campaign was very good at targeting districts in areas where they could do well,” said former DNC Chairman Don Fowler, a Clinton superdelegate from South Carolina. “They were very conscious and aware of these nuances.”

But, Fowler noted, the best strategy in the world would have been useless without the right candidate. “If that same strategy and that same effort had been used with a different candidate, a less charismatic candidate, a less attractive candidate, it wouldn’t have worked,” Fowler said. “The reason they look so good is because Obama was so good.”

It’s supremely ironic, though, that the legacy candidate, with every resource imaginable available to her, didn’t understand the rules while the neophyte mastered them from the outset.

About those steak knives: Tim Shipman, writing for the London Telegraph reports that Obama is offering Clinton a “negotiated surrender” at a level far, far less lucrative than is ordinarily awarded to close second place finishers.

The former First Lady would get the chance to pilot Mr Obama’s reforms of the American healthcare system if she agrees to clear the path to his nomination as Democratic presidential candidate. Senior figures in the Obama camp have told Democrat colleagues that the offer to Mrs Clinton of a cabinet post as health secretary or to steer new legislation through the Senate will be a central element of their peace overtures to the New York senator.

[...]

After today’s primary election in Puerto Rico and Tuesday’s final contests in Montana and South Dakota, the remaining super-delegates will come under huge pressure from fellow party grandees to declare their hands. The Obama camp, however, remains nervous about Mrs Clinton’s intentions and ambitions, and is preparing a face-saving package that will allow her to continue to play a role in health care reform, which has been her signature issue for more than a decade. Despite pressure from some Clinton allies, Mr Obama and his advisers do not wish to ask her to be his vice-presidential running mate. “They will talk to her,” one Democrat strategist close to senior figures in the Obama camp told The Sunday Telegraph. “They will give her the respect she deserves. She will get something to do with health care, a cabinet post or the chance to lead the legislation through the Senate.”

Another Democrat who has discussed strategy with friends in the Obama inner circle said that Mr Obama was openly considering asking Mrs Clinton to join his cabinet, alongside two other former presidential rivals: John Edwards, who is seen as a likely attorney general; and Joe Biden, who is a leading contender to become Secretary of State.

Edwards and Biden together won essentially the same number of delegates as my cats, Scamp and Henry. Yet they’re being considered for far more prestigious posts than Clinton, who has taken Obama to the wire. I’m guessing that such an offer would actually serve to stoke her desire to keep fighting to the bitter end.

Her campaign’s feigned outrage over a rather generous settlement yesterday in the dispute over the Florida and Michigan ballots is another indicator of that intention.

To jeers and boos that showcased deep party divisions, Democratic Party officials agreed Saturday to seat delegates from the disputed Florida and Michigan primaries at the party’s convention in August but give them only half a vote each, dealing a setback to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The agreement, reached by the rules committee of the Democratic National Committee behind closed doors and voted on publicly before a raucous audience of supporters of the two candidates, would give Mrs. Clinton a net gain of 24 delegates over Senator Barack Obama. But this fell far short of her hopes of winning the full votes of both delegations and moved the nomination further out of her reach. She now lags behind Mr. Obama by about 176 delegates, according to The New York Times’s tally, in the final weekend of campaigning before the nominating contests end. Mrs. Clinton, who led the voting in the Michigan and Florida contests, which were held in defiance of party rules, picked up 19 delegates more than Mr. Obama in Florida and 5 delegates more than Mr. Obama in Michigan.

The deal prompted one of her chief advisers, Harold Ickes, a member of the rules committee himself, to declare that Mrs. Clinton’s fight may not be over, even though Mr. Obama’s advisers say he is only days away from gaining enough delegates to claim the nomination. “Mrs. Clinton has instructed me to reserve her rights to take this to the credentials committee,” Mr. Ickes said before the final vote, raising the specter of a fight until that committee meets. His words drew cheers from Clinton supporters, including many who yelled, “Denver! Denver! Denver!” — implying that the fight could go all the way to the convention in that city.

Or beyond.

Today’s Democratic primaries in Kentucky and Oregon provide something akin to a rematch of the recent Indiana-North Carolina pairing. Hillary Clinton should easily win Kentucky, where Barack Obama hasn’t even bothered to campaign, and Obama should take Oregon.

The Polls

The latest RealClearPolitics average has Clinton up a whopping 29 points in Kentucky and Obama up a comfortable 12 in Oregon. A strange thing, though, about Oregon: the polls are all over the place.

ARG, which has it as a 5 point race — and a 4 percent margin of error — has done well predicting margins and turnout in recent contests. Their internals:

Barack Obama leads Hillary Clinton 57% to 39% among men (48% of likely Democratic primary voters). Among women, Clinton leads 51% to 44%.

Obama leads 51% to 44% among white voters (88% of likely Democratic primary voters). Clinton leads 50% to 46% among Hispanic voters (6% of likely Democratic primary voters).

Obama leads 55% to 38% among voters age 18 to 49 (49% of likely Democratic primary voters) and Clinton leads 52% to 45% among voters age 50 and older.

Clinton and Obama are tied at 49% each among voters saying they have returned their ballots (58% of likely Democratic primary voters) and Obama leads 52% to 40% among voters saying they will definitely return their ballots by May 20th.

20% of likely Democratic primary voters say they would never vote for Hillary Clinton in the primary and 22% of likely Democratic primary voters say they would never vote for Barack Obama in the primary.

Prediction

Clinton will win Kentucky by even more than the 29 point average margin. Call it 73-26.

Oregon will be interesting. Obama is ahead in every single poll but his demographics are slightly softer. I’d still guess he’ll take it by something like 10 points. Call it 55-45.

Impact

If things go more-or-less according to script, Obama will be the night’s winner. He’ll almost certainly go over the 50 percent mark in pledged delegates, further enhancing the perception that he’s the presumptive nominee. (Clinton, meanwhile, claims to have passed 300 Electoral Votes and thus won, easily. Someone forgot to tell her that the Electoral College is for the general election, not the primaries.)

The only way it gets interesting is if Clinton wins Oregon. While highly unlikely, it’s not out of the realm of possibility. There are two polls which have her within the margin of error and she’s leading among the more reliable older voters. If she somehow pulls it off, she’ll get some buzz and strengthen her argument to the superdelegates that she’s the stronger candidate.

But she has to win. Even coming very, very close won’t be enough.

UPDATE (Dodd): Hillary Clinton should easily win Kentucky, where Barack Obama hasn’t even bothered to campaign….

I keep hearing this and I presume it’s because that’s the pre-match spin Obama’s campaign’s been putting out to diminish the significance of his expected loss here. But it’s patently false. Obama himself was here in Louisville last week for a standing room only rally (10,000 got in, hundreds more were turned away). He has an office here in what used to be the county Democrat Party HQ (and before that was my favourite coffee shop – that corner’s really gone downhill). His campaign is definitely canvassing heavily. And, even though I don’t watch that much television, I’ve been seeing quite a lot of his TV ads for the last 2-3 weeks (by contrast, I have not seen a single one for Hillary!).

Jeralyn Merritt recounts a blogger call with Senator Hillary Clinton:

She is staying in the race. She is ahead in the popular vote by 50,000 votes, counting Florida and Michigan which must be counted. She intends to continue to lead in the popular vote when June 3 comes around and everyone has voted.

The number one message: It’s the map not the math. In addition to the popular vote, the electoral map shows her with a cushion and Obama with a deficit. She has won 311 electoral votes to Obama’s 217. While a few of her’s like Texas and Oklahoma will be a challenge in November, many of his states will be: Alaska, Idaho, Utah, to name a few.

This is simultaneously ridiculous and sublime.

On the one hand, it’s absurd beyond words to count Michigan, in which only she was on the ballot, in any “popular vote” count. Especially when, running unopposed in an election that did not count, she only got 55.5 percent of the vote. “Uncommitted” got 39.9 percent. Should Obama get none of those votes? Further, as I’ve noted numerous times, the “popular vote” argument makes no sense, anyway, given the differential conditions involved in the various races. Caucuses get smaller turnouts than primaries, states holding contests on Saturdays have different dynamics than those held on Tuesdays, and so forth.

The “Electoral College” argument, though, is interesting. On its face, it’s silly. The Democratic Party has a set of rules in place for how it selects its nominee. Those rules don’t at all resemble a winner-take-all model mirrored on the Electoral College. Consequently, her opponents didn’t run their campaigns as if that were the case. To now claim that this is how the race should be decided is brazen.

At the same time, though, my colleague Dave Schuler (a Democrat, albeit of the virtually extinct Scoop Jackson/Sam Nunn variety) has observed several times that such a system is what the party should be using. It’s pretty much what the Republicans do and it gives them a relative advantage because it vets its would-be nominees through the same gauntlet that they’ll face in November.

Again, should be and is are different things. But since Clinton’s argument is intended to sway unpledged superdelegates, whose job it is to decide which candidate will represent the party best in the general election, it’s a defensible point. And, frankly, about all she’s got left.

This, though, is just pathetic:

She also talked about the blogosphere, saying she deeply regrets the vitriol and mean spiritedness and insults that have been thrown around at bloggers for supporting her and at women in general, but this too shall pass. She said she’s impervious to the insults and almost sees it as a perverse (reverse?)form of flattery.

The woman started with every conceivable advantage. She began as a household name, having been in the center of the national spotlight since 1992. The Democratic Big Money folks were afraid not to back her because she was the presumptive nominee. She had Bill’s Rolodex and her pick of his old team.

Meanwhile, her opponent’s first name rhymes with a country we’ve invaded, his middle name is the same as the dictator in charge of said country at the time of said invasion, and his last name rhymes with the first name of our most hated enemy. He’s been on the national stage about five minutes. He’s a half-black Muslim who has spent the last twenty years attending a Christian church led by a Louis Farrakhan fan who hates America and, especially, white people. And he won’t even wear a flag pin or give the poor, bitter working man a break on his gas taxes.

And she’s got it tough?

Chris Cillizza examines Hillary Clinton’s claims that her demonstrated ability to appeal to white, working class voters makes her the better candidate in the Fall. Examining the state-by-state races, he figures only 14 states will truly be competitive.

A glance at these 14 states — and the polling to date in each — suggests that Clinton is clearly the stronger Democrat in three: Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. That trio of states, which includes the two central battlegrounds in the 2000 and 2004 presidential contests, have 68 electoral votes between them.

Obama would seem to have a discernible edge over Clinton in six states: Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Oregon, Virginia and Washington. These states have a total of 57 electoral votes.

Neither Clinton nor Obama can make an air-tight case that she (or he) would be stronger against McCain in Maine (4 electoral votes), Michigan (17), Missouri (11), New Hampshire (4) and New Mexico (5).

Taken as a whole, Clinton’s argument that she is the stronger potential general election candidate against McCain is true — to a point. She is stronger — although not by much — if the playing field in 2008 is a mirror image of the battlegrounds of 2004 and 2000. Clinton, at the moment, is more strongly positioned to win in three states — Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio — that have decided the winner in the last two presidential contests.

One of Cillizza’s commenters actually looks at the numbers, as currently reported by RealClearPolitics, and breaks down the state-by-state numbers. The bottom line is in contrast with Cillizza’s guess:

Clinton advantage states: AR, FL, MO, NH, OH, PA, WV (94 total)

Obama advantage states: CO, IA, MN, NV, NM, NC, ND, OR, SC, VA, WA, WI (103 total)

Still, given that Clinton is more likely to win traditional large battleground states of Florida, Missouri, Ohio, and Pennsylvania whereas Obama is looking to pick off a handful of traditional Republican states trending purple, I’d say Clinton has the slight advantage.

Cillizza concludes,

But that argument only holds if you believe two things: First, that the playing field will be essentially unchanged between 2000/2004 and 2008 and, second, that current polling is an accurate predictor of what things will look like in November.

He’s dubious of both those assumptions, as is Bernard Finel, who believes, Obama is “the better candidate and he’s likely strong enough to win. Her marginal superiority on the latter measure does not overcome his dramatic advantage in the former.”

The contrary view is expressed by Dodd Harris who, as noted previously, argued last night on OTB Radio that the Democrats will have buyers’ remorse this Fall, wishing they’d nominated Hillary Clinton rather than upstart Barack Obama. He’s of the belief that Obama’s tendency to commit gaffes on the campaign trail is likely to intensify, the his vague “hope” and “change” appeals will wear thin, and that his dismissal of all criticism as illegitimate and (via surrogates) racist will hurt him in November.

My view of Obama’s candidacy, from the beginning, has been that he started at the apex of his popularity and that it could only go down through prolonged exposure. I still believe that’s the case. He began as a tabula rasa onto whom people could project their fantasies of a candidate; he’s revealing himself to be a mere mortal.

Still, he’s ultimately the better candidate. While Obama has his problems, half the country starts out strongly disliking Clinton as a human being. Given that this sentiment has been hard won in sixteen years in the public eye, I’m confident that it will only be hardened by several more months of exposure. By contrast, even those who wouldn’t dream of voting for Obama rather like him.

The Democratic nominee has every advantage in this contest but it’s quite conceivable that John McCain could nonetheless win. He vastly outpolls the generic Republican ballot and he’s got a lot of strengths that will appeal to moderates.

Obviously, if the Democrats lose again, they’ll wish they’d nominated someone else. That’ll hardly be evidence, though, that Clinton would have done any better. I tend to agree with Finel here:

Clinton may have a marginally better chance to eke out a 270-268 victory. Obama undeniably has a much better chance to win with 350+ electoral votes.

Obama’s “hope” and “change” bubble could burst or he can continue to inspire. Clinton, by contrast, is more likely to win a nasty slugfest. The end result of that victory, though, would be another four years of partisan rancor at DEFCON 2. McCain and Obama each have the potential, at least, of ratcheting that down a couple notches.

Hillary Clinton beat Barack Obama by a 2-to-1 margin (67-26) in West Virginia.

Does this change anything? Probably not. One suspects Dick Cheney could have beaten Obama in this one. As impressive as Clinton’s string of victories in states dominated by white people with blue collars, there’s no evidence that her argument of “and therefore only I can win in the Fall” is gaining any traction outside the media. Indeed, Obama has been getting flooded with superdelegate defections during that streak.

What Clinton’s victory does do, however, is to give her a thin rationale for hanging on. And for the media to carry on with its prescripted story lines.

As is generally the case when Clinton wins one of these primaries, the attention is on race. Patrick Healy of the NYT writes, “racial considerations emerged as an unusually salient factor as Mrs. Clinton drew strong support from white, working-class voters who have spurned Mr. Obama in recent contests.”

He cites exit poll data which he extrapolates as “West Virginians are racist hicks.”

The number of white Democratic voters who said that race influenced their choice on Tuesday was among the highest recorded in voter surveys in the Clinton-Obama nomination fight. Two in 10 white West Virginia voters said that race was an important factor in their vote, and more than 8 in 10 of them backed Mrs. Clinton, according to surveys of voters leaving the polls.

Interestingly, the 9 in 10 black voters who chose Obama did so strictly on the merits. Indeed, 7 in 10 didn’t even realize he was black, they’re so color blind.

And, of course, the inevitable apples/oranges logic:

The voter surveys showing a strong racial component to the West Virginia voting suggest that Mr. Obama would still face pockets of significant Democratic resistance if he does become the party’s first black nominee. While he has argued that he could broaden the Democratic base in the fall, given his popularity with independents and his strong showing in traditionally Republican states like Colorado and Virginia, the Clinton camp has pointed to his modest support from white voters and blue-collar workers as weak links in his coalition.

My hunch is what these data really show is that West Virginians are more willing than most people to admit that race is a factor in how they view the world around them. How that translates into Democrats switching parties in the Fall, however, escapes me.

The West Virginia results offered some troubling signs for Mr. Obama. While exit polls in other states have indicated that many Clinton supporters, including many whites, would back Mr. Obama in the fall, more than half of West Virginia voters said they would be dissatisfied if Mr. Obama won the nomination, according to the voter surveys conducted by Edison/Mitofsky.

Memo to Mr. Healy: Those are entirely different questions. That the nearly 7 in 10 Democrats who showed up to vote for a surefire loser would be “dissatisfied” if the other guy won is not news, it’s axiomatic. There’s not much evidence to suggest that they’d be more satisfied with John McCain.

Obama supporters accused Mrs. Clinton of playing the race card last week when she explicitly said that she had more support among “white Americans” than he did. Yet however blunt she may have been, white and financially struggling voters in West Virginia — and in Kentucky, which votes next week and which Mr. Obama has all but conceded to Mrs. Clinton — have become a major force keeping her in the presidential race at this late stage.

Although not as major as the fact that she really, really doesn’t want to quit.

And there’s this gem:

As the Clinton campaign noted in a strategy memo on Tuesday, no Democrat has won the White House without winning West Virginia since 1916. Bill Clinton carried the state in 1992 and 1996, but Al Gore and John Kerry lost the state in 2000 and 2004, respectively.

To which Matt Yglesias retorts,

What’s even more interesting is that no Democrat has won the White House without carrying Minnesota since 1912 (it went for Teddy Roosevelt’s Bull Moose party) so given that Obama won Minnesota and Clinton won West Virginia, McCain is guaranteed to win the general election unless the eventual nominee can somehow completely replicate the social and political conditions prevailing in pre-WWI America. The outlook, in short, is very grim.

Quite.

We only have presidential elections every four years and the circumstances surrounding each one are unique. This one will be spectacularly so in that there’s no incumbent president or vice president on the ticket, a senator is guaranteed to win, and we’ll either elect our oldest first-time president or our first biracial one. Further, both Obama and McCain defy the traditional molds their party candidates have fit into in recent years.

Will race be a factor in the Fall? Sure. It always is. In this particular case, Obama will likely motivate black turnout more than any recent candidate and, yes, he’ll probably run off some traditional Democratic voters. He’ll likely also attract some moderate whites who normally vote Republican. How that’ll all balance out is unclear.

As always, though, the election will be decided by a myriad of factors, at least some of which won’t even be on our radar screen until very late in the process.