The New York Times has asked some of its op-ed contributors from North Carolina and Indiana to write about the race in their states.

Today's articles, one from each state, are both very good. In Songs of Eloquence and Experience, Alan Gurganus attends first a Bill Clinton and then a Hillary Clinton event, not expecting much but comes away impressed with each of them. Then it's on to an Obama event where he is expecting to be swept away in hope, optimism and youth -- politics mixed with a little religious ferver.

I’m nervous as I enter Chapel Hill’s basketball Valhalla, the Dean (Smith) Dome. Am I about to sing-speak-preach? This is the most perfectly racially integrated crowd I’ve ever been part of. Average age? Twenty-eight. I become that young myself.

He leaves extremely disappointed: [More...]

Charlotte Observer:

The choice between Sen. Obama and Hillary Clinton is not easy. She is indeed ready to be president on day one. After two terms with her husband in the White House and almost eight years in the Senate, she knows how things work. Smart and tenacious, she offers a progressive agenda. There are many reasons to think she'd be a good president.

More...

When Hillary Clinton appeared on Nightline this week, Cynthia McFadden asked her (from the transcript, ABC News, May 1, 2008, Clinton on the Rise, available on Lexis.com):

Would you be running for president if Chelsea were 10?

Hillary: No. Not a chance. I just couldn't have done it. I could never have run for office if I had young children. I just couldn't have done it.

Barack Obama brought his daughters, ages 6 and 9, along to campaign events in Indiana today. Michelle said it was an exciting time for the girls, a special treat.

Obama often mentions how he misses his children while campaigning. A few times he's flown home for a night just to be able to see them off to school in the morning. [More...]

I'm sure there's more going on in the world besides Guam. Here's an open thread -- you pick the topics. I'll be back at some point.

Bump and Update(TL): Hillary won Dededo 509 to 313, getting 61% of the vote. As Big Tent says below, that gives Obama a 7 vote win out of 4521 votes. It's Obama 50.1% to Hillary 49.9%.

There will be a recount due to about 500 ballots being "spoiled."

Update (BTD): It has been reported that unofficial initial results have Obama winning the Guam caucus by 7 votes, 2264-2257. I assume a recount may be in order though the delegate split is set. I doubt a 7 vote differential is going to sway the Guam superdelegates.

Update (TL): Still waiting on Dededo. Here's a chart with the caucus results so far. Obama's lead is down to 52.7 % . (7:06 am Guam time.)

While we're waiting, I just checked to see where Obama's Guam office is. It's in Hagåtña , "the island's second smallest village in both area and population" . It's where the government seat is. Dededo's 46,000 residents include 17,000 Chamorros and 24,000 Filipinos. Farming is making a comeback there. There is a university and it has a student group for Obama on his website but it only has 28 members. {More...]

In the face of some surprising and disappointing endorsements of divisive and false smears, it is important to remember the candidates themselves are much better than some of the activists and bloggers who seem intent on ripping the Democratic Party apart:

[Comments now closed]

HuffPo e-mailed me my friend Al Giordano's post that lauds Charles Blow's absurd piece that discusses the fact that white folks like Obama but ignores the fact that, as of now, they will not vote for him in large numbers in key swing states.

Blow's column is incomprehensible yet smear filled. Giordano enjoys the smears but ignores the problems:

Obama's favorable and negative ratings among whites have paired at five point increases. . . . [H]e's more popular today among white voters than he ever was prior to February.

Obama is more popular with whites now says Giordano. Which begs the question - then why does he get less white votes now than he did in February? Obama is poised to lose the white vote in North Carolina and Indiana by 3-2 at least. He lost the white vote by 2-1 in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida. He loses white working class voters to McCain while Clinton wins them. He now runs worse than ever in head to heads with McCain while Clinton runs better than she ever has.

I do not doubt that Obama is better liked, but I am not at all sure anymore that he is likely to get more VOTES. And votes are what count in politics.

By Big Tent Democrat

The trial of Tony Rezko is wrapping up. The Chicago Tribune reports the Government is expected to rest Monday.

The Tribune says the evidence against Rezko has been largely circumstantial and without a smoking gun to support the allegations of its cooperating star witness, the self-admitted drug-abuser and fixer Stuart Levine, who sang for his supper for weeks on the stand.

Jurors will have to pull together a variety of moving pieces if they are to agree on Rezko's guilt. There is no smoking gun evidence, no clear money trail of kickbacks into Rezko's pocket and no wiretap that indisputably captured Rezko in the act of scheming. Instead, jurors were taken on a disturbing ride through the dark underbelly of Illinois government.

To fix this, the Government this week called on Ali Ata, who had pleaded guilty days earlier and could use the sentencing break the government was offering for his Rezko testimony (8 years down to one.) The Tribune says Ata was called to support Levine's accounts rather than to provide a smoking gun against Rezko. [More...]

The New York Times reports that states are rescheduling executions now that the Supreme Court has ruled in Baze v. Rees that the three drug cocktail used by states does not violate the 8th Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

The Fourth Circuit has a new challenge on its hands.In Emmett v. Johnson, Emmett is arguing that the way in which Virginia administers the drugs is unconstitutional because unlike Kentucky and other states, it doesn't allow enough time for the first drug, which anesthetizes and renders the inmate unconscious, to take effect before administering the other two drugs which cause pain. To make it worse, when there seems to be a problem with the first drug, rather than giving more of the drug, Virginia increases the doses of the pain-causing second and third drugs, but not the first.

In its brief (available here pdf) Emmett's lawyers make the argument that there is a painless way to kill someone with just one drug: [More...]

John Zogby, after successfully jiggering his PA poll from an Obama lead to a Hillary 10 point advantage in the last three days before the Pennsylvania primary, has regained some Media cred. He is clearly a charlatan imo. But charlatans have political uses. For example, his latest polls have Obama up 9 in North Carolina (yesterday Obama was up 16 in the Zogby poll, which would NORMALLY mean Obama is cratering, but this is Zogby) and Obama up 1 in Indiana (up 1 from yesterday).

This presents an opportunity for the Clinton campaign in terms of the expectations game. Zogby tells a story of a huge Clinton rally in North Carolina from a 16 point deficit five days out. Zogby tells a story of an Indiana race as tight as a tick. I think you can mark it up now, Obama wins NC by 8-10 points. Clinton wins Indiana by 6-10 points. But in terms of expectations, Zogby gives the Clinton camp a lot to work with.

By Big Tent Democrat

Bob Herbert seems shocked to discover politics is stupid:

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright is no doubt (and regrettably) a big issue in the presidential campaign. But what we’ve seen over the past week is major media overkill — Jeremiah Wright all day and all night. It’s like watching the clips of a car wreck again and again. . . . We’ve forced Barack and Michelle Obama, two decent, hard-working, law-abiding, family-oriented Americans, to sit for humiliating television interviews, reminiscent of Bill and Hillary Clinton on “60 Minutes” at the height of the Gennifer Flowers scandal.

(Emphasis supplied.) I am not sure if Herbert is saying the Wright story is less substantial than the Gennifer Flowers story in 1992 but it is a strange juxtaposition. But I must say, when Barack Obama gave the "greatest speech ever" about race relations (and never to return to the subject afterwards), Bob Herbert did not think that was overkill. Indeed, just a few weeks ago Herbert wrote:

Barack Obama has been blasting the temporary lifting of gas taxes as political gamesmanship and bad economic sense. He didn't always. While in the Illinois Senate, he woted for it.

Available on Lexis.com: Chicago Defender July 1, 2000,

While Gov. George H. Ryan signed legislation suspending Illinois' five percent sales tax on gasoline for six months and issued an executive order creating state monitoring teams, Mayor Richard M. Daley Thursday vowed to keep an eagle eye on gas prices in Chicago.

Some people opposed it. Among their arguments:

Dr. Quentin Young, chairman of the Health and Medicine Policy Research Group, who said those funds are earmarked for health, education, and human services.

He called the passage of the state's six-month gas tax reduction nothing more than a "pre-November election states-manship" saying this will only force the legislature to compensate in other ways while "compromising the health of Illinois residents with future raids of the tobacco settlement funds and other state-funded programs."

Where was Obama on the issue?

Senators Kimberly A. Lightford (D-4th) and Barack Obama (D-13th) said the bill gives customers needed temporary relief from high gas prices. "Gas retailers must post on each pump a statement that indicates that the state tax has been suspended and that this temporary elimination of the tax should be reflected in the price per gallon of gas," said Obama.

What happened: [more...]