If John McCain was hoping to use his speech at the Republican convention in September to try to woo working class voters away from Obama, he might have hit a snag. It seems that McCain’s speech (which traditionally happens on the final night of the convention) will be happening at the same time of the NFL season opener between the Superbowl champs NY Giants and the Washington Redskins. Whoops. I wonder how many people are going to want to skip the big game just to hear an old man give a patronizing speech about war?

I know this is a couple of months late, but isn’t the Clinton campaign’s insistence that including the MI and FL delegates is acceptable under DNC rules because the rules could change in committee sorta like arguing that something is constitutional because we can amend the constitution? If she had a self-conscious strategy from day one of going after those delegates in the hopes that she could get those delegates seated, it would be one thing, but every bit of evidence indicates that her campaign’s reliance on FL and MI is just a desperate gamble, a last-minute plan to cling to when it became clear that Obama’s delegate strategy made him the inevitable winner.

In other news, Edwards endorsed Obama today, a story that’s also a month or two late. Endorsing now is like waiting until the bottom of the 9th to bet on a baseball game. I’m glad he did it, but if he was going to wait this long, why not wait another week or two and announce so that his pledged delegates are what pushes Obama over the finish line?

Josh Marshall has a good explanation of why Obama lost West Virginia last night which busts the “only Clinton can win white, working-class voters” myth :

There’s been a lot of talk in this campaign about Barack Obama’s problem with working class white voters or rural voters. But these claims are both inaccurate because they are incomplete. You can look at states like Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and other states and see the different numbers and they are all explained by one basic fact. Obama’s problem isn’t with white working class voters or rural voters. It’s Appalachia. That explains why Obama had a difficult time in Ohio and Pennsylvania and why he’s getting crushed in West Virginia and Kentucky.

If it were just a matter of rural voters or the white working class, the pattern would show up in other regions. But by and large it does not.

In so many words, Pennsylvania and Ohio have big chunks of Appalachia within their borders. But those regions are heavily offset by non-Appalachian sections that are cultural and demographically distinct. West Virginia is 100% Appalachian. If you look at southeastern Ohio or the middle chunk of Pennsylvania, Obama did about the same as he’s doing tonight in West Virginia.

Josh includes this handy map of all the counties where Clinton won by > %65, which neatly corresponds to the Appalachian region of the country :

The unfortunate thing about this map for Clinton is that her biggest strength seems to be in places where Democrats are unlikely to win in November, regardless of how well she does in the primaries. Compare that map to the electoral breakdown of the last two presidential elections :



The Clinton campaign may want to fool itself into thinking wins this week and next are indicative of a weakness on Obama’s side, but her heavy support in the Appalachian region makes it clear that back-to-back wins in WV and KY are simply scheduling flukes, like Obama’s post Super Tuesday winning streak. Now if Clinton can win big in some of those remaining greyed-out states (OR, MT, SD), then she’ll have something to really brag about.

- I gave away my couch on Craigslist to someone with a Gmail address. Now that she’s in my contacts, I can see every time she’s online. Kinda creepy, but according to her status message, “Son of Rambow” was really good. Thanks, girl who has my old couch.

- The story of the teacher who was fired after being “accused of wizardry” might be my favorite since “whistle ass”.

- As much as I love the video of Bill O’Reilly throwing a temper tantrum on the set of his old show, I think I like this animated gif even more.

It’s like an amuse bouche of petulance.

- I went to M-W.com to find a word to use for the title of this post and setttled on this because I liked the example sentence :

the exhibit was a hodgepodge of mediocre art, bad art, and really bad art

I think I’ve been to that exhibit.

- This week and next would be good opportunities for Clinton to drop out of the race on a high note rather than spend the next month dragging her feet looking like a delusional, lame duck candidate who nobody thinks can win. Using her WV or KY victory speeches to graciously bow out would be better for everyone involved.

- I was all set to write a long blog post about potential VP picks, but Chris Bowers’ post about Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius pretty much sums up what I’ve been thinking. For the VP pick, I don’t see Obama picking someone like Sen. Webb who would be a tacit admission by the campaign that he’s lacking foreign policy credentials. I think he’d be better off picking someone who (a) is from a red state that isn’t in the deep south, (b) has executive experience, (c) who he’s comfortable with, and (d) can help unite the party. A female governor from Kansas who endorsed him would satisfy those criteria well. I think Govs. Tim Kaine and Brad Henry would also be interesting picks, though most red staters are going to have baggage that would piss off the base.

- I’m sure those pesky Catholics were just taking that whole “great whore” thing out of context. Nice to see that the Catholic League isn’t going to let a little thing like denigrating their entire religion get in the way of electing a Republican.

- Speaking of Sebelius, what the hell is Jerome Armstrong talking about here?

Plus, there’s something there that the media will binge over the couch– Obama choosing a older white woman from Kansas, where his now deceased mother is from originally.

I know Jerome can’t stand Obama, but the implication that choosing a female running mate from Kansas is somehow indicative of an Oedipus complex is just creepy. Ewww…

Hillary Clinton’s devotion to the oil company handout disguised as tax relief that she stole from McCain is just sad. The more she pushes the point, the more she looks like a shameless panderer and makes Obama, by contrast, look like someone willing to make the right choice even when it’s politically unpopular.