The Supreme Court today refused to consider the appeal of former Illinois Governor George Ryan, who is serving a 6 1/2 year sentence on corruption charges.

In other Chicago corruption trial news, the Tony Rezko jury is still deliberationg. They've been meeting part-time over the past 14 days, putting in only 6 days of deliberations. But they must know they're slacking off. Today's reason for cutting out early after four days off was that a juror had a job interview to go to. In a note, the jury wrote:

the jury told the judge in the second part of its note that it will be working until 5:50 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday. The longer hours were "to help conclude our decision," the jury note said.

Friday is a no-deliberate day as one has child care problems that day. [More...]

It is my expectation that at the end of this process, Barack Obama will have had more voters go to primaries and caucuses expressing support for him than Hillary Clinton. In short, I believe Barack Obama will win the popular vote and thus his likely nomination will reflect the will of the people.

I imagine the above paragraph will be viewed as a strange opening graf to defend Hillary Clinton's right, indeed, duty, to fight to see that all the votes are counted. But there it is. I believe the Democratic nominee should be the choice of the People (as defined by the Democratic Party, the electorate eligible to vote for our Democratic nominee in the nominating contests). As Jeralyn's post below conclusively demonstrates, there is virtually no moral imperative in terms of the Will of The People attached to the pledged delegate count. Not only is it fundamentally flawed and undemocratic, the pledged delegate count has no rules based mandate either. So when Barack Obama trumpets his so called winning of a majority of the pledged delegates (excluding Florida and Michigan), it is an entirely trumped up metric, as Jeff Toobin of CNN pointed out. As for the popular vote, even opponents of Hillary Clinton, as Greg Sargent points out, like Hendrik Hertzberg are forced to concede the moral weight of the popular vote:

This just in from the DNCC for media and bloggers planning to attend the Denver Convention in August: The final media walk-through is June 19. Details below:

DENVER - The Democratic National Convention Committee (DNCC) will host a media walk-through for national, local and online media outlets, including bloggers, interested in covering the 2008 Democratic National Convention on Thursday, June 19, 2008 at the Pepsi Center in Denver. Registration and a continental breakfast will be available beginning at 8:00 AM MST, and the program will begin at 9:00 AM with remarks from Colorado Governor Bill Ritter. A more detailed itinerary will be distributed to registered outlets closer to the event.

Working members of the news media interested in attending should register via email at MediaRSVP@demconvention.com and provide attendee name(s), name of news organization and complete contact information. The deadline to register for the walk-through is June 5, 2008. Registration is required to attend.

More...

What has 2008 shown us in terms of the fairness of the Democratic nomination process? That the caucus system is neither fair nor representative.

Here's an interesting report on the differences between primaries and caucuses and the impact in the 2008 Presidential nomination. I am reprinting it with the permission of its author, P. Cronin. It addresses:

• Voter Suppression in Caucuses
• Disenfranchised Voter Groups & Statistics
• Differential in Voter Turnout Rates
• Popular Vote Disparity
• Estimated Voter Suppression in 2008 Caucuses
• Caucus Systems Distort Election Results
• Vote-spread Differences
• Disproportionate Votes-to-Delegates Ratio
• More Math of Electability
• Other Primary versus Caucus Considerations
• 2008 Democratic Election Snapshot
• What IF: Florida & Michigan

Some highlights are below, but I recommend reading the entire report. [More....]

The San Francisco Chronicle reports on the electoral map challenges for Obama in November:

The same day that Obama enthralled the young, educated voters of Oregon, he was thrashed in Kentucky, losing many counties by 85 and 90 percent margins.

"I was shaking my head when I looked at the Kentucky results," said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center. "Single-digit numbers are something a fringe candidate gets. You put a Joe Smith, a placebo, on the ballot and they get 7 percent. ... The voters in Kentucky in our poll said they thought Barack Obama would be the next president, yet only 7 percent in some of these counties were voting for him."

And these were Democrats. Parts of pivotal Ohio and Pennsylvania mirror or include Appalachia.

Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico don't make up the difference:

Obama then would have to recoup those 41 electoral votes someplace else. Taking Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado would yield just 19, leaving him short even of Kerry's losing total.

Add Ohio and PA to Florida and one has to wonder what the superdelegates are thinking.

Comments now closed.

John McCain shows that he can twist the facts with the best of them:

"[Obama] really has no experience or knowledge or judgment about the issue of Iraq and he has wanted to surrender for a long time."

Granted, Obama hasn't done anything to distinguish himself on getting us out of Iraq (aside from his speech in 2002 before we went in) and his experience and knowledge are fair game, but to say he advocated surrender? That's just false.

I might add, of the three remaining candidates, McCain is by far the worst on Iraq.

The candidates are definitely tired. Here's Barack Obama in New Mexico on Memorial Day, opening his speech with:

On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes -- and I see many of them in the audience here today -- our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.

Via Instapundit. On Obama's website, the line is missing from the text of his speech.

Was it video-shopped or did he say it? [Added: The video on his website includes the line, so it's real. Must have been an ad-lib]

Obama also played for the women vote in New Mexico today, singling out women veterans as particularly susceptible to post-tramautic stress disorder: [More...]

Via Glenn Reynolds, I found this TalkLeft mention by an old blog friend of ours, Bill Beutler, ironic:

No matter, the Isikoff story [on David Axelrod's lobbyist connections] still made it into the blogosphere. But as far as I can tell, only conservative blogs mentioned it. Even TalkLeft, which remains Clinton supporter central, hasn’t picked it up. . . .

(Emphasis supplied.) I can not speak for Jeralyn, but I saw the story. And I did not think it worthy of attention. Just as I deemed the McCain lobbyists story absurd and not worthy of attention. Since the moment Obama and Edwards played the stupid "I won't take money from lobbyists" game, I have detested this argument. It is ridiculous. It is hypocritical. It is not even politically effective. NO ONE CARES.

So that's why I did not write about the latest iteration of the stupid lobbyist stories. Anyway, this is an Open Thread.

Update (TL): I completely agree with BTD. "No money from lobbyist" claims by candidates are a game. Lobbyists don't even make the list of issues I care about.

The film director Sydney Pollack has died:

Academy Award-winning director Sydney Pollack, who achieved commercial and critical success with the gender-bending comedy "Tootsie" and the period drama "Out of Africa, has died. He was 73. Pollack died of cancer Monday afternoon at his home in Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles, surrounded by family, said agent Leslee Dart.

Pollack, who occasionally appeared on the screen himself, worked with and gained the respect of Hollywood's best actors in a long career that reached prominence in the 1970s and 1980s.

RIP. From Tootsie:

Here is my translation of portions of this interview of Barack Obama by the Puerto Rico newspaper El Nuevo Dia:

Q: Hillary Clinton promised that she would work to provide Puerto Ricans living in Puerto Rico [those living in one of the 50 states or in DC already can vote for President since they are US citizens. If US citizens from the US moved to Puerto Rico, they would lose the right to vote for President] the right to vote for President. do you agree with this position?

OBAMA: This would need to be resolved as part of a general solution to the status problem. If we are sending Puerto Ricans to war, they need to have more representation in Washington. But of course I can not make any promises, if the status issue is not resolved. Sen. Clinton needs to explain to you how she would acquire this right for Puerto Ricans without dealing with the US Congress.

Q: Do you think Puerto Rico is a colony? . . .

Here's the gist of Lanny Davis' eminently fair proposal for seating Florida and Michigan delegates.

In Michigan, Clinton received 55 percent of the vote. According to Thegreenpapers.com, she thus should receive 73 pledged delegates based on that percentage.

What about the 50 remaining uncommitted delegates, and 7 collectively cast for Sen. Chris Dodd and Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich, who were also on the ballot? Some of those 50 delegates might have been for Clinton as a second choice to candidates other than Obama, so it would be totally unfair to award all 50 delegates to Obama....Obama was not forced by party rules to remove his name — he chose to do so.

The Rules Committee has several options. The fairest would be to allocate those 57 pledged delegates, to Clinton and Obama by the same ratio of their standing to one another in the average of the most recent Michigan statewide polls prior to the Jan. 15 primary. [More...]

Here's some more number crunching I just received from a Talkleft reader as to electability in November, based on the past five Presidential Elections...

• There are FIVE "BELLWETHER STATES". These are states who have voted for the WINNER in ALL FIVE of the most recent Presidential elections. They are: Arkansas, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, and Tennessee.

  Number of these that HRC has won? FOUR (80%)
  HRC's Average Margin? 13.2%

• There are THREE "VERY SWINGY STATES". These are states who have voted Democratic in either 2 or 3 of 5 of the most recent Presidential elections. They are: Ohio, Tennessee, and West Virginia.

  Number of these that HRC has won? THREE (100%)
  
  HRC's Average Margin? 21.3%