What happened yesterday has, in my opinion, certainly decimated what little effort has been made toward unity within the Democratic party.  The wounds are undoubtedly deep on both sides, for sure, but I now see how little it takes to tear off the scab, and I'm genuinely worried about our chances come November, no matter who the candidate is.

I'm a Clinton supporter, and I admit that I'm readier to give Hillary the benefit of the doubt than I am Obama.  This reflects a human weakness on my part, some misguided overzealousness, a fierce loyalty that can slowly devolve into hate.  Many times I've had to check my feelings and reflect on the cause of my disgust or outrage, and I'm sure I share with many here the same icky feeling that creeps in whenever I post a biting comment or wise-ass reply-- that "oh sh*t, I wish I could take that back" feeling.  It leaves me dirtied and a lesser person.  It leaves the better issues undiscussed.  It demoralizes the people we need to help us push towards a big win in November.

The Obama campaign, seemingly the victor in this fight according to many opinion-makers, may not be ready to mend the torn fabric of party unity just yet.  There was a rapid response by campaign spokesman Bill Burton "Sen. Clinton's statement before the Argus Leader editorial board was unfortunate and has no place in this campaign."  I saw it as an unambiguous signal to resharpen the knives, that it's alright with the Obama campaign for partisans to read from Hillary's gaffe the worst thing you could ever imagine.  And so certainly the blogs overflowed with such convoluted logic and insinuations, followed closely by the soulless, profit-driven media.  We're back in the boiling cauldron.

Because Hillary is so smart and so cool and calculating (like all successful women, right?), she could not have made such a mistake (they're not allowed to make them), and therefore she really meant to bring up the specter of assassination as a surefire way to attack Obama and advance the cause of her candidacy.  At least that's how the prevalent logic goes.  Thus, what began as a gaffe (at worst) became another definite instance of the evil, calculating, demonic Clintonian strategy to either (a) scare superdelegates into thinking that "anything can happen" (which is so obviously true-- that, truly, anything can happen, ostensibly so), or worse (b) somehow stoke up the fire within her white supremacist supporters (in Appalachia, I'm guessing) to find a way to assassinate Obama before the convention.

I'm at a loss as to how to begin to untangle this mess, as I'm sure you are.  The back and forth on this site is a back and forth common in school playgrounds across the country, as many have observed. Months from now, as we're stewing in yet another tumultuous loss (perhaps), we'd look back to moments like this and understand that we had it coming all along.

Then of course Axelrod and Co. have since "defended" Hillary on some TV programs that I still refuse to watch, but only because the damage has already been done, and magnanimity and honor can once again flow from the victor's cup.  This has certainly been a hard-fought campaign, and the wounds are still raw, thus the tendency to continue the fight remains overpowering.  Maturity and generosity are now needed to once again form a unified party, and the best example ought to come from Barack Obama himself.  If he's really certain of his victory, he ought to rise above this silliness and publicly rebuke those who are still bent on further crucifying the Clintons for all the sins of the Democratic party.  He needs the Clintons to regain their stature as party leaders-- only then can Hillary's most fervent supporters find their way back to the fold and work actively towards a win in November.  It's the tactically correct move, and it's also compassionate and kind.

I'm a Democrat, and I'll vote for Barack Obama come November (if he is the nominee), but it will take some active bridge-building and lots of healing to make me push and campaign as actively as I had been for Gore in 2000 and for Kerry in 2004.

Mississippi exit polling from today's Democratic primary trickling in as the evening approaches. I took these from Blitzer's Situation Room on TV:

Obama voters: satisfied if Clinton wins nomination?  44% Yes, 55% No

Clinton voters: satisfied if Obama wins nomination?  26% Yes, 72% No.

Vote by age:
17-29 :  Obama 67%, Clinton 32%
65+  :  Obama 44%, Clinton 56%

Opinion of John McCain:  37% favorable, 59% unfavorable

Of course CNN is NOT releasing race and gender participation yet-- this should be the most revealing of all subcategories polled.

Spin cycle:  take a look at the map of Obama wins in his campaign website.  You'll see that rising "O" symbol stamped like cattle brand on those states that Obama allegedly won, bathing them in the kind of celestial light normally reserved for depictions of holy images and saints.

According to that map (look for it in the BO.com website), he won 27 out of 41 states, including Texas, Nevada and Missouri.  But just like the foundation of his candidacy, this is one big, fat lie.

MR. OBAMA, YOU DID NOT WIN TEXAS.  You lost the popular vote.  Nevermind that you're walking away with more delegates.  You got more delegates because of those caucuses, which are fundamentally undemocratic.  We don't want to hear that kind of talk, after we Democrats suffered through the same judgment in 2000, when our candidate Gore won the national popular vote but Renquist and Scalia stole it for Bush.  The will of the popular vote must be upheld.

MR. OBAMA, YOU DID NOT WIN NEVADA.  Like Texas, you lost the popular vote.  You may have walked away with one more delegate, but a majority of Nevadans chose Hillary Clinton to be the next president over you.  This is indisputable.

But you seem to love that pledged delegate argument in pushing the fairy tale that you won both Texas and Nevada.  If this is so, then you should be consistent with MISSOURI.  While you won the popular vote count by the tiniest margin (1%) in that state, both Hillary and you walked away with the same number of 36 pledged delegates.  By this count, and by your perverted measure of victory, you didn't win Missouri.  You tied Hillary in pledged delegates.

Stop the fuzzy math.

The press is also noticing this fantastic claim:

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/ 2008/03/obama-website-c.html

Is this how Obama will win our nomination?  By claiming fake victories, and fudging the math?

Interesting stuff:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/104788/Gallup -Daily-Clinton-48-Obama-44.aspx

Hillary Clinton has moved ahead of Barack Obama in national Democratic nomination preferences, 48% to 44%, in polling conducted Sunday through Tuesday.

The latest three-day average primarily reflects Democratic attitudes before the outcomes of Tuesday night's primaries were known. National Democratic preferences began to shift in Clinton's favor on Sunday, gained momentum on Monday, and remained favorable to her on Tuesday. Any impact her success in Tuesday night's elections may have on national preferences will be reflected in tomorrow's Gallup Poll Daily election tracking report.

Looks like a Hillary surge!  The daily tracking poll in the coming days will show just how big this resurgence is. This is also the first time that Hillary takes a statistically significant lead in more than a month (Gallup's margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points). This is big!

UPDATED: Hillary supporters, let's keep the momentum going. Contribute! The Clinton campaign has a challenge to raise $3M in 24 hours. Let's do our part.

http://hillaryclinton.com/home/

On today's World News Tonight on ABC, after an extended piece at the top of the broadcast about the Rezko corruption affair and the "contentious" Obama press conference today that focused on Rezko and the NAFTA/Canada-gate, George Stephanopoulos, in conversation with Charlie Gibson, said:

"If Senator Clinton does well tomorrow, people will look back and say, how much do we really know about this guy, and the scrutiny will intensify in the days going forward."

How much do we really know about this guy?  This is the question that will guide the narrative in the days and weeks to come.  Aided by the MSM, the Republican attack machine will certainly work on Rezko and NAFTA-gate, along with the tiniest piece of dirt that they could find or make up.

The mainstream for-profit media is now looking for the next "selling" story.  They have done their work on Hillary, and it seems they're turning their gaze ever so slowly onto Obama.  Just in time to prepare the way for the "maverick" and the "principled" John McCain, who every pundit and talking head on MSNBC adores.

How much do we know about this guy?  Already, Obama is being hounded by questions, and he's leaving them unanswered.  The great rookie, the wunderkind, is now being tested on the grand stage, and we're not really sure how he'll weather the media and Republican savaging.

Firstread says in an article titled "Obama Tangles with the Press":

Led by the Chicago press corps that has covered Obama for years, the candidate today faced a barrage of questions in what turned out to be a contentious news conference.

Questions centered on why his campaign had denied that a meeting occurred between his chief economic advisor and Canadian officials as well as questions on his relationship with Tony Rezko, a Chicago land developer and fast food magnate, now on trial for corruption charges ...

When did the (Canadian embassy) meeting take place? Why did the Canadian officials reach out? Did Goolsbee not come forward right away and admit the meeting to Campaign Manager David Plouffe and Obama when both denied it last week? These are questions that went unanswered as the press conference was cut short.

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2 008/03/03/726268.aspx

How much do we know about this guy?  Obama is now "tangling" with the press.  And he's leaving questions unanswered.  Is the honeymoon over?  Are we now witnessing how the Republican playbook on Obama will unfold?

Percent of votes MISSED:

John McCain: 55.7%  (second only to Tim Johnson, who has a valid excuse-- he's been hospitalized for a brain hemmorhage)

Barack Obama: 38.8%

Hillary Clinton: 27.1%

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congr ess/110/senate/vote-missers/

Thoughts?

Nothing to do post-Super Tuesday, so idle minds think of the state of our primaries in alternate universes.  So I thought, if there were no superdelegates, and states are all winner-take-all, and using the electoral college state totals to assign points for each state (with 270 needed to win) and excluding Florida and Michigan, we have the following tally:

OBAMA
Iowa 7
South Carolina 8
Alabama 9
Alaska 3
Colorado 9
Connecticut 7
Delaware 3
Georgia 15
Idaho 4
Illinois 21
Kansas 6
Minnesota 10
Missouri 11
North Dakota 3
Utah 5
TOTAL: 121

CLINTON
New Hampshire 4
Nevada 5
Arizona 10
Arkansas 6
California 55
Massachusetts 12
New Jersey 15
New Mexico 5
New York 31
Oklahoma 7
Tennessee 11
TOTAL: 161

Going into last night's vote counting, there was much buzz about how states in Hillary Clinton's backyard may turn against her and vote for Barack Obama.  That California, the big enchilada, the big prize, the delegate-rich battleground state will determine the momentum moving on from Super Tuesday.  That there seems to be a definitive movement towards Obama in the poll of polls ...

But none of that happened.  Connecticut and Missouri were close.  The big prizes, California, New Jersey, Massachusetts-- all went to Hillary in convincing margins.  The MSM, ever creative to push their agenda, immediately went into action, buying the premise being hawked by the Obama campaign that as soon as people "get to know" Obama, that they go his way.  That if given enough time, he'd have won states that were tending towards him in the end.

But how much more time, and how much more money, and how many more Kennedys and Oprahs will it take for people to "get to know" Obama?  In my opinion, the intense media coverage leading up to Super Tuesday, with such an undeniable bias, should have been enough to "introduce" the "relatively unknown" candidate to many millions of people.  THE PEOPLE KNOW OBAMA, and they voted based on what they know, and how they feel.  In the end, you have to WIN the big prizes, not just come close to winning them and then make excuses.  How much more help can MSM provide for Obama to win these big states?  Why isn't it that, despite a clear advantage in money, endorsements, press favor, and "mo", Obama lost the big prizes?  The Latinos, the middle class, the working poor, the retirees, the Asian-Americans, women have spoken in convincing numbers, yet all they could find to talk about is "Hillary's white male problem."

So I'm turning off my TV.