Here and There

Update: I got two of the five states I needed from Quinnipiac, and *shocker* Obama is ahead in both:

• Pennsylvania: Obama 52, McCain 40 (solid)
• Florida: Obama 47, McCain 43 (McCain will go down after his offshore drilling comments Tuesday)

Original post: According to Real Clear Politics, of the states that matter, the following haven’t reported polling data since June 3, when Obama wrapped up the Democratic nomination:

• Pennsylvania
• New Hampshire
• Florida
• Colorado
• New Mexico

Of those five, Obama leads McCain in four according to the last polls (Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Colorado, and New Mexico, where, by the way, Bill Richardson is governor) and trails Florida by only single digits.

With these numbers holding, and Nevada eventually tipping, here’s what a very plausible Election Day map looks like (click image to enlarge):

322-216

A bit of a landslide, eh?

Arizona a swing-state.

Other states I consider in play that the MSM may disagree with me about (based on my idea of Obama’s chances of winning, ranging from highest to lowest):

• Louisiana
• New Hampshire
• Georgia
• Alaska
• North Carolina
• South Carolina
• Indiana
• Texas
• Mississippi

I don’t include Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Missouri, Iowa, Michigan, New Jersey, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania because I absolutely believe Obama will win those. Ohio and Florida are tossups, to my mind.

I’ve got my sights set on Obama crossing the 400-Electoral College vote mark. Yes, I am crazy. But we’ll see.

Do not give a misbehaving child what (s)he wants.

And with that implicit analogy, this blog now turns its full attention toward taking down John McCain. Reader submissions are accepted.

The aim will be to expose John McCain for what he is — an old-school politician, beholden to special interests with deep pockets who play by their own rules. The arguments about approach to government are tired, but must be hashed out. The real question is who these candidates are, what they represent, and how they will lead and represent the United States of America at home and to the world.

Given these tenets, the choice should be pretty clear, methinks.

But this blogger (who blogs from work regularly) can no longer keep up.

I turn you over to my touchstone, Democratic Convention Watch, who reports several Clinton-to-Obama defections, 10 Edwards superdels, and many, many more.

Obama is easily within striking distance of 2,117 or 2,118, whatever. He may even get to that number before votes are counted in South Dakota and Montana. His speech tonight is a victory speech.

The question remains what Hillary will say. And whether anyone should care.

And other musings on the island, from our good man, Kos.

They’re the last ones. I can’t not lay out my predictions:

Montana:
Vote:
Obama 62%, Clinton 38%

Delegates:
Obama 9, Clinton 6

South Dakota:
Vote:
Obama 52%, Clinton 48%

Delegates:
Obama 8, Clinton 7

Supplement random prediction:
Monday and Tuesday will net Obama a total of 7 superdelegates. Wednesday will provide between 40-50, thereby fully affording him the right to declare himself the nominee. Thursday will see the vast majority of not-yet-endorsed supers come forward. And the remainders will continue to pour in for the next week or so.

Final results:

Vote:
Clinton 68%, Obama 32%

Delegates:
Clinton 38, Obama 17

I’m too embarrassed to point to my predictions, so look them up yourself. ;)

Being the honorary first superdelegates to endorse Obama after the RBC meeting yesterday, Maine’s Gwethalyn Phillips and Nevada’s Yvonne Gates endorsed today.

Added to expected gains from Puerto Rico (15 delegates), this brings the nomination clinch number to 47.

The Rules and Bylaws Committee of the DNC voted in favor of seating the full delegations from the renegade states of Florida and Michigan, but each of these states’ delegates will get .5 votes.

The committee also agreed to the Michigan Democratic Party’s proposal to split that state’s delegates 69-59 in Hillary Clinton’s favor. Halved, that means Clinton picked up 38 in MI (pledged and supers) and 56.5 in FL. Obama netted 32 in Michigan and 36 in Florida.

Clinton wins the day 84.5-68. She’ll gain even more tomorrow in Puerto Rico.

But Obama is just 64 away from the new magic number of 2,117, according to DemConWatch.

Oh, and Harold Ickes is a devilish cock.

Original post: The state territory that shouldn’t matter to the Clinton camp, but suddenly does and holds its primary this Sunday:

Vote: Clinton 54.3, Obama 45.2

Delegates: Clinton 17, Obama 11

Update: I previously misread Slate’s Delegate Calculator, and erroneously thought PR only sent 28 delegates to the convention. Turns out they actually have 55, so the revised delegate allocation would be: Clinton 30, Obama 25. Such a result would bring today’s new magic number of 61 down to 36, which is closer than he was last night.

With the latest endorsements, Barack Obama is now within a decent showing in the three upcoming elections. Predictions to come, but my estimates show him picking up a little more than 40 between now and Tuesday. Remaining superdelegate endorsements, plus any fair seating of Florida and Michigan delegates, put him over the top, where we’ve all known for some time that he was destined.

For the record, DemConWatch now has him needing 41 to clinch

Caveat: I don’t expect Clinton to go anywhere. I fully expect challenges, appeals, lawsuits, and it could easily become exactly the media narrative she wants. The biggies in the party, Reid, Gore, Pelosi, Carter, Mitchell, they’ll show support for Obama next week, but no matter. It’s about to get ugly, y’all.

DemConWatch’s KY and OR numbers show that Obama picked up 14 and 30 delegates from those states, respectively. Clinton wins the night on pledged dels, 59-44 (ouch), but Obama’s numbers are enough to secure a majority of pledged delegates, exclusing MI and FL. That magical number was 1,627. Obama now has 1,656.

Adding on his 304.5 supedelegates, Obama is now 64.5 short of an utter clinching of the nomination.

Al Giordano expects superdelegate floodgates to reopen this week. We’ll see.

You know what I mean, another symbolic event, another electoral milestone. Another chance for Hillary Clinton to say she’s going to win.

In the last week, with all the barbing, the jabs delivered from Israeli soil by non-McCain-surrogate-yet-a-McCain-surrogate George W. Bush (still president, btw), and the prompt responses by Obama, it sure did feel like a general election campaign was under way.

Tonight, in fact, I heard Hillary’s voice on the radio and it struck me at first as foreign. I hadn’t heard that voice in a while, haven’t been seeing that face.

All three campaigns released April fundraising number, and another victory for Obama was secured. He raked in $31 million in that month. The number of donors to his campaign approached 1.5 million (internal counts have surpassed that number by now).

I’m kinda over the whole thing. I don’t want to spend the next two weeks hearing about local issues in Puerto Rico. Honestly. Or seeing the candidates ride horses in Montana or South Dakota. Look, it’s this simple: She’ll win PR, he’ll take MT and SD. But before all that, the Rules and Bylaws Committee will meet and decide on a compromise for Florida and Michigan that the candidates will simply have to deal with (Obama can accept just about anything at this point).

I will be paying attention to how the superdelegates come out in the next few weeks, though. It’s become an obsession, counting my little daily dripping supers. I’ll miss them when they’ve all been counted.

Let’s see if Nancy Pelosi, Jimmy Carter, and the rest of those who said they’d go with the winner of pledged delegates now take the opportunity to kill the zombie that is the Clinton campaign.

Good night.

Oh! My predictions weren’t too far off:

Oregon Actuals: O 57.9 C 42.0*
Oregon Predix: O 58.8 C 40.9

Kentucky Actuals: C 66.8 O 30.5
Kentucky Predix: C 61.2 O 34.1

* 65 percent of precincts reporting

Oregon
Vote: Obama 58.8 Clinton 40.9
Delegates: Obama 33 Clinton 19

Kentucky
Vote: Clinton 61.2 Obama 34.1
Delegates: Clinton 34 Obama 17

Yes, I’m suggesting Clinton will end up in positive territory based on these two states’ elections. But, as always, watch for more superdelegate pickups to bring Obama close to even, if not to surpassing Clinton’s electoral advantage. And, watch for a larger “turnout” (all voting done by mail) in Oregon, giving Obama a win on popular vote for the day.

On a not hard-fought victory in the Appalachian state of West Virginia.

In a telling sign of the nature of the state of West Virginia, according to an exit poll, a little more than one-third of Clinton’s supporters said they’d vote for John McCain over Barack Obama in a head-to-head between those two.

From CNN:

But an even smaller number of Clinton’s supporters would back Obama: just 36 percent say that they would vote for the Illinois senator. About the same amount, 35 percent, say they would support McCain and 29 percent say they wouldn’t vote or would vote for someone else.

That means that one-third of Clinton’s vote tonight was from people either too racist to vote for an African-American Democrat, or too conservative.

Either way, yeah, congrats, Hills.

PS: Once we get final results, and a delegate breakdown, I’ll certainly be adding the day’s superdelegate and turncoat delegate counts to the day’s final numbers.