Ugghhh…CNN is now covering the election under the banner “Ballot Bowl ‘08″. It’s nice to see them take the election so seriously…

Funny :

Democratic White House hopeful Hillary Clinton said Wednesday she loaned her campaign five million dollars of her own money in January to keep up with rival Barack Obama’s record cash windfall.

“I loaned the campaign five million from my money,” Clinton said a day after more than 20 state nominating contests resulted in no clear front-runner for the Democratic party ticket.
. . .
[Obama’s] campaign announced it had raised 32 million dollars in January alone, compared to 13 million raised last month by Clinton.

Funnier :

***Page Exclusive: Some Clinton Senior Staff Working Without Pay***

SOURCE: THEY HAVE “VOLUNTARILY CHOSEN TO WORK WITHOUT PAY THIS MONTH” AS PART OF CLINTON CASH CRUNCH AGAINST OBAMA MOOLA FACTORY.

Includes campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle.

Funniest :

The Clinton campaign’s attempt to turn their Massachusetts win into some sort of Giants vs. Patriots underdog story is pathetic :

UPSET OF THE NIGHT

One of the biggest surprises of the night is Massachusetts

Despite the fact that Senators Ted Kennedy and John Kerry were actively supporting and campaigning for Obama, Hillary Clinton won the state.

Despite the fact that the Governor of Massachusetts endorsed Obama, Hillary Clinton won the state.

Despite the fact that Obama visited Massachusetts just last night, Hillary Clinton won the state.

This is a strong victory and shows that Hillary Clinton has strength in places where Barack Obama was expected to win.

Expected to win? By whom? Here’s what the polls looked like in Massachussets :

Congratulations, Senator Clinton. You won a state that every single poll but one expected you to win. Same goes for California and New Jersey, where most polls showed Clinton ahead and Obama had the disadvantage of being far behind in the polls when early voting began.

If anything, it was Barack who showed unexpected strength in places Hillary was supposed to win. If you look at the trendlines for Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Kansas, Missouri, and Minnesota, they favor Clinton, but Barack won them all. Going forward, things are looking worse for Clinton :

There are ten more primaries/caucuses this month and Obama is expected to do well in all of them.

Now the landscape gets much more favorable for Obama. On Saturday, it’s Louisiana, Nebraska, and Washington. Then on Sunday it’s Maine. Then Tuesday offers Maryland, DC, and Virginia. Then February 19 offers Wisconsin and Hawaii. That’s a lot of states, but not a ton of delegates. On March 4 comes the big showdown in Texas and Ohio. The question is whether Obama can build up enough momentum between now and March 4 to put Clinton away, or whether Clinton can draw enough blood in the intermediate states to shut him down on the March 4 firewall.

I’m not sure how Ohio will go, but considering that the delegates from Texas are being chosen via a weird hybrid that plays to Obama’s big primary strengths (open primary and caucus), I expect him to do well there. If Obama can spend a month kicking ass all over the country and delivers a big win on the 4th, I think the superdelegates will see the writing on the wall and start falling into place.

UPDATE : There’s a great breakdown of the upcoming primaries here.

That’s the word from the Clinton campaign despite widespread concern about voting problems reported by the LA Times, LAist, and Calitics. Just the sort of thing I’d expect from a campaign that has been trying to win via voter suppression, changing the rules mid-election, and a reliance on the support of party insiders.

That’s the unfortunate thing about Obama’s surge. Even if he sweeps today’s primaries, institutional support for Clinton and the “didn’t count until they favored Hillary” delegates from Florida and Michigan could have us wind up in a brokered convention which will, without hyperbole, turn the convention into utter chaos. Perhaps if the Clintons had a history of using this sort of ruthlessness to accomplish any of their progressive promises I’d see it as a selling point, but right now I’m not very inspired by the option of electing our Machiavellian candidate.

Newsweek had an interesting item the other day that I think really speaks to Barack Obama’s ability to inspire the electorate :

“Barack Obama will really be in a singular position to attract moderate Republicans,” she told NEWSWEEK. “I wanted to do what many people did for my grandfather in 1952. He was hugely aided in his quest for the presidency by Democrats for Eisenhower. There’s a long and fine tradition of crossover voters.”

Eisenhower is one of a small but symbolically powerful group of what Obama recently called “Obamacans”—disaffected Republicans who have drifted away from their party just as Eisenhower Democrats did and, more recently, Reagan Democrats in the 1980s. They include lifelong Republican Tricia Moseley, a former staffer for the late Sen. Strom Thurmond, the one-time segregationist from South Carolina. Now a high-school teacher, Moseley says she was attracted to Obama’s positions on education and the economy.

Former GOP congressman Joe Scarborough, who anchors MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” says many conservative friends—including Bush officials and evangelical Christians—sent him enthusiastic e-mails after seeing Obama’s post-election speeches in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. “He doesn’t attack Republicans, he doesn’t attack whites and he never seems to draw these dividing lines that Bill Clinton [does],” Scarborough told NEWSWEEK.

I know a few conservatives who support Obama that would never have dreamed of supporting a Democrat before they saw him speak. I know a lot of Obama’s detractors think his promises to bring people together amount to a bunch of naive “fairy tales”, but having spoken to Republican voters that are excited to vote for Obama, I can’t help but give him the benefit of the doubt. Especially compared to Hillary, who I doubt will ever be able to get Republican support (in the election or in Congress). This “Obamacan” support is really the basis for the urgency I’m feeling about the primary now. As Barack himself noted in an interview posted at The New Republic :

BRODY: Will Hillary be a drag for down-ticket races as a presidential candidate?

OBAMA: I think there is no doubt that she has higher negatives than any of the remaining democratic candidates. That’s just a fact and there are some who will not vote for her. If you look at the results in Nevada, for example, she eked out the popular vote victory over me, but I ended up winning more delegates because she got almost all of her votes from Clark County, Las Vegas and some of the traditional democratic areas. We got votes there, but we also got votes in northern Nevada and rural conservative regions of the state that traditionally don’t vote Democratic, but were excited about my campaign.

I have no doubt that once the nomination contest is over, I will get the people who voted for her. Now the question is can she get the people who voted for me? And I think that describes sort of one of the choices that people have, just a practical choice, as they move forward.”

Personally, I don’t quite understand why Republicans would support Barack Obama. His positions across the board are solidly Democratic : universal(ish) healthcare, ending the war, reversing tax cuts for the rich, government transparency, raising the minimum wage, etc. But I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. If conservatives and moderates are being inspired to support a liberal agenda, why the hell would we want to throw that support away?