Assuming Barack Obama actually gets the nomination (we cannot rule out Clinton somehow nabbing it at the brokered convention), I think there are perhaps three politicians who could possibly add to his ticket going into the general election:

John Edwards - His populist talk and devotion to working class issues, combined with his skills as an attorney, make him an ideal vice presidential candidate. He managed to sell himself as one in 2004, and although he didn't get enough footing to remain in contention for the nomination this year he still has a base of supporters who could help bridge the divide between Obama's followers and Clinton's. But this is unlikely, because Edwards is an economic populist, and corporate Democrat Obama blew it big time when he tried to finagle an endorsement only to end up angering Donna Edwards by attacking her husband's health care plan.

we have no recent information about hillarys conversations with ms roosevelt, tho i suspect they have long since ceased. the evidence is overwhelming.

i suggest that senator clinton call on the sainted first lady and seek her advice about what depth of political expediency one can sink to without losing any claim on a positive place in history.

i can imagine what the excellent ms roosevelt would say about hillarys lust for the presidency and what she has done and said hoping to win it.

and eleanor would say it MUCH nicer than me.

i do believe that the senior ny senator is headed for the jefferson davis/lester maddox section of democratic party hell and taking her cracker husband along.

The results in Tuesday's twin primaries--Barack Obama by 14 percent in North Carolina and Hillary Clinton by 2 percent in Indiana--confirmed that Clinton is finished as a contender. Barack Obama will be the Democratic candidate for president this fall.

Clinton, the private-schooled, Wellesley and Yale-educated millionaire lawyer from Chicago, first tried to present herself as a White House veteran, and then, in recent weeks, as a NASCAR mom on Food Stamps, and in Pennsylvania resorted to cheap race-baiting and red-baiting in an effort to derail her opponent, has failed. Barack Obama, another private-schooled Harvard and Yale-educated lawyer, but one who actually did have to work his way up the economic ladder, won decisively in North Carolina, even drawing a significant number of working-class white voters in a state where white voters have not traditionally voted for candidates with dark skin.

Obama's electibility reflects his likelihood of winning. The chance of victory hinges on key states.

I've said Obama is unelectable. Yet no one can say definitively that Obama would do worse than Hillary against McCain. Polls over McCain vs. Hillary, McCain vs. Obama are brought out by one candidate's side to denounce the other. The media is blitzed with polls, predictions, and punditry. Those in one camp are receptive to information positive for their candidate and negative for the other. The same holds true for those in the opposing candidate's camp.

I do hope the majority of this nation, who do hold a set of largely progressive values in common, can overcome the squabbling of two politicians and focus on the larger issue, which is beating John McCain in the fall. Compromise is invaluable tool in politics, and the idea that progressives would abandon each other if their candidate isn't nominated is utterly childish.

To paraphrase Harry Truman’s dictum that the only things we don’t yet know being the history we haven’t yet read, current headlines, in a comparative vein, are reminiscent of 1960.

Shortly before the beginning of the Democratic Convention of 1960 a group of prosperous looking Texans stood in the lobby of the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, the convention’s headquarters, and one said in a strong, determined accent with a notable Texas twang:

“That Kennedy is making me damned mad!”

The youthful Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy and the politically experienced majority leader of that same body, Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, had exchanged plenty of verbal blows as each sought to win the Democratic nomination and the opportunity to face Vice President Richard M. Nixon in the fall presidential campaign.

For more than a month I have called a moratorium on the Democratic race only blogging on the hype of the contests as presented by the media. After the two primaries in Indiana and North Carolina, it is apparent that Hillary Clinton can not win the nomination. Even if she were to win the remaining contests she would still not be able to catch Obama. So what is the point of continuing? Hillary Clinton has waged a strong campaign and is deserving of praise for being able to recover when most had pronounced her campaign dead. The time has now come for Hillary to set aside her personal belief that the nomination was inevitably hers and to do what is best for the Party. What is best for the Party is for Hillary to gracefully suspend her campaign and allow the Party to coalesce behind the presumptive nominee Barack Obama.

I am one American that is ashamed of what this nation has become. I am sick to death of watching my country invade other nations for their oil. I am ashamed of the people we wantonly attack in the “name of democracy”. I cringe when I see police officers kill citizens with impunity and beat people as if they the police were nothing but state sponsored gangs. I am disgusted with this so-called Presidential race where you can’t tell one candidate but for their gender or race and the citizens of this country fall for the same old tired rhetoric that there will be “change”.

There will be no change, no matter who is elected. We can’t even count on the election process, Votes are not counted and voting machines are rigged. It’s laughable that any of these candidates will bring this nation back to where it once was a pillar of light in a dark world. We have become what we hate. We have seen the enemy and the enemy is us. We are not even contemplating stopping a war that we started, killing hundreds of thousands if not millions of Iraqis and Afghanistan’s while the American voter does and says nothing to stop it.

In the wake of the North Carolina and Indiana Democratic primaries, it becomes quite apparent that barring any totally unforeseen circumstances, Barack Obama is going to be the Democratic presidential nominee. I see no way Hillary Clinton can get the nomination unless the super delegates decide to totally ignore the will of the people in the primary states, which is quite unlikely.

Finally the time rapidly approaches to address the real question, namely, is America ready, willing, and able to vote for a Black male as President of the United States? An election process beginning as the search to pick the most qualified candidate for president must inevitably end by testing the climate of racism in America. Ironically, the Democratic theme during the primaries as well as the upcoming national elections will be the necessity of change, an obvious approach after seven long and seriously flawed years of the Bush Administration and an enabling Congress. Any Democratic candidate would be running on a platform of change. Ironically, Barack Obama represents a whole lot more than mere political change. He is a Black man in a nation that historically and presently continues to be a hot bed of racism and discrimination. America, ready or not, has reached a critical nexus point in its history, and racism can no longer remain on the back burner.

A senior Democratic Party official outlined a new proposal that would allow only white voters to participate in the remaining primaries. Under this proposal the Party would only count the votes of Caucasians whose income level is considered to be "working class," and whose political orientation is considered conservative - or, as the official put it, "culturally non-elite."

"The other people can vote," he said on conditions of anonymity. "We're just not going to count their votes."

"We don't want those latte-sipping liberals choosing our nominee," he added. "You know who I mean: They're the ones who knew the war in Iraq was wrong and who don't like it when our presidential candidates - or their husbands - triangulate on torture."

I spent a career in the United States Army. I’m not bragging or trying to influence anyone by bringing this fact up, I simply want to make a point, and this it seems, is an easy way to do it. In the Army, especially in field I was in, we formed very tight bonds with each other. We ate together, slept together and played together. I was in Air Defense, which meant that our jobs were actually “real time, all the time”, as one of our commanders was fond of saying. We could, at a moments notice, go from an exercise drill status, to the real time tracking of a target that violated American or Allied airspace. We worked twenty four hours on and twenty four hours off, 365 days a year.

Obama has 1,491 pledged delegates. Clinton has 1,332 pledged delegates. There remain 408 delegates to be pledged, plus 19 that have been pledged to Edwards. Clinton would need to win by a gap of 39 percent to catch up to Obama - not the "huge win" of 9 percent that she had in Pennsylvania.

These numbers are based on leaving out Florida and Michigan, which are being left out.

These numbers do not include Super Delegates.

But these are the indisputable numbers of delegates assigned to candidates by actual voters and caucus-goers.

Clinton cannot win. Period. She can only hope for an anti-democratic coup by Super Delegates that would destroy the Democratic Party.

I take Obama to task on a lot of issues, but it wouldn't be fair if I didn't acknowledge that he does take some good positions in this campaign. An example is illustrated in yesterday's column by the New York Times' Paul Krugman, which states:

The impression that Mr. McCain’s tax talk is all about pandering is reinforced by his proposal for a summer gas tax holiday — a measure that would, in fact, do little to help consumers, although it would boost oil industry profits.

"In a campaign of surprises," writes Daniel Henninger in a recent Wall Street Journal column, "none has been more breathtaking than the falling away of Clinton supporters, loyalists [and] friends. Why?"

The answer, of course -- after all, this is the WSJ -- is "Money."

Henninger explains. "Once Barack proved conclusively that he could raise big-time cash, the Clintons' strongest tie to their machine began to unravel."

We all owe a debt of gratitude to Jimmy Carter. This is a man that has consistently tried to do what others in the political arena seem unable to do, and that is to live up to their own expectations, regardless of the political costs. His recent trip to the Middle-East was Carter at his finest. While he understood all to well that the compromised, immoral regimes of both Israel and Washington did not support his mission and were unlikely to approve anything that came out of his meetings with Hamas, he chose to go in order to illustrate to the world what these two governments are really about. I believe Carter was successful in illustrating that neither America nor Israel want to pursue a realistic solution for peace. If anything, his visit proved once again, that Israel seeks not peace, but capitulation.

Last night MSNBC (including Keith Olbermann) was all over Jeremiah Wright for going on a book tour and — gasp! — daring to criticize Barack Obama. Reading today's hate-fueled rant on the web site, you'd think he had done something wrong. Why? Why shouldn't the man who was publicly tossed overboard by his former parishioner return the favor?

Reading Kevin Alexander Gray's assessment of the speech in which the Democratic candidate for president distanced himself from the man who presided over his marriage and baptized his children, I couldn't help but conclude that Wright had been thrown under the proverbial speeding bus by Obama — who apparently decided long ago to adopt Bill Cosby's out-of-touch, blame-the-victim rhetoric (an observation echoed by Adolph Reed, Jr., in the May issue of The Progressive).

This is what many of us have known about Hillary for years. The stats on the link below about Hillary, overall, are not new.
Were I to write excerpts here from the article on Hillary it would be unfair as both Obama and Clinton show up as being dented by the fight. The point is, Democrats will be the losers in an ongoing fight between Senators Obama and Clinton.
You know, I am a Bill Clinton supporter and if Hillary had achieved an outright win I would support her. And so would most Democrats I believe. What has happened is she has lost and she is staying the course, which is leading to the implosion, once again, for the third time in succession, of a Democratic presidential success. As these stats show the situation is worsening for the Democratic party overall. It seems incredulous that Bush won in 2000, as it is to any thinking person. This is how Gore lost. There were a series of bumblings and miscalculations. Then Kerry did it again in 2004.

Daniella Zalcman (cc)

Is that Tough Enough?

Michael Collins
"Scoop" Independent News
Washington, D.C.

Last week, Hillary Clinton proved that reason is on holiday. When asked how she would react to an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel, Clinton said that she would "obliterate" Iran. She didn't say it in a rage. She didn't say it in a state of nervous exhaustion. She appeared calm and composed. Her voice didn't waiver at all as she spoke these words on "Good Morning America:"