Prayers and thoughts.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2009/01/ kennedy-collaps.html

With yesterday's Idaho primary, won by Barack Obama, we now have four states which have conducted both a primary and a caucus in this election season - Washington, Texas, Nebraska and Idaho.  In all four cases, more people participated in the primary than in the caucus.  Also in each case, Hillary Clinton performed better and Barack Obama worse in the primary than in the caucus.  What is amazing is how regular the trend is:

The figure above plots Hillary's (blue) and Obama's (red) perfomance in the primary in each of those four states (y-axis) vs. their performance in the caucus in each of those four states (x-axis).  A linear fit for each of Hillary's and Obama's data is generated (whose equation is given), each of which have a very high R-squared value, indicating a clear correlation.

I'll be the first to admit that Barack Obama will be the Democratic presidential nominee.  The Democratic primary process is not one in which the ascertainment of the will of the voters is the desired end-product.  It is a system of rules and procedures by which a result is obtained.  Obama's campaign has worked that system well, especially caucus states, and so will receive a greater than 50% of the votes of delegates at the Denver convention.

What he will not have done is to win a plurality of votes in the Democratic primary season.  This does not matter.  As I've said before, the process was never meant to ascertain the will of teh people, and so superdelegates are under no obligation to change the media-created narrative that Obama is the winner by taking a pesky little thing like the voice of the people into account.  To do so would take courage.  Superdelegates have none.

I'm bored waiting until Tuesday.  I want to engage in some wild speculation.

Say McCain wins in November.  Who (other than Obama/Clinton) would be likely contenders in 2012?

Say the Democrat wins in November.  Who would be likely Republican contenders in 2012?

Assume, of course, that the denouement of the current primary does NOT actually result in the complete destruction of the Democratic Party as we know it.  Probably at least a 50/50 bet at this stage.

I know there's already been discussion of the latest SUSA poll of North Carolina showing Obama with 49% and Hillary with 44%.  Discussion of it was based on television reports, I believe.  Well the poll with all the crosstabs is now available at the SUSA website.

http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollRepo rt.aspx?g=d4d1bc7e-32d4-438e-8143-75c8b2 5b3435

So I've updated Survey USA's Electoral College prediction based on updated results in 14 states.  The results:

Hillary Clinton 292
John McCain 236
Tie 10

John McCain 296
Barack Obama 242

Based on "Electoral Math" by SUSA (Obama, Clinton) released March 6, 2008 and modified using updated results from 15 states released March 19 and 20 and 14 more states released April 17.

Maps below the fold

20-point lead for Hillary in the latest poll of the Keystone state.  Poll was taken April 11-13, so it does include a good chunk of time post-"Cling to guns and religion".

Hillary Clinton 57
Barack Obama 37
Undecided 4
Someone Else 2

It's ARG, so in truth it's proabably less than that.  But it is significant movement from a 45-45 tie in their previous poll.  Good news for the Democratic Party and especially Hillary Clinton.

http://americanresearchgroup.com/pres08/ padem8-705.html

..And he becomes a (capital L) Libertarian. I guess this also means he's finally officially dropping out of the Democratic primary race?

Long-shot presidential candidate Mike Gravel told supporters Wednesday he is leaving the Democratic Party to join the Libertarian Party.

Gravel, a former Democratic senator from Alaska, said in an e-mail that the Democratic Party "no longer represents my vision for our great country."

Source: Yahoo.

Looks like he's going to try to make a push for the Libertarian nomination too....  Paul/Gravel? Gravel/Paul?