Salient

I expect Obama to become the presumptive nominee as he is way closer to the magic number of 2025 but its grinding on pretty exhaustively! West Virginia (suits Hillary but only 28 delegates) next week then Kentucky (51 delegates, suits Hillary) and Oregan (52 delegates, suits Obama) so what you will see is a tracking of diminishing scales of delegates required with Obama eventually coming over the finish line.

Super delegates as everyone knows by now will be crucial and Obama is getting endorsed at higher rate than Hillary and he needs less than 200 total delegates to get to that magic number whereas she looks less likely as she will have to swing a huge percentage of the remaining super delegates and her reasons look less valid with today’s results considering the last 2 weeks of the campaign Obama looks better than he did a few days ago…

You only see what you want to see Laura.

“slips the chain” he could have meant slipping the chains of oppression and fulfilling his destiny as the first real black presidential nominee, or he could just be continuing his casual racism. I’ll let you decide

It’s not racist if you’re talking about bicycles.

Conrad “or breaking the metaphorical chains that were holding him back these past two months. Pennsylvanian, Jeremiah Wright etc…”

Yes that’s the tone the media are making, also they are commenting about Bill’s Gloomy looking face behind Hillary’s manic energy during her Indiana victory speech. Tone beginning to change in media, key words “total lead” (Obama), “the long goodbye” (Clinton), “survivor” (Obama, remember Bill went through Gennifer Flowers in 92, she was his Jeremiah Wright), “is the end in sight?”, “super delegates expected to begin weighing in” and so on. And my Favourite on CNN.com (http://edition.cnn.com/POLITICS/) “Superdelegates await Clinton’s next move” with a half gloomy and half optimistic photo of her (see what I mean!!)

It seems that the media picks up on these themes (or memes!) and recycles them constantly, Pennsylvania did it for Clinton (margin of 9-10% helped her raise money to stay in the race) and new tone change (as expected) leads down yet another road.

Next few days will be crucial, the key is superdelegates:

Clinton has 267 and Obama 257, if Obama in next few days passes Clinton in superdelegates or even catches up then it is game over. Clinton’s strategy (or Harold Ickes her superdelegates lobyist) will be to counter any moves by using stored superdelegates to pledge. But the danger there is the panic tone (e.g. “we really need to step back and select a nominee who will…” etc) of some of them could be counter productive and any misssteps could start a flood of superdelegates to Obama
If she gets any defections then that will be fatal as the ship will be seen to be sinking and the superdelegates are all waiting for someone to take the lead before they turn into a flood of endorsements either way…

And Obama has extended his TOTAL lead in delegates by 159 delegates to be on 1845 by most estimates and Clinton is now languishing way behind on 1686 (which psychologically looks bigger than it really is because she is 2 hundred digits behind ie he is way up in the 1800’s and she’s stuck in the 1600’s), and with the pool of delegates halving with each major primary date makes it near impossible for her to catch up. Obama only needs around 180 more delegates whereas she needs around 338… NEAR IMPOSSIBLE! As her arguments to superdelegates that looked realistic and valid 2 weeks ago after Pennsylvania carry less weight…

Also expect the Dems in October/November to reply to the Jerimiah Wright saga by attacking right back at McCain over his endorsement by popular televangelist John Hagee (preacher who calls the Catholic Church the Whore of Babylon)…

Yeah CNN did pick a pretty grim photo there for their website…

I honestly believe that Clinton is going to as hard as possible to get the Florida and Michigan delegates seated. He’s currently around 160 delegates away from 2025 and if he gets around half of the remaining pledged delegates yet to be allocated he will be near around 60 delegates required. Add the growing number of superdelegates supporting him daily and he will be very near the magic mark by June.

Even if Clinton manages to get the Michigan delegates seated in perhaps a 40/60 advantage for her (Obama wasn’t on the ticket) it still takes Obama over the top regardless. This was being discussed as a possible solution to the Michigan issue. Same story with the Florida delegates. He lost by a significant margin (17%) however he would probably still go over the 2025 mark. Thus it’s inevitable that he will be the nominee.

I think it is possibly good for the democratic chances in the general that all of the scandals about Obama are already out in the open (hopefully, but who knows what Fox will dig up) while McCain’s scandals haven’t been probed very rigorously.

What’s your opinion on the possibility of a joint ticket with Obama/Clinton? I really don’t think it can happen after all the shit she has been slinging. I personally think John Edwards is pretty hot, or Anderson Cooper

Yeah Anderson Cooper gets around everywhere (Hurricane Katrina etc…) surprised he’s not in Myanmar. CNN is a strange beast, corporate but with roughage around the edges (not surprising as Ted Turner is that too!), I usually just log into their website for the Political Ticker which has been REALLY ferral between Obama/Clinton supporters.

To get the cream of the crop of CNN it’s best to tune into the Situation Room.
Quest is pretty interesting (at times) I also like Jack Cafferty as he is no nonsense old fashioned dem, he plays the role of old crank that Blitzer turns to first for comment.

And watching their election nights coverages are handy with John King with his special map that he moves around (BIG improvement on Nigel Roberts over here)…

Wolf Blitzer is ok, but annoying at same time (he really LABOURS some wedge points when he interviews). The panel they have are usually good. CNN has it’s own niche reporters following the candidates, Dana Bash follows McCain and has been boring s far (that will change when focus is on November) and some Fran Mold lookalike (name escapes me but she won some big journalism award for her coverage of New Hampshire) follows the Dems….

I actually find Sky News (Australian version) panel/analysis (when they have it) to be pretty sharp too, as the political scientists they have usually know what they are talking about (except for one old cudger who predicted right after Super Tuesday that Clinton would win on the back of Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania, but he didn’t see the 10-0 bounce that Obama got)…

BBC is also pretty good, forget Fox News (don’t have to tell anyone that!) and someone told me that Al Jazerra is fun to watch when they do the election coverage!

Clinton is damaged goods (her own and her campaign teams doing) so she won’t be a good VP candidate.

As for Florida and Michigan, they should have some delegates at the convention for party business, but it SHOULD not impact on the nominee race as the race is effectively over (and they broke the agreed to by all the candidates campaign rules anyway). If Clinton tries to the issue it as one LAST grab for the nomination she will alienate a LOT of people. Her spin machine needs to wind down…

She should and will stay in the race till at least West Virginia, and if she can raise some money (unlikely however) stay till June 3 to allow the campaign to wind down with dignity for the sake of her party. If she ignores the wind down process then the fears of many that she is willing to destroy the party if she is not the nominee will be confirmed. Thankfully in the last few days she is sounding like she is winding down…