It's an interesting maximum advantage / minimal damage effect that's likely governing things.

The SDs are by nature political animals. Some of them are holding out to maximize their advantage upon endorsement. Others are holding out until there's no question in anyone's mind who the nominee will be, in ordder to minimize the damage with the Clintons.

Unfortunately I think we're still in the shit for awhile.

These people really do need to end this. If the media is going to treat Obama like the nominee, and carry McCains water, he needs to be able to respond as such.

"These people really do need to end this."

I agree with this statement.

I just think "these people" means the good Democrats of the state of Pennsylvania.

soullite, I'm sure, means some other "these people" than the Democratic electorate. I know he's not very fond of Democratic voters.

"I've stopped trying to predict these things."

I'll predict one thing:

After next Tuesday, Hillary Clinton will take back the popular vote lead from Senator Obama.

When we look at Obama, we see who we want to be.

When we look at Clinton, we see who we are. And for me, that's a complete and total douchebag.

One thing that's ALWAYS predictable is Petey.

You know, I've long been convinced that Bill would not have amounted to much without Hillary- she's 100 times more disciplined, and tougher, than he is. And I admire that. But as we've seen, she has nothing even remotely resembling his political instincts and skills. Thank goodness her failure to execute came in the primary and not the general. This is why contested primaries are a good thing.

my hunch is that it'll be Clinton's apparent inability to play a stunningly good political hand.

You mean like blowing an exponential advantage in name-recognition, fundraising, and establishment support?

After next Tuesday, Hillary Clinton will take back the popular vote lead from Senator Obama.

Translation: Bet the house on Obama.

Petey's Predicition Service: Even more reliable than Matthew Yglesias!

Hey everyone,

Note that Petey is counting MI and FL in his prediction, and not IA, NV, ME, and WA. That some seriously selective reasoning. If you do the fair thing and count the states that, well, counted, including the aforementioned caucus states, Obama has a lead of roughly 800,000 in the popular vote. Clinton will do well in PA (Poblano predicts a popular vote margin of 120,000), but she probably won't win by 567% more than expected.

Um, Alex, there are no vote totals for Iowa, Maine, Nevada, or Washington. Everyone's totals are based, at this point, on some sort of elective interpretation. And not counting Florida, where all candidates were on the ballot and a substantial vote recorded, seems absurd, rather like pretending - as we're doing - that a 48 state decision on the nominee is a full representation of the preference of all Democrats. Given that, yet again, Ezra's decided to frame this as Yet More Terrible Things About Clinton, I'm not surprised where this dicussion is headed. Still, as Petey points out, for playing her "terrible hand", Mrs. Clinton is on track to win Pennsylvania, and leading in many of the next states. Which, yes, certainly shows me how Barack Obama has it all sewn up, and how she's totally bungled that whole campaign thing. My goodness, why didn't I see it sooner? /s

I'd say that the Clinton campaign's inability to play a strong hand is all the more remarkable since they've repeated a mistake they've made before (being overtly negative on a trivial matter), even after have shipped-off the party (Mark Penn) that was supposed to have been responsible for that mistake in the past. What happened to the new model Clinton campaign that was going to emphasize the candidates strengths and not harp on her opponents ostensible weak points?

Clinton badly misplayed this. Negative messages carry far more weight coming from a "third party" like the debate moderators on Wednesday than they do coming from an electoral opponent. Clinton had nothing to gain by trying to pile on herself when there were more credible sources doing the attacking for her. I can't believe somebody who's been around politics as long as she has hasn't learned this yet.

Weboy, my understanding is that estimates of the Iowa, Maine, Nevada, and Washington vote totals are base on the total number of people that the states say participated multiplied by the percentage of precinct-level delegates that went for each candidate (these are the only percentages). It's certainly an imperfect estimate, but it's probably not wildly off, and it's exceedingly hard to argue that it's a worse solution than not counting those votes at all, which seems to be Petey's suggestion.

Also, Florida may be debatable, but counting Michigan as a 328,000 to 0 win for Clinton is indefensible, and again, it's essential to Petey's math. Even if you count Florida and not the 4 caucuses without clear totals, Obama leads by 422,000. To put that in perspective, Clinton's margin in New York was 317,000, so it's pretty far-fetched for her take the popular vote lead on Tuesday by any count that is even remotely reasonable.

"After next Tuesday, Hillary Clinton will take back the popular vote lead from Senator Obama."

Only by some quite predictable and quite bizarre definition of "popular vote" that excludes quite a few voters who just happen to have voted for Obama.

After next Tuesday, Hillary Clinton will take back the popular vote lead from Senator Obama.

As long as you're counting elections where Obama wasn't even on the ballot, Petey, why not throw the votes from Clinton's Senate elections in there too? Those are votes too, right? So it would be wrong not to count them! Why, when you count all the votes, she's some 5 million votes ahead of Obama!

It's too bad we'll never get to see what Hillary's powerful coalition-building abilities would do with health care. Why, with her non-confrontational style, we'd surely get a filibuster-proof health plan out of the Senate before the end of next winter. Hillary just has a way of bringing people together.

"And not counting Florida, where all candidates were on the ballot and a substantial vote recorded, seems absurd.."

It seems more absurd to quietly ignore the fact that voters were told that this was not a primary that would count, and that many of them therefore did not vote. All the Florida numbers mean is simply that a fraction of the available Democrats voted in a meaningless contest. It says nothing about true levels of support for either candidate, and does not represent the will of the Florida electorate in any significant way. Sorry, weboy, but you can't switch the rules after the game is over.

Actually, neil, by Petey's logic, we have to count the popular vote totals (and states) that voted for Bill Clinton in '92 and '96. Of course, it might be harder to demand the same count against McCain....

Funny, I never realized until now that Petey was Sean Hannity making mischief among Democrats.

"Hillary, I know what to expect from her, which is eight horrible years, but I'm not so sure she's still a Leninist. Her husband has made so much money in so many different capitalist ways that I actually think they've matured and become good Americans. [laughs] No, there's a paradoxical statement I've just made. In other words, I think the Clintons probably started out as far-leftist characters in their early years, but they've been around so long in the power structure and now, finally, they've been allowed to make so much money and they've circulated with the rich for so long that I think she's a safe bet. In fact, there's an argument to be made that she might be a safer bet than McCain in that regard,"

judging by the above quote, I'd say Petey was Michael Savage.

"Only by some quite predictable and quite bizarre definition of "popular vote" that excludes quite a few voters who just happen to have voted for Obama"

Untrue. Pretty much all Obama votes are counted - remember Team Clinton is into counting votes with Team Obama is into disenfranchising Democrats - with the exception of states that haven't reported publically results.

Being as someone who in opposed to disenfranchising Dems, I'm fully in support of counting them as well. But even if we could get those results and add them in, Clinton would still have the popular vote lead after next Tuesday.

And if you further subgroup out to only count Democrats, Clinton has an overwhelming margin right now, no matter how you count it, among the folks who are supposed to be deciding the nomination race - the Democratic electorate.

"Being as someone who in opposed to disenfranchising Dems, I'm fully in support of counting them as well. But even if we could get those results and add them in, Clinton would still have the popular vote lead after next Tuesday."

By all means, Petey, give us your numbers. Spell it out. Which states are you including and what are you estimating for the unreported caucus states? Go ahead and break out your registered democrats as well (but separately, if you don't mind). Let the rest of us be the judges of whether it makes sense.

"Funny, I never realized until now that Petey was Sean Hannity making mischief among Democrats."

Funny. I'm trying to get the get the real Democratic candidate to win the nomination.

If General Electric would like to run Obama for the general election campaign, perhaps with Mike Bloomberg as his VP, on a platform of bashing universal healthcare and weakening Social Security, well, it's a free country. And after all, GE Healthcare and GE Financial have a business plans to meet.

My concern is getting the Democratic nomination for the actual Democratic candidate - Hillary Clinton.

"If General Electric would like to run Obama for the general election campaign, perhaps with Mike Bloomberg as his VP, on a platform of bashing universal healthcare and weakening Social Security, well, it's a free country. And after all, GE Healthcare and GE Financial have a business plans to meet."

Are you suggesting that Hillary Clinton is not subject to any corporate influences?

Petey, to lose one candidate may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose two ....

Or is Clinton just the latest candidate du jour for Republican trolls? You obviously never believed a word that Edwards said, and obviously never cared about the Democrats. Anyway, mercifully, you have your usual albatross-like effect. The minute you scurried from the sinking ship Edwards to the derelict rustbucket Clinton, wise crewmembers began lowering the lifeboats and preparing to relocate. Thank you, Petey, for removing Ms Republican-lite from the race for us. Once she's gone, please, support McCain, or Nader.

Ya'll know, if Petey didn't exist, someone would have to invent him. Could anyone produce more distorted arguments, more spurious facts, more dazzling non-sequiturs - and all with such an air of pompous, puffed-up virtue? Honestly, it's like listening to a hamster impersonate a lion!

The real Democrat? Madam de Carpetbag? Oh Petey, even by your wingnut standards, this is priceless. Clinton? A Democrat? She who embraces rightwing talkingpoints like longlost children? She who can't keep her lies straight? She who thinkswe should screw poor white southern voters? She who endorsed Bush's war, and didn't bother to read the NIE? Petey, how tall was the tree you fell out of? I've heard you spout some idiocies in the past, but this one is your most astounding act of public incoherence yet! Remember how John Edwards said there were two candidates for change - himself and Obama? Or don't you want to remember what the dead and gone one said?

I'm not sure I agree. It's generally agreed that HRC can't catch up in the electoral process, and so her only hope is, as one blog I read sweetly put it, that Obama gets caught in bed with an Arab. THAT would, then, turn in superdelegates in a massive way.

"Bitter-cling", HRC's campaign decided, was as close to that as they were going to get, and so they pounced.

The standing-back approach works if your goal is to let incremental weakening of your opponent happen--as with the Obama campaign's handling of HRC's Bosnia exaggeration. But it doesn't work if you're going in for the kill, and I have to think that they were.

I don't think it's possible to call her response to the bitter comments a "huge tactical error" until there's some proof that people penalized her for it.

We're all in a bubble in blogtopia (hail skippy). It's very different on the ground. I read a lot about wanting the primaries to end. For my part, I'd love them to continue through June so more people can be involved in the process. I'd like bloggers and commenters to stop writing about them or, failing that, to calm the heck down.

About that huge tactical error.

ERobin, would you like to discuss the Newsweek poll, which shows Obama 19 points ahead? Or is that not posted by Taylor Marsh's vomitorium?

Ezra Klein, re: your link to that video of Obama making hay of the debate:

Are you fully supporting Obama's giving Clinton the finger there? Does that strike you as presidential?

Not to spoil your day, but everyone has debunked the "finger" story. Please, grow up!

We know what we saw. W.O.R.M. to your heart's desire though.

Clinton has badly misplayed her whole campaign, not just the bitter remarks. How on earth the inevitable candidate blows the kind of cash, institutional support, and goodwill among Democrats that she had is hard to figure. That people still think she has what it takes to take on McCain is incomprehensible, until when you realize that most voters don't follow politics with the eagerness that bloggers do.

I'll never forget the article that quoted the Pennsylvania woman who thought the superdelegates were actually stealing the election from Hillary, not the other way around.

"How on earth the inevitable candidate blows the kind of cash, institutional support, and goodwill among Democrats that she had is hard to figure."

citation on the goodwill among Democrats please: I'm REALLY not remembering that phase

words matter