The Horse’s Mouth counts up the pundits on either side of the debate. In sheer numbers, the press-has-been-unfair-to-Hillary camp wins.
Progressives are finally developing an infrastructure for young activists to rival the conservative youth colossus, Michael Connery writes at TPMCafe’s Table for One.
TPM Reader JW laments the McCain, media bigs love affair.
Ya, the lobbyist story was pretty much the ballgame. Bumiller’s NYT piece yesterday was buried in the avalanche of Democratic primary coverage. If the lobbyist story, and McCain’s reaction, didn’t tarnish St. McCain then I can’t imagine a little pandering to crazy right wing religious fanatics will do the trick. The Lobbyist story undercut everything about McCain. It’s like if the press found out Obama didn’t really believe in Hope or Hillary really wasn’t a Senator from NY. It went to McCain’s fundamental argument — I’m not one of Them, not a Politician, can’t be bought by Lobbyists. In fact, he IS ALL OF THOSE THINGS. But he got away with it.
And the reason the press isn’t all over the Hagee thing (besides the normal, its okay if you are a Republican) is that they think McCain really doesn’t like Hagee, but is gritting his teeth and engaging in
smart politics by getting the religious right’s vote. Whereas, they think Obama is trying to have it both ways: get the benefits of a Farakhan endorsement (what are those?) while avoiding the bad of being
associated with him.Oh well. We’ve gone through 8 years of this, what’s 4 more?
I’m not quite so despairing.
Jon Alter runs the math for what Hillary has to do to get back take the lead among pledged delegates.
Late Update: A surprising large number of readers have written in to note that Hillary Clinton cannot “get back the lead” among pledged delegates because she has never been in the lead. To the best of my knowledge this is true. Obama has been in and maintained his lead throughout. I’m not sure this makes a great deal of difference to the larger story. But accuracy counts. So I stand corrected.
Regulars probably know to expect it by now. But we’ll be bringing you live election results right here at TPM starting at 7 PM (when Vermont closes). And we’ll stay with it until all the results are settled. Could be a long night. Join us.
I’m looking at the second wave of exit polls. They show an Obama blowout in Vermont, which was entirely expected and basically dead even in Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island, the latter two of which would be pretty substantial surprises. At this point in the cycle, though, I think we should remember that the early exit numbers have been significantly off the mark from the final results in a number of cases. So not just one grain of salt but several.
As expected, Vermont goes to Obama, according to network projections.
There had not been much polling in Vermont, but as you can see here, it wasn’t expected to be close.
Late Update: I hasten to add that John McCain also is projected to win Vermont. There is still technically a GOP nomination race.
Later Update: Speaking of the forgotten, TPM Reader PP suggests: “If either Obama or Clinton do well in tonight’s elections, maybe it’s time we ask Mike Gravel to leave the race.”
John McCain.
Ohio is too close to call on the Democratic side.
Voters pick “change” over “experience” by big margins in Ohio and Texas, according to exit polls.