No, this is not a good sign for the GOP.

Hat tip to Marc Ambinder.

I guess McCain is not playing that well in Oregon. Oh and note Gordon's lack of party identification.

We're down to the final 3 contests of the Democratic race for the nomination: Puerto Rico (June 1), Montana, and South Dakota (both on June 3). A total of 86 pledged delegates will be decided pending the outcome.

Hillary Clinton won Kentucky by 35 percentage points to net a total of 23 delegates. She also won by a total of roughly 150,000 votes.

Barack Obama won Oregon by 18 percentage points to net a total of 10 delegates (with 94% of precincts reporting). He won by a total of roughly 102,000 votes.

By nearly every count, with last night's additions, Obama has now earned a majority of all pledged delegates. There are 3,253 total pledged delegates in the contest, and Obama has guaranteed that when the final primary results are tallied on June 3, he will have won a majority of those delegates selected via the vote. That is true whether or not one includes Florida and Michigan delegate totals (however one might allocate them).

There are 795 Democratic Superdelegates. According to Real Clear Politics, Obama now leads Clinton in this category by 27: 306 to 279. The reason the pledged delegate threshold is important, is that many superdelegates are on record as saying that they will not go against the final winner in pledged delegates.

Lastly, for the very contentious popular vote tallies, we must tackle the issue of how to come to an agreed upon number. These numbers vary widely depending on how or whether you tally Florida, Michigan, and all the states that held caucuses. To my mind the whole question is rather beside the point, since, as it stands, the Democratic primary is a hodgepodge of contests whose main purpose is to give us a winner in terms of delegates, not individual votes. Whether we should amend this process for future races is another matter.

Kos makes what I think are the right points about this issue in a post that can be read here.

Ever hear of the Decemberists? No, not the soldiers who rose up against the Czar in Russia back in 1825. I'm talking about the folksy, indie rock band from Portland, darlings of the music press, recipients of the prestigious Colbert-bump and Barack Obama's opening act at a very well attended rally in that city this past Sunday. 75,000 attended the event, which news organizations universally hailed as "big" or "huge".

Media Research Center's Robert Knight (not the basketball coach) wants it known, the Decemberists contributed to the size of that crowd. In an article for NewsBusters Knight wrote, "Unmentioned in national reporting was the fact that Obama was preceded by a rare, 45-minute free concert by actual rock stars The Decemberists. The Portland-based band has drawn rave reviews from Rolling Stone magazine, which gave their 2005 album Picaresque four and a half stars (out of five), and another four and a half stars for 2007's The Crane Wife."

So how much of that tidal wave of humanity was there to see Barack Obama, and how much was there to see the Decemberists? Before you answer, you must also hear testimony about the pristine weather, and you simply must hear the genius of Decemberists' principle songwriter Colin Meloy...

That's the Clinton campaign blowing out earlier estimates of $20 million, according to papers released in the wake of her Kentucky victory, presumably hoping the news would be lost in the uproar. Nope. My eagle eyes saw it this morning. I thought David Knowles would already have had a story filed, and that he did, but that was two weeks and $11 million dollars ago.

From the LA Times:

She added another $9.5 million in unpaid bills to vendors this past month alone, pushing her total debt to vendors and herself to the new astronomical figure, about a 50% debt increase in one month.

According to a campaign release put out Tuesday evening as election returns revealed her big win in Kentucky and loss in Oregon, Clinton raised "approximately $22 million" from other people in April. The release also touted that $10 million had poured in within 48 hours of another lopsided Clinton victory over Obama, that one in Pennsylvania, and said it was the second best fundraising month of her entire campaign.

But the number collected is actually closer to $21 million and the release also neglected to mention that she spent $28.9 million, nearly $8 million more than she took in. She used personal loans to make up part of the difference. She also delayed payments to consultants. Including the $9.5 million in unpaid bills from April, she owes consultants and other venders $19.5 million.

Obama wins big in Oregon and loses even bigger in Kentucky. And we've learned nothing that we didn't know before. Obama sucks with rural Appalachian type white people.

Is this finally going to convince Hillary to bow out? I don't think so, If Obama wins, her next shot at the presidency is 2016 and who knows where she'll be then. If Obama loses she may have a shot in 2012. Either way, it pays off for her to stay in. If Obama loses, she's set to say, "I told you but you wouldn't listen." And if Obama wins, she's done anyway and won't need to convince a bitter and angry Democratic party to turn back to her.

But let's roll the history tape back to 1976 and see another party nominee wannabe who just wouldn't admit it was over until the convention.

I think Hillary really sees herself as another Reagan. And if this is not her time, maybe next time. And if she can't win, she wants to be there on that podium, placing the crown on Obama's head and making the speech that steals the show, and gets the party all wistful that maybe they made the wrong choice.

Which is all hilarious of course, if anyone is Reagan in this remake, it's Obama, but I am telling you, this is how Hillary sees herself. Which may be why she's not getting out. Plus Puerto Rico is coming.

Web TV provided by Ustream Update: I'm mulling the idea of a live webcam. Why? Because I can. What do you guys think?

0:35AM 58-42 in OR with 55% reporting. Better than expected for both candidates tonight, so, as usual, the status quo prevails. I'm going to turn in soon, this will be the end of my written post. I'll finish up on the webcam.

11:35PM Per Tom Fitzsimmons, Ron Paul got 14% of the GOP vote in Oregon. RPFP, Wish Belkin!

11:31PM 59-41 with 40% reporting. An 18 point margin for Obama. If that holds, it's very good, 50% higher than his RCP average.

11:16PM Rachel Maddow!

11:14PM Obama got 52% of non-collee white voters. Huh. Do tell. 83% of Obama's support today was from white voters.

Humor break.

Via Wonkette, proof of what some supporters of Hillary Clinton have been saying all along: Barack Obama supporters simply parrot their candidate's slogans like a bunch of mindless... Well, watch for yourself.



And yes, bird fanciers will recognize this specimen as an African Grey, further proving that Obama and his supporters are racist, or something. Of course, given the foul fowl's deep voice, it's probably a male, misogynist Obama supporter, too.

Not a lot of parrots living in Kentucky, I hear. Oregon? Chock full of them.

On the banks of Portland, Oregon's Willamette River this past Saturday, the largest crowd of this campaign season gathered to hear Barack Obama speak. According to Portland's Fire and Rescue chief, Duane Bray, a staggering 75,000 people packed Tom McCall Waterfront Park. Not a bad symbolic boost heading into Tuesday's Oregon primary.

More symbols? As Frank Rich pointed out in his column this week, Obama, should he go on to become the party nominee, will deliver his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention exactly 45 years to the day that Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The next day, John McCain, who voted against the creation of a holiday honoring Dr. King (he had a bad dream?) before he voted for it, will turn 72 years old.

The Democrats will gather in Denver--the city whose altitude will launch untold "mile-high" metaphors. The Republicans, meanwhile, will disembark in the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, and run something of a gauntlet past tempting men's rooms for fear they'll wind up in the one made famous by another very bad Republican dream, Larry Craig.

There's some very seemingly underhanded politicking going on in Oregon, but it seems to largely be going unnoticed by the national media, which is distracted with the ongoing Clinton-Obama fight.

Oregon's Democratic presidential primary will be held May 20 - the same day as the state GOP primary, which will decide who will run for the seat of outgoing six-term U.S. House Democratic Rep. Darlene Hooley, who represents the 5th Congressional District. The GOP candidates are Kevin Mannix and Mike Erickson. The Rothenberg Political Report categorizes the race as a "pure tossup."

This week brought new accusations that have the distinct smell of smear.

The Oregonian reports today that Mannix actually sent a direct-mail appeal to 60,000 GOP voters, alleging that Erickson impregnated a woman eight years ago, then paid for her to have an abortion. The Mannix campaign is waving around a 2-year-old e-mail as proof - a message purportedly from a friend of the woman who had an abortion. The campaign sent that e-mail to voters. The Oregonian says the campaign mailing blacked out the last name and e-mail address of the author, identifying her as "Kristi" and her friend as "Tawnya. "

"I am convinced that the story is real," Mannix says in the May 12 mailer. "It is important that you, the voter, be aware of this situation. Rarely have I been confronted with such a difficult decision as to whether to proceed with something of this nature. But what is on the line here is the character of the person who will represent you in Congress.

"Many people have suggested to me that I allow some "other party" to share this information with you so that I can stand by and watch the situation develop. I believe it is important for me to take personal responsibility for sharing this story."

In a move that will rock the Democratic foundations, Barack Obama will reportedly announce his victory as the Democratic nominee following the May 20 primaries in Kentucky and Oregon. The bold (perhaps reckless) declaration will excite party loyalists and spark an aggressive response from the Clinton campaign.

Both sides will cite variously tortured numbers in support of their interpretations of the Democratic party's torturous nominating process. Obama's campaign will peg the threshold at 2,025 pledged and super-delegates (a tally excluding Florida and Michigan). Clinton will include those states and demand a total count of 2,209. Yet, Obama will not have met either of those markers following the May 20 primaries. Instead, Obama will have won the majority of pledged delegates (1,627) - excluding, of course, those from Florida and Michigan, which would raise the bar to 1,784 (which Obama will not likely reach on May 20). Clinton will also retort that pledged delegates alone do not win the contest, but only those Illuminati-esque super-delegate can finally award victory. And then there is the whole issue of the popular vote, which might not be in accord with the delegate count (with or without the two states in limbo).

Regardless of the dizzying math and rivaling perspectives, the inescapable result of an Obama declaration of victory will be that Clinton will cry foul. Both campaigns will then inundate the public with interpretations, constructions, statistics and a load of other perplexing formulations which will all boil down to calling the other candidate a cheat. The wedge between Obama and Clinton supporters will widen, and Clinton voters will engender animosities toward Obama which will make their conversion to his camp (following his inevitable nomination) all the more difficult. A Clinton vice-presidency will become less palatable as she resorts to personal dispersions against her too-presumptive challenger.

Obama's early declaration will be premature, and its effect will be to harden Clinton supporters and engulf the Democratic party in a bickering tainted with charges of fraud. Perhaps McCain could be so lucky that one of the campaigns would threaten a lawsuit. Obama's gamble will win him (unneeded) media attention, but it will not secure his nomination any sooner than would otherwise have occurred.