4:45 pm: Terry McCauliffe tells Wolf Blitzer Hillary absolutely will not drop out tonight.

He says he and Hillary are making superdelegate calls. She has more voters than any other candidate in presidential primary history. "We're still going."

Laugh of the segment: Going into a commercial break, Wolf says: "But could the superdelegates still sway her way? Come back and we'll ask our expert, Donna Brazile."

These threads are filling up fast. We need some topical music video suggestions. Ideas?

This is an open thread.

Update: Jon Ausman, whose Florida challenge to the seating of delegates was heard on Saturday, announces is 1/2 superdelegate vote will go to Hillary. Why? He wants a joint ticket and she is the key to winning Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Shorter version (mine): Obama can't win those states without her, and the Dems won't win the presidency without them.

CNN is reporting Hillary has told New York lawmakers that she is open to the VP slot.

Now here's the funny part: Suzanne Malveaux reports that the Obama campaign says she is on the "short list" but is concerned that the Clintons haven't been fully vetted.

Could the media do any more today to discourage those in SD and MT from voting? This is their third attempt to tell them their vote doesn't matter, may as well stay home.[More...]

Hillary may be running on empty, but as of now, she's still running.

I predict she will win South Dakota and come within 6 points in Montana.

This is another open thread.

Take the poll below on when the nomination will be decided:

The AP, which still has egg on its face from this morning's false report that Hillary would concede to Obama, does it again.

The AP is sending out a breaking news report, complete with post-mortem analysis, that Obama has reached the magic number and is officially the nominee.

Votes are cast at the convention in August. Superdelegates can change their mind any time before then. If this went to an open convention, even pledged delegates would be released from their pledge after the first vote.

This does not mean it's going to the convention. It means that until one candidate drops out, there can be no winner because the number of delegates that candidate has can change any time until the convention.

Until and unless Hillary Clinton publicly suspends or ends her campaign and concedes that Obama is the nominee, there is no nominee. There is only a statement that if current delegate positions at this moment were frozen in time until August he would be the nominee.

If and when Hillary makes that determination, then Obama will be the nominee. At that point TalkLeft will congratulate him and offer him our support. We're not there yet.

Comments now closed.

I have not a clue what to expect from South Dakota and Montana, and will not even venture a guess. But you can give it a shot. I will make one prediction - a lot of people are going to say a lot of nice things about Hillary Clinton tonight.

This is an Open Thread.

Our other threads are full (and I still haven't made it to the jail but I'm trying) so here's another one.

Blogcloggers don't bother, your comments will be erased when I return.

• South Dakota thread here

• Montana Thread here

Update: Statement from Clinton Campaign:

The AP story is incorrect. Senator Clinton will not concede the nomination this evening.

Update: The Clinton campaign has sent out a press release denying the AP report. She will not suspend her campaign tonight nor will she concede Obama is the defacto winner. I just got off the phone with her internet communications director who told me he just received a copy.

So now the AP is falling for a story the only effect of which would be voter suppression in two states? How do these things happen? [More...]

Suddenly the pressures fallin, fallin
Skies have all turned grey
Suddenly the storm is heading straight your way

Its like a full force gale
Atop a mountain of cold
You tell your story again and again
And it never gets old
Its like a wall of mirrors
You charge em at full speed
You cover up - you hear the shattering glass
But you never bleed

Storms pass. I'm off to the jail for several hours. This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Comments now closed.

This is disturbing news from Venezuela:

President Hugo Chávez has used his decree powers to carry out a major overhaul of this country’s intelligence agencies, provoking a fierce backlash here from human rights groups and legal scholars who say the measures will force citizens to inform on one another to avoid prison terms.

. . . The new law requires people in the country to comply with requests to assist the agencies, secret police or community activist groups loyal to Mr. Chávez. Refusal can result in prison terms of two to four years for most people and four to six years for government employees. “We are before a set of measures that are a threat to all of us,” said Blanca Rosa Mármol de León, a justice on Venezuela’s top court, in a rare public judicial dissent. “I have an obligation to say this, as a citizen and a judge. This is a step toward the creation of a society of informers.”

Bump and Update: Today should be the day for a verdict in the Tony Rezko trial. There seems to be some consensus among trial watchers that count 16, the attempted extortion count, is the one the jury did not agree on. We'll see if a good night's sleep and a dynamite charge from the judge made a difference. Or, if they decided last night and the judge just held the verdict until this morning.

Bump and Update: The jury went home without announcing a verdict and will return in the morning. It may be they reached one but due to the late hour, the judge is holding it until the morning. That's not uncommon in high profile cases.

***

The jury deliberating the fate of Tony Rezko sent the judge a note today saying it cannot agree on 1 of the 24 counts against him. I guess that means they've decided on the other 23 counts. The judge told them to keep deliberating. [More...]

There are conflicting news reports on whether Barack Obama will declare victory tonight in the presidential nomination.

This morning on Good Morning America, George Stephanapoulus said he will:

"He will declare victory tonight in a moment of history," ABC News' chief Washington correspondent George Stephanopoulous told "Good Morning America."

Obama, D-Ill., is expected to speak shortly after 10 p.m. Eastern while the votes are still being counted in the final two primary states of Montana and South Dakota....

I think Obama's response will depend on what Hillary does. She will be speaking in New York tonight. While some media reports say she will concede the race, others say she will not and will take another day to make her case to superdelegates that she is more electable in November.

So long as Hillary remains in the race, and Barack Obama does not have 2,118 pledged delegates, I think he will avoid claiming he has won the nomination, giving Hillary the time she needs to make whatever decision she is going to make.

That certainly would be his wisest course.

Unlike Jeralyn, I believe this campaign is all but over and Barack Obama will be the nominee. Believing that, most of my thoughts have been focused on how Democrats make sure they do not kick away an election they should win comfortably. What concerns me most is whether the impulse we read from many Obama supporters and in the Media to purge the Democratic Party of its Clinton Wing is the thinking of the Obama campaign. Last night, Josh Marshall provided a variation on this theme:

I think the most revealing thing . . . is that Bill refers to the youtube viral video of Rev. Pfleger as "the movie." In a sense, of course, this is just a triviality of word choice; he's a little out of touch with the lingo. But for me -- maybe just the personal prism through which I see the drama -- it communicates the larger truth: that Bill is a man out of his time, out of his element, which is something painful to watch and must be a unique agony for him to experience.

I find this a dangerous attitude for two main reasons. First, because Marshall seems prepared to toss out the Democratic strength of being able to point to the Clinton Presidency as an example of Democratic governance. Second, it seems to me to show a real contempt for older people, who, in case people have forgotten, STILL vote in higher numbers that the much vaunted youth vote. It is a dangerous game to play. More.