2008 Presidential Election

Obama has a very specific problem with white voters — the ones in Appalachia don't like him. The following graph, from DHinMI at Daily Kos, shows the counties where Hillary Clinton won at least 65% of the vote. (The states in white haven't voted yet.)

Interesting pattern, isn't it? However, Obama easily won Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska, and many other predominantly white states. He's also projected to win white voters in Oregon by 55%–42%. DHinMI concludes:

Obama doesn't appear to have much of a problem with white voters. But it seems quite likely Appalachia has a bit of an Obama problem.

The exact number depends on how you count, but it's clear that Obama has essentially erased Clinton's lead in superdelegates (ABC News):

Sen. Barack Obama moved into the lead today in the last category that Sen. Hillary Clinton had claimed to have an edge — support among the Democratic Party's superdelegates.

The Illinois Democrat grabbed the superdelegate lead thanks to a switch by New Jersey Rep. Donald Payne and an endorsement from previously uncommitted Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon.

Those two votes gave Obama a 267–266 lead over Clinton. That is a huge shift since the days when Clinton boasted about a 60-plus vote lead among the party's pros back on Super Tuesday.

And Obama's lead will only get wider.

Deseret News:

Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, still hasn't made up his mind about which Democratic presidential candidate to support — even though the party's state chairman sees the race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama winding down.

"I really want to keep my powder dry until this process is done," Matheson, the only one of Utah's so-called superdelegates to the Democratic National Convention in August not committed to a candidate, told the Deseret News Wednesday. [...]

"Neither of the campaigns have been knocking at my door," Matheson said. "I have made it real clear that I'd like to watch this process play out. I am learning, I think all of us are learning, more about the candidates every day as this campaign rolls through all 50 states."

But unless Matheson is committed to voting for the candidate with the most pledged delegates at the end of the process, what's the point of waiting? What more are we learning?

Good analysis from Karen Tumulty in TIME:

2. She didn't master the rules

Clinton picked people for her team primarily for their loyalty to her, instead of their mastery of the game. That became abundantly clear in a strategy session last year, according to two people who were there. As aides looked over the campaign calendar, chief strategist Mark Penn confidently predicted that an early win in California would put her over the top because she would pick up all the state's 370 delegates. It sounded smart, but as every high school civics student now knows, Penn was wrong: Democrats, unlike the Republicans, apportion their delegates according to vote totals, rather than allowing any state to award them winner-take-all. Sitting nearby, veteran Democratic insider Harold M. Ickes, who had helped write those rules, was horrified — and let Penn know it. "How can it possibly be," Ickes asked, "that the much-vaunted chief strategist doesn't understand proportional allocation?"

Ezra Klein:

As Sarah Arnquist has written, aside from his awful internment in a Vietnamese prison camp, it is hard to find a day in McCain's life when he was not sheltered by the government-run health care he now claims to loathe. Born the son of a Navy admiral, he was cared for by Navy physicians during his childhood. After graduating from high school, he enrolled in the United States Naval Academy, and the military's care continued until he retired from the service in 1981. In 1982, he won a seat in Congress, ushering him into the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program, and in 2001, he qualified for Medicare. When he says, "we have the highest quality of health care in the world in America," he is speaking as a man who has enjoyed a lifetime of government-run care.

But now John McCain is seeking the presidency as a Republican, and a healthy distaste for government-run health care is de rigueur. "I am convinced," said John McCain at Miami Children's Hospital, "that the wrong way to go is to turn over your lives to the government and hope it will all be fine. It won't." Spoken like a 71-year-old whose government health coverage has kept him healthy enough to run for the presidency.

Washington Post:

"Vote for Change" will summon the volunteer army that Obama has amassed in the 47 states and territories that have already held primaries or caucuses this year, along with the nine yet to come. Deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand described the effort as a "sustained six-month campaign" aimed at driving up turnout for all Democratic candidates in November. [...]

Hildebrand cited Wyoming as an example. The March 8 caucus state got little attention from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, and it's a long shot as a Democratic pickup in the presidential election. But Obama, who beat Clinton in Wyoming easily, built a volunteer team there that can now be dispatched to aid Gary Trauner, who lost a 2006 race for the state's at-large House seat by 1,000 votes. Trauner has a better shot this year: The GOP incumbent who beat him, Rep. Barbara Cubin, is retiring. "We're looking for opportunities beyond the presidential campaign," Hildebrand said.

Also see the Wall Street Journal:

[Obama's] campaign also just announced a 50-state voter mobilization. That reflects another pitch to nonelected party officials: That Sen. Obama would work to build the party even in Republican "red" states, and has the money to do it, while Sen. Clinton focuses only on Democratic "blue" states and battlegrounds such as Ohio.

Interviews with party officials suggest this appeal has effectively exploited lingering resentments that the DNC, under President Clinton, abandoned the red states. "Obama has made it absolutely clear he's committed to the 50-state strategy, and the Clintons obviously aren't," says Nebraska party chairman Steve Achepohl, who endorsed Sen. Obama last week. "That's a major factor for all the party people in smaller states."

Digby says it's started, right on cue:

[In February] I wrote this:

It was only a matter of time before the media began to trivialize Obama and his campaign as a bunch of latte-sipping left-wing hippie elites. That's the 30-year conservative rap on liberals and it's been fully internalized by the MSM and a whole lot of Americans, including some Democrats. When you start to hear the pundits talking about "beer track/wine track" this isn't far behind...

[...] This is a Village meme that has been used over the course of thirty years.(Fifty, if you want to go back to Stevenson.) It has been so internalized among the media elites that the Republicans don't even have to say it out loud anymore. It was inevitable that it would happen. [...]

Nobody should be surprised or unprepared for this by now. I think Obama's campaign people underestimated how this label could be applied to their guy and they allowed it to play out in Pennsylvania in ways that should have been anticipated. But then I have always wondered why Democrats are always off guard every time this hits them.

On Monday might, The Brad Blog reminded us that most of the votes in the Pennsylvania primary would be unverifiable:

On Tuesday night, you will be told who the winner of the Pennsylvania primary is. You will accept it. You will have no choice. No matter who the winner really is. Or isn't.

This Tuesday's crucial contest will be primarily run on 100% faith-based, Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen or push-button) e-voting machines across the state. There will be no way to determine after the election whether the computers have accurately recorded, or not, the intent of those voters who voted on them. As VerifiedVoting.org summarizes the crucial contest, it "will be essentially unrecountable, unverifiable, and unauditable."

Most of the votes, more than 85%, will be cast on such DRE systems which do not provide so-called "Voter Verified Paper Audit Trails" (VVPATs), as their use has been found unconstitutional in the state, since its been determined, accurately, that ballot secrecy cannot be guaranteed when using such paper trail systems. Not that it matters.

With or without a so-called "paper trail" printer, all touch-screen/push-button/DRE voting machines are equally unverifiable and antithetical to American democracy. Period.