With the Montana primary approaching, I just received an anti-Baucus push poll that was fairly well disguised as a legitimate poll. It wasn't particularily nasty, but with standard push poll types of questions like "Would you be more or less likely to vote for Baucus if you knew he voted to raise your taxes over 200 times?" Has anyone else in Montana received this call yet?

All I could get from the questioner was that he was calling out of New York and worked for "Central Research."  I don't know if the fact that he had trouble reading the questions had anything to do with the nature of the outfit. Has anyone heard about this?  Is this sufficiently egregious that we should look into it, or has this become standard campaign fare?

More details below...

They're hard to look at, especially for the animal lovers and environmental activists among us, but these photos of ranchers celebrating their recent take of a wolf in Idaho illustrate a side of the west that's important to understand - they call it "custom and culture."  

(cross posted at The Dead Guy)

On March 28, over at Chris Weigant's blog, Chris asked his readers to place their bets (in quatloos) when Clinton would drop out of the Presidential race. Well, I've done pretty well so far. I predicted that Obama would surpass Clinton in Superdelegates before the West Virginia primary (got it right) and several of my delegate totals from the primaries were darn close (I didn't do so well on my original delegate estimate for Indiana). Also, I was only 1 day off for the John Edwards endorsement of Obama. My final prediction is Clinton drops out on June 16, just 31 days from now.

27. This is the magic number.

As the June 3 Montana primary approaches, the atmosphere here is electric with pro-Obama organizing.  Tell us the nomination is a wrap and we don’t have to work so hard? Not a chance.

We’re taking nothing for granted.  Besides, why would we hold back on this chance to help build a new and more progressive Democratic majority – in Montana, throughout the country, and in Washington, D.C. – by sitting back now?  It’s full-tilt boogie from now through June 3.  

Obama’s candidacy is not just generic for Montanans; he and the campaign are touching lots of us in profoundly important and specific ways. For my first DKos diary, I want to help locate you in our particular sense of place.

In yesterday's poll something happened which I haven't seen done in such an obvious and blatantly stupid way in any other poll before. The voting on the next Sec. of the Interior was pretty much done, maybe a vote here and there was still coming but it was pretty much over. Then I noticed how the vote total for Les AuCoin (who had somewhere between 5 and 8 votes before this started) was slowly rising. At first it looked as if someone just wanted him to surpass Olypia Snowe who was in second place with 11 votes at that time. But that person didn't stop there. While the vote count for everyone else remained pretty much stagnant (Robert Kennedy, Jr.'s went from 60 to just 63 in this time frame), Les AuCoin's went from the single digits to a total of 42 votes. So, one person actually took the time to vote for him more than 20 times to get him into a runoff with Robert Kennedy, Jr.

Yesterday's Attorney General poll needed no runoff as John Edwards won more than 50% in the first round. Results below the fold.

With the Obama Veepstakes poll now concluded and Gov. Bill Richardson as your chosen running mate (which was covered by the Santa Fe Reporter) it's time to take this a step further:

Who would you like to see in an Obama cabinet?

Today you can vote on the next Secretary of the Interior:

Update III: Commenters have noted that Dahlman was counted previously as having endorsed Obama. She told us today she had not formally endorsed, and the list we checked  and we did not see her on the list at Politico earlier today. Sorry for the confusion. She declared her support for Obama in the Great Falls Tribune Apr. 13. Sorry for the confusion. We've been calling people listed as uncommitted, but not all lists have caught up with everyone. I think the interview is still articulate, informative and reflective of states to come, but don't mean to overshadow any other news, so obviously recommend/unrecommend at your discretion.

We just spoke with Jean Lemire Dahlman, a Montana super. None of Montanas supers have backed Hillary. She explained her reasoning primarily in the context of Hillary failing to be able to "unite" the party. Congrats goes to Bev Davis, our new political reporter who joined us from Huffpo's Off the Bus.

A while back I broke down the likely delegate splits in Oregon and in Kentucky, now I'll take a look at the remaining states West Virginia, Montana, and South Dakota.

I'll start with West Virginia, which has 28 delegates to award on May 13.  They break down as follows (from the Green Papers:

• 10 delegates by statewide total
• 7 At-Large delegates
• 3 PLEO delegates

• 18 district delegates
• 6 delegates to WV-01
• 6 delegates to WV-02
• 6 delegates to WV-03

"Wisdom is a gift; you can't train for it, inherit it, learn it in a class, or earn it in the workplace--that access can foster the acquisition of knowledge, but not wisdom." - Toni Morrison

Shouldn't Dr. Maya Angelou be part of Hillary's dialog on race?

Some have wondered why there are blacks who consider Dr. Maya Angelou a 'traitor' to her black race. I don't know if I put her there just yet. But her past words create questions as to why she has not spoken up about her friend Hillary Clinton's need to inject racism and Reverend Jeremiah Wright into this campaign in the many ways Hillary has.

Here, she is speaking to the American Academy of Achievement in January, 1997. She covers many topics still relevant to today, so as you read through this interview, remember it's eleven years old.

It's as if she's predicting an Obama candidacy.

Students helping make Montana a BIG state for Obama.

With the Obama Veepstakes poll now concluded and Gov. Bill Richardson as your chosen running mate (which was covered by the Santa Fe Reporter) it's time to take this a step further:

Who would you like to see in an Obama cabinet?

Yesterday, Joe Biden won the Sec. of State poll (results below the fold). Today you can vote on the next Secretary of the Treasury:

Hillary's taunting of Barack for a Lincoln/Douglas style debate has now become a three (count 'em, three) state strategy.  She now wants to have a L/D debate in Montana.

Story here.

Since there are 10 primaries left (I'm using Clinton double-digit math) she has thrown down another gauntlet:

Clinton, trailing in delegates and the popular vote, has been stepping up the pressure on Obama for more debates in advance of the remaining primaries. She has been particularly strong in seeking debates before May 6 primaries in Indiana and North Carolina.

Yesterday, the NYT made an excellent Graphic showing how a few demographic questions about a county make it highly likely it was carried by Clinton or Obama.  I decided to look at all the upcoming races, and post maps to show my findings.  

This just in:

I am officially opening up the Montana Division of Operation Chaos.

--Andy Hammond

Hammond's devious plan to confuse the pollsters:

He also urged Montana conservatives and Republicans to tell pollsters they were voting for Obama but then vote for Clinton on June 3.

Who is Andy Hammond and why does he love chaos so much? Find out after the jump...

That dog don’t hunt.
Rehberg’s wiggling and waffling, pandering and pontificating on CHIP

It seems like some folks have really worked themselves into fit over the attention Dennis Rehberg’s position(s) on health care for kids is getting...I think it might have something to do with getting out-fundraised by a political newcomer who only had half the time to do so...

Anyways, there seems to be a lot of spin in the GOP blogosphere about where Dennis really is on health care for kids...to get around some of the spin being spun, stories being told, and Congressman Rehberg’s election year shuffle to the center, I wanted to give a brief history of where our favorite sub-divider (worth $57 million dollars) has been on the issue:

It's often very difficult to figure out what advantages come from electing Democrats. Consider Montana's destruction of 1,700 bison this winter:

Officials with the Buffalo Field Campaign call this winter’s management actions the worst slaughter of bison since the 1800’s.

Montana is the wintering ground of choice for bison seeking refuge from the deep snows of the Yellowstone highlands in neighboring Wyoming.

But according to the Jackson Hole News, thanks to the slaughter and weather-related deaths:

Yellowstone officials say more than half of the park’s 4,700 bison have died this winter.

Yellowstone bison really ought to be safe in Montana, which has Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer overseeing the state's wildlife management and its agriculture department.  

This is an update to "The Cult of Popularity" from April 11 about the final ten contests in the Democratic Presidential Preference elections. Since we are just under one week until the Pennsylvania Primary - I thought now would be a good time for us to visit that "popular vote" strategy that Senator Clinton is trying to employ to sway delegates (both superdelegates and elected delegates) to her side.

I will repeat the same response I have whenever someone tries to rewrite the rules. The DNC determines the Democratic Nominee by only one measure: Delegate count in sanctioned, legitimate elections. However, to quell the cries, I've laid out the math of the popular vote scenario. Since the first post, Clinton has made a little headway in the projection (about 11,000 votes) due to a .8% increase in her Real Clear Politics average lead in PA and a new SurveyUSA poll in Kentucky. However, at the same time Obama has tightened the race in Indiana and increased his numbers in Montana and South Dakota while losing a smidgen in North Carolina.

Via Left in the West, could Montana be a swing state again?

General Election, 4/6. Likely voters. MoE 4.5%

The last time Montana voted for a Dem was in 1992, when Clinton won the state with 38%, benefitting largely from having Perot on the ballot pulling 26%. Obama's appeal to those swing voters who helped boost Perot has him in range. There's also the reality that Montana is warming up to Dems, as evidenced by Schweitzer and Tester. Schweitzer's name on the ballot in November also wouldn't hurt Obama a bit. The Governor has a 61% approval rating, with just 14% disapproving of his job performance.