I saw CNN for the second time last night. Terry McCauliffe (do I have that spelling right?) answered the question of how Clinton could possibly believe that she could win. He lad out a two-step process, both hard steps.

1. Get Obama's elected delgate lead down to 100.

2. Then convince "the superdelegates" that Clinton would win the general.

An analysis of why those are hard steps after the jump.

The Obama campaign passed another milestone over the weekend.
(Not just that he now leads in superdelegates, although that happened at about the same time.)
He now needs 158 delegates to clinch the nomination. While
Clinton would need 169.5 to catch him in total delgates and 164 to catch him in elected delgates.
The Obama figures can only go down, but the Clinton figures will go up if Obama receives more delegates from a process than she does.
These figures are from the front-page box as I write this. They may well improve before you read it.
We've long known that she can't catch him in elected delgates, but the number remaining to be elected, 217 now, is beginning to make it more and more laughable to contemplate. He neede 27 out of the remaining 217 to win more elected delegates than she has. Edwards and Richardson have a few, but Obama will have an absolute majority after the 25th.

The meme over the past few weeks is "why can't Obama win X"
Where X can be "Catholic voters," or "White women with a less than college education," or some other demographic splinter.

The fallacy is is shown in that he actually gets a good fraction of each particular demographic spliter in a race with Hillary Clinton.
The lady:

1. is a former first lady,

2. is a sitting US Senator,

3. got 55%, 67%, and 84% in her last three elections before this year. (I don't have the figures for the first senate primary, but she has to have won. She ran in the general.)

I consider it at least possible that some of the voters who chose her over Obama were voting for her rather than against him,

There has been a lot of handwring recently about the Democrats' chances in the geheral election.
Most of it is nonsense.

1. Obama has been neck-and-neck with McCain in the polls -- sometimes a little ahead, sometimes a little behind, never significantly different -- especially for this long before November.

2. clearly, some of "McCain's" vote in the polls has been Clinton supporters who want Obama to look less electable. (Probably something similar is going on WRT McCain/Clinton results.)

3. Obama is a great closer. Look at the prim ary results contrasted to the poll results far out in states where that is avainalble. And he didn't campaign at all in MI and FL. That won't be the case in the general.

4. And most important, history favors a change of party when the incumbent president is not running. Details after the jump.

Saturday, I went back to Hammond Indiana with the Democratic Party of Evanston. This time, there were 25 of us leaving Evanston. The Hammond Obama office was jammed the whole time we were there. (We went seperately in cars, The car in which I was riding -- with two sisters -- got there fairly early; another car came later, but the ofice was so jammed that they arrived before we could leave.)
Reception in the area I covered was overwhelmingly positive. Most were not home, but more than half of those who were said that they were Obama voters. Many said that they would vote early. I got one volunteer.
The driver had to come back early, so I was there only two or three hours, but we think we made a real difference.
Next Saturday, the effort will be getting out the vote.
If you are in the Chicago area, cars leave the Democratic Party of Evanston at 10:00 A.M.
Or see the directions here for the rendezvous of NDFA.

Saturday, while (almost) all eyes here were on Pennsylvania, some of us went from the Chicago area to help the effort in Indiana.
We went from Evanston (organized by the Democratic Party of Evanson and Cong. Jan Schakowsky's political operation) to Hammond IN. The town is across the state line from Chicago.
The details are after the jump.

Gallup runs a "daily" tracking poll on the Democratic primary. (They also run one each competing Clinton with McCain and comparing Obama with McCain.) It really is a three-day rolling average. The dates they (and I) use are the third date of the sample.
The last time that Clinton led Obama was March 20. Since then, there have been four periods.
Mar. 21 - Mar. 25 -- O-C was 1-3 points.
Mar. 27 - Mar. 30 -- O-C was 7-10 points.
Mar. 31 - Apr. 05  -- O-C was 3-5 points.
Apr. 06 - Apr. 14 -- O-C was 7-10 points.
The pattern suggests that the next phase should be a narrower lead with Obama 5-7 points ahead. Instead, the poll published on Tuesday has him 11 points ahead.
It's not a huge change; the margin of error is 3 points for the primary poll. It is, however, the largest spread between the two for more than a month. It represents the second day at a new low for Clinton (which implies that the latest day represents little change from the poll three days before -- not horrible news for her). It represnets Obama one point lower than his previous high points.
More analysis after the jump.

In any sufficiently close election, any sufficiently large bloc could decide the vote if they voted together. To say that they did or will decide the vote, however, is to say that they will or did vote together.
The obvious example, today, is the superdelegates. Another I've hated for years regards minority groups of stockholders.
concretions after the jump.

Normally, I only mention my LTEs when one is published. Last week, though, I sent one to the Chicago Tribune that illustrates a point I want to make. It read:

According to a story on Sunday's front page, the Republicans admit that McCain's positions conflict with those of most voters, but they hope to win the election on his personality. His personality? Is this the John McCaion with the notorious short fuse? The one whose campaign tried to defend his blunder about Iran supporting Al Qaeda with snips selected from intelligence reports? The guy who left the wife who waited faithfully for him while he was a POW for a younger, slimmer, richer second wife? The poster boy of the Keating Five?

Reasons for bringing this up after the jump.

Posters have been blaming Hillary for the negative tone her campaign has been taking. I'm becoming less sure. I don't claim to have any special information; "all I know is what I read in the newspapers." (And on htis site.) But follow me through the analyusis of what happened.
First of all, a candidate is too busy during a campaign -- for state rep, let alone for president -- to manage the campaign. He goes where the staff tells him, speaks on the subject the staff gives him, shits when the stqff says he has time. You follow your staff's direction or fire them. Hillary knows this.
Now, go back with me to the days of yesteryear just after super Tuesday and after the jump.

It's bec0ming clearer and clearer that the choice for Democrats is no longer between Obama and Clinton.
The choice is between Obama in April and Obama in August.
Of the two, I think we'd do much better with Obama in April.
One of thereasons is that the negatve campaigning from the Clinton camp is hurting our candidate without helping Clinton. The Obama camp can retaliate with negative info about Clinton, but that won't help us in November. More after the jump.

It's been a common trope this election:

The elected delegates are too closely divided to decide the nomination. It will be decided by the superdelegates.

Tha is totally false. It was somewhat plausible when first articulated. It no longer is.

Now, I will admit that if the superdelegates all voted together, they would decide the nomination. (If the electted delegates all voted together, they would decide the nomintaion. Nobody seems to have noticed this.)
But those superdelegates who have announced are currently more evenly divided than the already-elected delegates. And they are a significantly smaller number. The nomination will go to the candidate with the greatest total of elected delegates and super delegates. And I'm willing to wager that he/she will have the greater number of each subgroup.
When Hillary had an overwhelming advantage among already-announced superdelgates, some people believed that this advantage would continue. I didn't think this, but it was plausible. It no longer is.

Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Just empty rhetoric. Ideals are irrelevant to the problems of our time.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived can long endure

.
The war needs someone decisive back in Washington. Someone who knows what he is doing, who has administrative and military experience. Not a talking bag of wind.

As front-paged earlier, Survey USA has revealed that either Obama or Clinton would beat John McCain in the electoral college if the election were held today.
Their data, which I've summarized in a table below the jump, goes further. Against McCain, Obama has remarkably strong support; McCain, OTOH, has half his electoral votes from states which give him 5% or less plurality The Clinton-McCain race is far more balanced.

I mentioned in a Previous diary that lobbyists wanted to fund candidates who would be elected. "I'm so grateful to you; your contibution enabled me to run the ad which moved my percentage from 45 to 49" doesn't pass any loopholes.
That's one reason why the change inperception after Foster's victory on Saturday is so important.
The Republican party depends on outspending the Democrats with money that comes from donations by lobbyists. The lobbyists are looking for a sure thing. (They'd prefer to donate to an incumbent with certain re-election, but that's not always available.) The Foster win shows that damn few candidates in Republican open seats are sure things.
The RNCC is downplaying the loss as best they can, although they poured more money into the race than they could afford to; but this makes their fundraising this much harder.

The ideal object of a lobbyist's political contribution to a congressional candidate is someone with seniority on the committee covering that lobby's concern. He's a long-time incumbent with virtual certainty of re-election. (And, of course, the majority party has more influence.)
That means that candidates get lobbyist money in inverse ratio to their need for money. (Ideologues, including the Club for (slow) Growth, use opposite standards.)
Enter the Leadership PAC to solve that problem and extend lobbyist power even further. A Leadership PAC is a PAC organized by a congressman (or other political leader) to gather contributions and distribute them to other politicians whom he favors. How this centralizes power and helps increase the power of lobbyists after the jump.

I was part of the effort of NDFA's drive to boost turnout in the critical race which Bill foster won on Saturday.
The headline about the election in the Chicago Sun Times was

BOMBSHELL

That was accurate.
Of the 8 Republicans who are in the US House from Illinois currently, 6 received a lower percentage of the vote in '06 than Hastert did. Only on the far-west edge of the 14th CD is there anyone who is represented by a Democrat in the legislature. Putting as money much into Republican open seats with lower winning margins in Illinois as the RNCC put into this losing race would take more than it has on hand. Never mind the other 49 states.
My experiences after the jump.

A friend had his LTE on FISA (sort of) Published by the Chicago Tribune. The paper has an extended electronic LTE section for opinions for which there was not room in print.
The URL is: No need for action on FISA
This was in response to a Tribune editorial regurgitating the usual White House talking points: The extension was vital to national security, the fault was all in the Democratic leadership of the House...
Jim couldn't deal with all of the nonsense in the editorial, but he made two critical points briefly. FISA worked just fine before, and President Bush had threratened to veto the extension if it did not give immunity to criminal telcoms.
The particulars of the LTE are less important than the example. We should all use our voices in LTE columns. When we do, it will be more difficult for the MSM to reprint WH BS.