Stolen Nomination? You bet.

Reposted here from MakeThemAccountable.com

Stolen Nomination? You bet. (MakeThemAccountable) The 2008 Democratic Party nomination for the presidency was stolen from Hillary Clinton and given to Barack Obama by certain members of the party leadership. Click through to read the deep, dark secret that the party leaders want to keep the public from knowing.

The 2008 Democratic Party nomination for the presidency was stolen from Hillary Clinton and given to Barack Obama by certain members of the party leadership.

Five states broke the primary timing rules, but only two—big states that Hillary was sure to win, Michigan and Florida—were penalized. The holding back of those two states gave Obama the ability to claim he was ahead in the race, even when he wasn’t. Unfortunately, a lot of people fell for that nonsense and started to consider him the frontrunner. That had an impact on media coverage and likely influenced the vote in later primaries. Paul Lukasiak documented this problem on several blogs, including InsightAnalytical, and found other evidence of what he calls “‘stop Hillary’ corruption” among certain members of the party leadership.More...

There was manipulation, if not outright fraud, in the caucuses. A group is making a film about it, and Lynette Long offers a preview. Pacific John, writing at MyDD, gave us a taste of what went on in Texas, but it wasn’t the only state with serious problems reported. Lambert reports on Texas caucus fraud and the general unfairness of caucuses at Corrente. Dr. Long has started a new website, Caucus Fraud, to document as much as possible of what happened.

Peniel Cronin’s final report, “Primary versus Caucus: How millions of voters were systemically disenfranchised and election results were skewed” has just been published at TalkLeft (pdf). The most significant findings:

Though voters in all 13 caucus states cast only 2.9% of the total 35.9 million votes those caucus votes control 14.6% of the pledged delegates and 15.5% of the Super delegates sent to the DNC Convention…

39 Primaries with 34.8 million voters gave Clinton a lead in both votes and delegates. Caucuses with 1.1 million voters gave Obama 300,000 more votes and 206 more delegates.

Alegre has more on the allocation of delegates, including this gem:

Hillary won the state of Nevada 51%-45%
…but by the time the contest reached the state convention, she ended up with 3 fewer delegates.

Hillary won the popular vote, according to ABC News. The information is no longer available on the ABC News website, but both No Quarter and Taylor Marsh documented it at the time:

POPULAR VOTE (all primaries and caucuses)
Hillary Clinton: 17,785,009
Barack Obama: 17,479,990

Rather than being penalized for the tactical move of removing his name from the Michigan ballot, on May 31 Obama was rewarded instead, by the Rules & Bylaws Committee of the DNC. He was given delegates who didn’t vote for him, and was even given four of HILLARY’s delegates. There is no precedent for that kind of theft. Lambert explains at Corrente how the committee broke its own sunshine rules to decide on the delegate donation.

Had the RBC not halved the votes from Florida and Michigan and given to Obama delegates who didn’t vote for him, Hillary would also be ahead in pledged delegates. From Riverdaughter at The Confluence:

[N]ow we know why the RBC did what [they] did. She had over 100 delegates from Florida and 73 from Michigan. If he got zero from Michigan and both states had been able to seat with full strength, she could have added over 86 delegates and he would have lost 59. Hmm, that brings her total to 1725 and Obama’s to 1707.

If that’s not a stolen nomination, I don’t know what is.

How McCain Won Saddleback

In an unusual setting, his experience overwhelmed Obama.

By Byron York

Lake Forest, Calif. — It’s fair to say that in the hours before John McCain appeared with Barack Obama at the “Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency,” here at Pastor Rick Warren’s famed southern California mega-church, there were at least a few McCain insiders who were a bit nervous about their candidate’s prospects. Obama can be remarkably polished in this sort of situation. Unlike other Democrats, he’s not afraid to hang out with evangelicals. McCain, on the other hand, can at times be cranky and take pleasure in irritating his base. Could he come out ahead in this one?

Team McCain needn’t have worried. This was not your usual political TV show. Warren — Pastor Rick, around here — asked big questions, about big subjects; he wasn’t concerned about what appeared on the front page of that morning’s Washington Post. And his simple, direct, big questions brought out something we don’t usually see in a presidential face-off; in this forum, as opposed to a read-the-prompter speech, or even a debate focused on the issues of the moment, the candidates were forced to call on everything they had — the things they have done and learned throughout their lives. And the fact is, John McCain has lived a much bigger life than Barack Obama. That’s not a slam at Obama; McCain has lived a much bigger life than most people. But it still made Obama look small in comparison. McCain was the clear winner of the night. More...

The idea was for Warren to question Obama for an hour — they tossed a coin to see who would go first — and then ask the same questions of McCain, who was not allowed to hear what Obama had answered before him. Not a few people in the press thought it was a bad idea. Asking each man the same questions meant Warren couldn’t tailor his queries to each man; sure, he could ask Obama about Rev. Jeremiah Wright, but what sense would it make to ask McCain, too? It seemed like a recipe for nothing much at all.

But Pastor Rick hasn’t built a huge church and sold more than 25 million copies of The Purpose-Driven Life for nothing. By the time Warren finished questioning Obama, people were eager to hear how McCain would handle the same subjects. In a debate, candidates are often asked the same question, but the second guy has always heard what the first guy said and tailors his answer accordingly. At Saddleback, there was something much different — and more revealing — going on.

The contrast was striking throughout each man’s one-hour time on stage. When Warren asked Obama, “What’s the most gut-wrenching decision you’ve ever had to make?” Obama answered that opposing the war in Iraq was “as tough a decision that I’ve had to make, not only because there were political consequences but also because Saddam Hussein was a bad person and there was no doubt he meant America ill.” But Obama was a state senator in Illinois when Congress authorized the president to use force in Iraq. He didn’t have to make a decision on the war. That fact was a recurring issue in the Democratic primaries, when candidates Hillary Clinton, Joseph Biden, Christopher Dodd, and John Edwards argued that they, as senators, had to make a choice Obama didn’t have to make. And now he says it’s his toughest call.

When McCain got the question, he was able to tell an old story with a sense of gravity and poignancy that he seldom shows in public. He described his time as a prisoner of war, when he was offered a chance for early release because his father was a top naval officer. “I was in rather bad physical shape,” McCain told Warren, but “we had a code of conduct that said you only leave by order of capture.” So McCain refused to go. He made the telling even more forceful when he added that, “in the spirit of full disclosure, I’m very happy I didn’t know the war was going to last for another three years or so.” In one moment, he showed a sense of pride and a hint of regret, too; he came across as a man who did the right thing but not without the temptation to take an easy out. In any event, the message was very clear: John McCain has had to make bigger, more momentous decisions in his life than has Barack Obama.

McCain bested Obama again when Warren asked for an example of a time in which he “went against party loyalty and maybe even against your own best interest for the good of America.”

“Well, I’ll give you an example that in fact I worked with John McCain on,” Obama said, “and that was the issue of campaign ethics reform and finance reform.” But it turned out that was an issue on which Obama had briefly allied with McCain and then jumped back to the Democratic mother ship, causing McCain to write Obama an angry note about the abandonment of what had been a principled position. As far as bucking your party goes, it wasn’t very big stuff.



When McCain got the question, everyone in the room thought he would bring up campaign-finance reform, the issue on which he has alienated the Republican base for years. But he didn’t. “Climate change, out-of-control spending, torture,” he said. “The list goes on.” McCain’s prime example, though, was his story of opposing Ronald Reagan’s decision to send a contingent of Marines to Lebanon as a peacekeeping force. “My knowledge and my background told me that a few hundred Marines in a situation like that could not successfully carry out any kind of peacekeeping mission, and I thought they were going into harm’s way,” McCain said. But he deeply admired Reagan, and wanted to be loyal to the party; it was a difficult decision.

McCain answered the whole question without touching on campaign finance; he had so much more life experience to draw on that he could swamp Obama without using everything he had.

And on it went. On questions like the nature of evil and causes worth dying for, McCain’s depth stood out. And that was true even when he admitted wrongdoing. Early on in the questioning, Warren asked each man, “What…would be the greatest moral failure in your life, and what would be the greatest moral failure of America?” Obama answered that he drank and “experimented” with drugs as a teenager, which he attributed to his own selfishness. McCain, on the other hand, said, “The failure of my first marriage. It’s my greatest moral failure.”

McCain’s actions in that matter are nothing to brag about, but what came from it onstage at Saddleback was the sense that he was willing to dig deeper and take a greater risk in his answer than had Obama. McCain knew that critics on the left, looking for a way to change the subject from the John Edwards affair, had been pointing to the end of McCain’s first marriage. But McCain took the subject straight on. “He could have avoided that altogether or come up with some other answer,” Chip Pickering, the Mississippi Republican representative, told me later in the “Messaging Room.” (There’s no “Spin Room” at Saddleback; just a “Messaging Room.”) “But he very quickly, cleanly, and clearly confessed his failure.” Still, I said to Pickering, adultery doesn’t sit well with evangelicals, and that’s what McCain was talking about, wasn’t it? “The clarity of confessing his failure — there will be respect in the evangelical community for doing so,” Pickering answered.

Finally, there was the question of abortion. In the days leading up to the forum, pro-lifers had been worried that Warren was not going to include a question on the issue, focusing instead on things like poverty, AIDS, and the “new” evangelical agenda. But Warren brought it up, simple and straight. “At what point does a baby get human rights, in your view?” he asked Obama.

“Well, I think that whether you are looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade,” Obama answered. “But let me just speak more generally about the issue of abortion because this is something obviously the country wrestles with. One thing that I’m absolutely convinced of is there is a moral and ethical content to this issue. So I think that anybody who tries to deny the moral difficulties and gravity of the abortion issue, I think, is not paying attention. So that would be point number one.” Obama went on to say that he is pro-choice. Even for people who agreed with him, it wasn’t a terribly impressive answer.

An hour later, when Warren asked McCain the same thing, he got this: “At the moment of conception. I have a 25-year pro-life record in the Congress, in the Senate, and as president of the United States, I will be a pro-life president and this presidency will have pro-life policies.”

“Okay — we don’t have to go longer on that one,” Warren said, quickly moving on.

Obama had nothing to win on the question; if anything, he seemed wary of saying something that might anger his pro-choice base. But McCain had a lot at stake with this group, and his answer seemed to settle the concerns of social conservatives who have been rattled by reports that he might be considering a pro-choice running mate. While many evangelicals have softened on the issue of gay marriage, they wanted to hear a solid, clear statement from McCain on abortion. “Abortion and marriage are still pivotal issues…but I think that abortion is probably more pivotal than marriage,” Marlys Popma, the Iowa social conservative who is now McCain’s national coordinator for evangelical issues, told me after the forum. “Abortion is still very, very solid with this group, even the younger ones [who are more liberal on marriage]. Life is a real delineating factor.”

To further press the case on abortion, McCain had brought along New Jersey Republican Rep. Chris Smith, one of the most forceful pro-life voices in Congress. After the forum, I asked Smith whether Obama had helped himself at all with pro-lifers. Just the opposite, Smith said. “I thought Sen. Obama’s statement in quoting Matthew 25, which is my favorite scripture since I was in high school — ‘Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do likewise to me’ — when as a matter of record he voted against [a ban on partial-birth abortion ]…well, I find it discouraging and disingenuous for him to talk about the least of our brethren.”

As far as the crowd is concerned, it was clear that McCain was the favorite. That was hardly a surprise; at a small gathering I attended a few years ago, someone asked Warren how many of his parishioners voted for John Kerry. He thought for a moment and said 15 percent. So the conservative Saddleback crowd, while happy to see Obama in their midst, was not going to be on his side. What they wanted was proof that John McCain was on theirs, and that’s what they got.

—

Byron York, NR’s White House correspondent, is the author of the book The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy: The Untold Story of How Democratic Operatives, Eccentric Billionaires, Liberal Activists, and Assorted Celebrities Tried to Bring Down a President — and Why They’ll Try Even Harder Next Time.

N.O.W. Book Signing

See corrected date for this event. Join Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney in Albany, New York for Book Signing for her new book.”Rumors of Our Progress Have Been Greatly Exaggerated”



Book Signing for "Rumors of Our Progress Have Been Greatly Exaggerated"
by Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney More...

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

7:00 pm - 8:00 pm (Book Signing and Remarks)

Location:
The Bookhouse
Styuvesant Plaza,
Albany, NY

Rumors of Our Progress Have Been Greatly Exaggerated by Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney shatters the myths about how far we’ve come, highlighting how women’s issues permeate every realm of society, and how political change has provided only a fraction of a solution.

Senator Hillary Clinton says: “My colleague and friend Carolyn Maloney has been a tireless and effective advocate for women in America and abroad. I applaud her ongoing efforts to highlight issues affecting women and to fight for solutions that improve women’s lives.”

If women have made so much “progress” why haven’t their lives gotten any easier? Why do most American women say they don’t get enough sleep and that balancing work and family is getting harder? Why do they make 77 cents to a man’s dollar? And why must Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney still fight to preserve rights-such as educational equality and even birth control-that seemed secure in the 1970s?

Mixing wit with withering criticism, Maloney exposes where progress for women is being stalled, even reversed, by “family values champions” who prefer women’s roles and rights of the 1950’s. She argues that gains for women and girls have only been a down payment on realizing their full potential, which will be indispensable to maintaining their families’ quality of life, and America’s standard of living, in the 21st century global economy.

Maloney offers actionable steps-large and small-for women to make real progress and support real family values in their homes, communities, workplaces and nation.

Gallup Poll: John McCain & Barack Obama tie if the Election were Held Today!

PRINCETON, NJ -- Gallup Poll Daily tracking for Aug. 14-16 finds John McCain and Barack Obama tied at 45% in the latest presidential election trial heat.

The race has tightened over the past several days with Obama's modest advantage over McCain disappearing. (To view the complete trend since March 7, 2008, click here.) Registered voters' preferences appear quite stable at the moment -- in the last five individual days of Gallup tracking polling, the candidates have been closely matched with neither candidate holding more than a two percentage point advantage on any day. More...


Obama has returned from his Hawaiian vacation and will have one more week of campaigning before the Democratic national convention takes place in Denver starting Aug. 25. The Republican convention will take place the following week. -- Jeff Jones

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The Obama Balloon...

Latino voting bloc rises at a bad time for black pols

The Philadelphia Enquirer

Two eye-catching things were buried in the new Census Bureau projection that, by 2042, America will no longer be a white man's country. One is that the proportion of African Americans also will fade, or at least not get much bigger. The other is that the number of Hispanics will soar, to about 30 percent of the country's population.

Not only will America not be a white-majority country; but it will almost certainly be a bilingual nation. In many cities, Spanish will as likely to be heard on the streets, in schools and workplaces as English will. This seismic demographic revolution is already happening in many urban neighborhoods. There has been huge growth in Latino-owned businesses and media ownership, and a growing employment dominance in retail and manufacturing industries. In years to come, in entire areas of the country, the economic shake-up will be colossal. More...

The biggest shake-up will be in politics. That's the area with greatest angst potential for blacks.

In 2000, the 23 million blacks eligible to vote outweighed the 13 million eligible Latino voters, even though Latinos had by then virtually reached parity with blacks in the population. More than one-third of the Latino population was younger than 18. Forty percent of Latinos of eligible voting age were noncitizens, compared with only 5 percent of blacks.

Those numbers have radically changed. Since the 2000 election, the number of citizen Latinos of voting age has jumped. Beyond just eligibility, there are now an estimated 15 million registered Latino voters. Compare that with the 15 million black voters in the 2004 election.

That's not the only shift in ethnic politics in America. In past elections, the majority of the Latino vote was concentrated in California, Texas, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado. In the 2008 national elections, helped by the sharp increase in the number of legal and illegal immigrants in the Midwest and Northeast, the Latino vote will have national impact.

In the next couple of months, presumptive presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain will dump millions into Spanish-language ads, pitches, and pleas for votes on Spanish-language stations. When, not if, Democrats and Republicans cut an immigration-reform deal, one of its features almost certainly will include some legalization plan that within a few years will turn thousands more Latino immigrants into vote-casting U.S. citizens. Democrats and Republicans will pour even more time, money and personnel into courting Latino voters. The potential political gain from a massive outreach effort to Latinos is far greater than putting the same resources into courting black voters.

It's sound political reasoning. That effort worked for Republicans in 2004, when Bush got nearly 40 percent of the Latino vote. The Democrats, meanwhile, maintain a solid lock on the black vote. In every election since 1964, blacks have given more than 80 percent to 90 percent of their votes to the Democrats. They will give even more of their vote to Obama this election.

With the tantalizing prospect of a small, nonetheless important, segment of newly enfranchised Latino voters going Republican, there's no political incentive for Republicans to do more to get the black vote. That even includes their relentless pursuit of black evangelicals. Hispanic evangelical churches have an estimated 20 million members, and those numbers are growing yearly. According to a survey by the Hispanic Churches in American Public Life project, the majority of Latino evangelicals are conservative, pro-family, antiabortion and antigay marriage. Latino evangelicals are GOP-friendly, and they have political clout. They got several mainstream evangelical groups to back the Senate compromise immigration-reform bill. And while the National Association of Evangelicals stopped short of backing the Senate bill, it still urged "humane" immigration law.

The leap in Latino voting strength comes at a bad time for black politicians. Although the number of black elected officials has held steady in state offices and in Congress, the spectacular growth of prior years has flattened out. The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies reported only a marginal increase after the 2004 elections in the number of black elected officials, mostly in a handful of Deep South states and Illinois.

Politicians already are de-emphasizing traditional black issues. Obama and McCain have been virtually mute on miserably failing inner-city schools, soaring black unemployment, prison incarceration, and the HIV/AIDS crisis that has torn black communities.

The new reality is that immigration, both legal and illegal, has drastically changed the ethnic and political landscape. As whites fade into a minority, the great fear is that blacks could fade just as fast in numbers and political power.

Myths of the Obamacans

By Christopher Caldwell

Published: August 15 2008 18:50 | Last updated: August 15 2008 18:50

One of the winning passages in Barack Obama’s speeches is his description of the Republicans flocking to his campaign rallies. “They whisper to me. They say: ‘Barack, I’m a Republican, but I support you.’ And I say ... ” – here Mr Obama usually lowers his voice to a stage whisper – “‘Thank you.’” The founding of Republicans for Obama this week by former congressman Jim Leach of Iowa, former senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Rita Hauser, a former fundraiser for George W. Bush, seems merely to make official a phenomenon that is already widespread. “There is going to be a split in the Republican base on foreign policy,” Mr Chafee told reporters, “because the Bush-Cheney approach has been such a failure all over the world.”

Is this true? Mr Obama is making a big pitch to Republicans. He has spoken glowingly of Ronald Reagan, is friendly to religious voters and has invested heavily in advertising and staffing not just in the swing states of the Midwest but also in such Republican strongholds as Texas. Yet there are a number of myths about “Obamacans” (as Mr Obama calls them) or “Obamacons” (as pundits do). Their numbers are overestimated and their import is misunderstood. More...

If there is a recent Republican flight to Mr Obama, foreign policy is not at the core of it. While the Iraq war has been unpopular, Republicans paid the price in defections – a steep one – well before Mr Obama’s rise. The founders of Republicans for Obama all had grave misgivings about the Iraq war. Ms Hauser endorsed John Kerry in 2004. Mr Chafee was the only Republican in the Senate to vote against the resolution permitting the use of force in Iraq. He was constantly rumoured to be on the verge of leaving the party. After his defeat in the Democratic landslide of 2006, he did.

Of the trio, it is Mr Leach who is the key defector. Although he called this week for a “new approach to our interaction with the world”, he was best known, until his own defeat in 2006, as chairman of the House banking committee and a financial watchdog of high integrity. Among today’s Republicans are many who still profess Mr Leach’s budget-balancing kind of conservatism. Mr Obama’s fiscal policy is more compatible with such a conservatism than the deficit-widening tax-cuts John McCain proposes. In fact, Mr McCain’s career of eloquent opposition to George W. Bush’s tax slashing is more compatible with Mr Obama’s platform than his own. According to a new poll from the Pew Research Centre, McCain supporters, asked to say what they admire about Mr Obama, most often name his economic positions.

It is neither on foreign policy nor on economics but on religious values that Mr Obama has made his big pitch to party-switchers. In July, he shocked some Democrats by defending Mr Bush’s use of faith-based programmes as government service providers. He did so in Zanesville, Ohio, one of the most heavily evangelical towns in the country. A study released last week by the Barna Group, a Christian consulting firm, found Mr Obama reaping the rewards of his outreach. He leads among non-evangelical born-again Christians, by 43 per cent to 31, although Mr McCain continues to dominate among the highly politicised evangelicals, 61-17.

Mr Obama’s attempt to synthesise new policies is more sincere and thoroughgoing than that of any candidate since Reagan. You would think Republicans would like Mr Obama a lot more than Democrats like Mr McCain, who not only has been on the political scene for a quarter-century but has also signed on to many of the less popular fiscal dogmas of the Bush-era Republican party. But this advantage for Mr Obama in theory has not materialised in practice. Mr McCain has always had a stronger cross-party appeal than any Republican of his generation. As long ago as 2000, the high points of his presidential campaign were those states – Michigan in particular – that had open primaries, permitting Democrats to cross over and vote for him.

Perhaps due to the bitterness of this year’s Democratic primaries, Mr McCain’s advantage in crossover voting persists, according to that Pew poll. Among Democrats who supported Hillary Clinton in the primaries, only 72 per cent say they will vote for Mr Obama. Fully 18 per cent will back Mr McCain, and another 10 per cent are up for grabs. This is a sharp contrast to Republican supporters of Mr McCain’s primary opponents, 88 per cent of whom will back Mr McCain versus just 6 per cent who will go over to Mr Obama.

The US could benefit from the party shake-up that Mr Obama is trying to effect. That does not mean such a shake-up is happening. Most Obamacans are intellectuals, including a few who are actually conservative, such as the writers Francis Fukuyama and Andrew Bacevich. But the Republican party is no more a natural home for intellectuals than it is for feminists or trades unionists. Much has been made, stupidly, of the support of family members of prominent conservatives, from the daughter of former president Richard Nixon to the son of economist Milton Friedman – as if families never contain political disagreements.

There has been a former assistant secretary here and a former deputy secretary there. But not a single prominent conservative with either an ongoing political career or a continuing affection for the Republican party has yet chosen to back Mr Obama. The endorsement of General Colin Powell, for instance, or Chuck Hagel, the Nebraska senator, would be an election-shifting coup. Unless and until that happens, Obamacans will be a media phenomenon, not a political one.

The writer is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard

More columns at www.ft.com/caldwell

Rep.: Half of House Dems may vote Hillary at DNC

On Friday, the Obama campaign confirmed that the floor vote in Denver, intended to assuage Clinton supporters still stewing over her narrow loss, will be conducted as a state-by-state roll call."

Photo: AP

By AMIE PARNES & BEN SMITH | 8/15/08 5:58 PM EST

Rep. Loretta Sanchez says she’s happy for the chance to vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton at the Democratic National Convention — and she predicts that as many as half of the Democrats in the House could join her.

Just how many former Clinton supporters will vote for the former first lady during the symbolic first ballot is anybody’s guess, but each of them will be called upon to do so — whether they want to or not.  More...

On Friday, the Obama campaign confirmed that the floor vote in Denver, intended to assuage Clinton supporters still stewing over her narrow loss, will be conducted as a state-by-state roll call. Under proposed convention bylaws, delegates would be forced to register their votes on a tally sheet with the convention secretary — the rules could be altered or suspended before the start of the convention.

“By putting her name in nomination, you're putting people on the spot,” said former delegate counter Matt Seyfang, adding a second potential drawback: “Having a roll call ... just chews into your broadcast time.”

Lower-key options were available. For example, Clinton’s name could have been entered into nomination, followed by laudatory speeches, ending with her release of delegates to Obama and proposal that he be nomination by acclamation, Seyfang said.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton said the “mechanics” of the roll call vote are still being worked out, but he conceded that Clinton probably will garner many votes on the first ballot.

For Obama’s camp, the roll call is a ritual that will defuse any potential tension with Clinton or her supporters without affecting the outcome or the theater of Obama’s dramatic nomination.

Said Sanchez: “I believe there are a lot of supporters for Hillary among the superdelegates, especially now that they’ve agreed to place her name in nomination. I think half the House Democrats would probably be Hillary supporters, especially women. ... I felt she was the most experienced and the best candidate and I still feel that way.”

Clinton herself has said she plans to vote for Obama.

A longtime Clinton adviser said it was “crazy” to guess at numbers but estimated that the former first lady would garner between 600 and 1,200 delegates — considerably short of the approximately 1,800 she had collected at the time of her departure from the race in early June.

“It’s a bizarre strategy,” said one Democratic strategist of the roll call. “It could backfire and show that her influence is waning. Chances are, she’s not going to have as many delegates vote for her on the floor as she had in the primary.”

Indeed, many Hillary diehards, including at least one member of the New York delegation, are reluctant to vote for Clinton after switching over to Obama.

“I think that most superdelegates, including myself, are going for Obama,” said New York Rep. Anthony Weiner, who campaigned with Clinton around the country. “I made my decision for Obama, and I’m not switching again.”

Other onetime Clinton backers are reluctant to reverse course for fear of angering their black constituents.

“My boss is totally conflicted about it — and pissed Hillary is putting us in this position,” said a congressional staffer for another New York House member. “We still haven’t made up our mind and I don’t know when we are going to.”

Another New York delegate, speaking on condition of anonymity, predicted that as much as 30 percent to 40 percent of the New York delegation would pick Clinton over Obama during the symbolic vote.

Obama’s decision to accept a roll call vote, which came after weeks of talks with the Clinton camp, doesn’t mean he’ll let the process get out of hand, observers say.

“The convention is about nominating Barack, so his people want to speed through the vote as fast as possible so it won’t take too much TV time,” said a Democratic delegate who plans to vote for Clinton. “They also want to avoid a scenario where she’s leading at any point.”

Additional reporting by Glenn Thrush.

McCain Makes Gains in Washington State

Twelve Weeks Out, McCain Makes Gains in Washington State: Democrat Barack Obama defeats Republican John McCain 51% to 44% in an election for President of the United States in Washington State today, 08/13/08, 83 days until the election, according to this latest SurveyUSA pre-election tracking poll conducted exclusively for KING-TV in Seattle and KATU-TV in Portland Oregon. Compared to an identical SurveyUSA poll released one month ago, when Obama led by 16 points, Obama is down by 4 points; McCain is up 5. Among women, Obama had led by 22, now leads by 15. Among men, Obama had lead by 10, now trails by 1. Among voters younger than Obama, Obama's lead has fallen from 19 points to 10 points. Among voters older than John McCain, Obama's lead has fallen from 24 points to 8 points. Among those voters in between the two candidates' ages, Obama had led by 10, now leads by 4. Obama has lost ground and McCain has gained ground among every demographic group. One month ago, 14% of Republicans crossed over to vote for Democrat Obama; today, 6% do so. McCain now gets 90% of Republican votes. Obama is up slightly among Democrats; one month ago, he took 87% of Democratic votes; today, he takes 91%. One month ago, Obama led by 7 among independents; today, he trails by 2. In Metro Seattle, Obama led by 29, now leads by 15. In the remainder of Western Washington, Obama had led by 11, now leads by 8. In Eastern Washington, McCain had led by 11, now leads by 13. More...

Filtering: SurveyUSA interviewed 1,000 Washington adults 08/11/08 through 08/12/08; of the adults, 875 identified themselves as being registered to vote in Washington state. Of the registered voters, 718 were determined by SurveyUSA to be likely to vote in the November general election. 37 of Washington's 39 counties vote exclusively by mail; ballots must be postmarked no later than Election Day, 11/04/08. Washington has 11 Electoral College votes. John Kerry carried Washington by 7 points in 2004; Al Gore carried Washington by 6 points in 2000.


If you were filling out your ballot for President right now, would you vote for ... (choices rotated) Republican John McCain? Or, Democrat Barack Obama?

718 Likely Voters	All	Gender		Age				<50 / 50+		Age			Race				Party Affiliation			Ideology			College Grad		Attend Religious Service			Abortion		Change Your Mind		Top Issue For Next President								Income		Region
Margin of Sampling Error: ± 3.7%		Male	Female	18-34	35-49	50-64	65+	18-49	50+	< Obama	> McCain	> In Bet	White	Black	Hispanic	Asian/Ot	Republic	Democrat	Independ	Conserva	Moderate	Liberal	Yes	No	Regularl	Occasion	Almost N	Pro-life	Pro-choi	Could Ch	Mind Mad	Economy	Environm	Health C	Iraq	Terroris	Social S	Educatio	Immigrat	< $50K	> $50K	Western	Eastern	Metro Se
McCain (R)	44%	48%	40%	38%	47%	43%	46%	43%	44%	43%	43%	45%	45%	**	**	22%	90%	8%	45%	83%	37%	8%	42%	45%	59%	39%	32%	70%	29%	39%	46%	45%	10%	21%	15%	93%	**	**	91%	37%	46%	44%	53%	40%
Obama (D)	51%	47%	55%	59%	49%	50%	49%	53%	50%	53%	51%	49%	50%	**	**	72%	6%	91%	43%	14%	57%	89%	52%	51%	36%	57%	62%	25%	66%	52%	52%	49%	87%	74%	80%	5%	**	**	5%	57%	50%	52%	40%	55%
Other	3%	2%	3%	2%	2%	3%	4%	2%	3%	2%	5%	3%	3%	**	**	2%	1%	1%	6%	2%	2%	2%	2%	3%	1%	3%	4%	3%	2%	6%	1%	4%	0%	2%	4%	0%	**	**	2%	4%	2%	2%	4%	2%
Undecided	2%	2%	3%	1%	3%	4%	2%	2%	3%	2%	2%	3%	3%	**	**	4%	3%	0%	6%	1%	3%	1%	4%	1%	4%	2%	2%	3%	2%	3%	1%	2%	2%	3%	1%	2%	**	**	1%	2%	3%	2%	4%	2%
Total	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%
Composition of Likely Voters	100%	49%	51%	20%	31%	28%	20%	52%	48%	45%	11%	44%	86%	3%	3%	8%	28%	40%	23%	27%	39%	21%	48%	52%	35%	27%	39%	34%	63%	30%	66%	42%	7%	13%	10%	7%	5%	4%	6%	32%	68%	26%	19%	55%

The Obama Overreach: Refuting A Few of Corsi’s Smears By Re-Writing History

August 15, 2008 5:42 PM

Don’t get me wrong – I half expected to see anti-Obama author Jerome Corsi at today’s Bigfoot press conference.

But not everything in the Obama campaign’s 40-page refutation of Corsi’s shoddy and dishonest book “Obama Nation” is fair.

Much of what Corsi writes in his book is demonstrably false, irresponsible, and feverishly conjured. The book is indefensible, as are Corsi’s many bigoted remarks about Arabs, the Pope and others.

But the Obama campaign got a little greedy in their refutations.More...

First of all, on the front of the response, is a labeled stamped “Brought to you by Bush/Cheney Attack Machine.”

Corsi has actually called for the impeachment of President Bush. Corsi’s a 9/11 Truther who thinks the Bush administration is covering up what “really” happened at the World Trade Center.

That said, the Simon & Schuster imprint that published this book is run by former Cheney aide Mary Matalin. So those looking for evidence this is part of a larger "Bush/Cheney Attack Machine" hit can point to her presence in this literary atrocity. But I don't think it's fair to blame this nasty screed on the President, considering the anti-Bush venom from Corsi.*

One item the Obama campaign labels a “LIE” is the claim that when Obama ran for state senator, “(i)nstead of stepping aside in deference to (then-state senator Alice) Palmer, Obama decided to fight her for the nomination.”

This is not a lie, this is true. Palmer had decided to run for Congress, and Obama was tapped to run to replace her. When Palmer lost in the primary, she wanted to stay as a state senator. Obama said no. He had every right to do so, but he decided to fight her for the nomination instead of stepping aside in deference to her.

Nonetheless, the Obama campaign calls it a lie and quotes a state representative who said Palmer “pulled her own plug”

Read more about what really happened HERE in the Chicago Tribune.

Speculating about how Obama ended up using the words of Gov. Deval Patrick in some of his speeches, Corsi speculates that Obama strategist David “Axelrod most likely liked how the speech worked with his client in Massachusetts and so decided to try it once again with Obama, perhaps thinking no one would notice.”

Corsi has no way of knowing that, but the Obama campaign’s response -- “REALITY: PLAGIARISM ATTACK WAS A “BASELESS AND DESPERATE PLOY” – is over the top.

As backup, the Obama campaign points out that writing in The Nation, Ari Melber wrote that “The Clinton Campaign’s attack on Obama’s use of the line ‘just words’ was widely panned as a baseless and desperate ploy. Her coverup might go over even worse.”

But that’s one man’s opinion.

Certainly it’s not “baseless” to question why Obama was using Patrick’s words as his own without crediting him, as we wondered about HERE.

Whatever you think of the incident, it doesn’t belong alongside the more unhinged Corsi smears, however much the Obama campaign would like it to be considered a non-event.

In another refutation, Corsi’s assertion that Obama adviser Air Force General Merrill ‘Tony’ McPeak (Ret.) has “anti-Israel views” is characterized by the Obama campaign as “SMEARING MCPEAK AS AN ANTI-SEMITE.”

Obviously holding anti-Israel views and being an anti-Semite are not the same thing (though they often go hand in hand.) But more to the point, plenty of Israel supporters have thought McPeak’s views on Israel -- in which he seemed to blame the stalled Mideast peace process on “pro-Israel” voters in New York and Miami – as highly inflammatory.

Again, I’m not defending Corsi. Much of what he writes is troubling and fictional. But that doesn’t mean that the Obama campaign shouldn’t hew closer to the truth.

And yes, I do have higher expectations of them.

- jpt

* This part was added on Saturday.