Disclaimer: Yes, this is another diary about John Edwards.  If you are sick of the topic, you don't have to read it.  If your main goal in reading it is to have the opportunity to berate others about feeling hurt nor not hurt, believing or not believing, continuing to support or not continuing to support, then I HOPE you won't read it.  Ditto those who just want to "it's none of your business/I'm sick of this topic" scold.  If you're over it, that's great for you, but I'm not, and I still want to talk about it.  

Basically, I've been wrestling since yesterday with trying to decide whether or not I believe the story that Edwards is telling us now, and I wanted to ask other people what they think.

I hope we can do this without digressing into sniping or namecalling or scolding or berating people for supporting/not supporting believing/not believing Edwards.  There are lots of other diaries out there where this is already going on, and I don't think we need another.  I'd really just like to have a frank and honest discussion about whether or not we believe this latest story.  And if so, why, and if not, why not.

Meredith Vieira nailed McCain on the Today show this morning.  Surely someone got this on tape. Updated with link, thanks to fixyourface!

Video of McCain from msnbc.com

Vieira kept asking questions about TODAY and McCain kept answering questions about two years ago.  He filibustered and hummed and generally came off like a tool.

I got back yesterday from a 3-month business trip to Paris.  My company maintains an overseas office, and one of their workers was out on maternity leave when the office hit a particularly rough patch.  I speak French, so I was shipped over to fill in.

I'd been to France before, but not recently and never in a non-tourist capacity.  But during this stay, I lived in an apartment, mingled with French people and generally tried to live like a Parisian.  I learned from this some very interesting things:

Final tallies are still coming in, but as of right now, it's virtually impossible for either Clinton or Obama to pull within 1000 of the total delegates needed to win the nomination.  And as of Feb 6, 2005, there are only 1428 pledged delegates left to be acquired in all remaining Democratic primaries/caucuses put together.

What does this mean?  It means that barring absolute freefall by one or another of the candidates that leaves the other able to capture in excess of 70% of the vote in every remaining state (a feat only accomplished--by either candidate--in ONE state last night), we WILL NOT go into the convention with a nominee secured by the ordinary primary-voting members of the Democratic party.

It's time for us to stop focusing exclusively on who will win what state and to start talking a lot more seriously about the SuperDelegate problem and what we as lowly voters in this party can do about it.