By Big Tent Democrat

Watching ABC This Week, George Stepanopoulos's show, George and his panel fully understand and explain two things: one, that Hillary Clinton is ready and eager to do revotes in Florida and Michigan and Barack Obama will try and squirm his way out of them and; two, that there has to be a unity ticket, Clinton-Obama or Obama-Clinton. They also properly said that not only will there be pressure on the nominee to pick the other as the VP candidate, there will be pressure on the "not nominee" to accept the VP slot. Exactly right imo.

Face The Nation discusses Michigan and Florida at the top of its broadcast. Howard Dean on to discuss it. Dean says the "rules will be followed" but speaks encouragingly about a revote. Particularly about a mail in primary. Even says it is a "great party building exercise." Discusses raising money for funding it. Bill Nelson coming up. I'll update on the flip.

This is an Open Thread.

By Big Tent Democrat

According to the latest Rasmussen poll, Barack Obama has a 14 point lead in Mississippi, 53-39. But because of the demographic disparity, Obama leads by enormous margins among African-Americans and trails by enormous margins among white voters, Obama is likely to suffer, at best, a repeat of what happened in Alabama, a virtual tie in the delegate count.

Because Alabama voted on Super Tuesday, the strange and troubling Alabama result flew under the radar. On Tuesday, Mississippi votes alone and its results will receive full coverage. A review of the Alabama result is instructive. Obama won the state by a very comfortable 56-42 margin in the popular vote. But he barely won the delegate count, 27-25, and in fact only tied Clinton in the congressional district delegate count.

How could that happen? Well, since, like Mississippi, Alabama has a majority-minority district, most of Obama's African American support was to be found in that congressional district. He also won the AL-3 district by a thin margin, because that district included two strong counties for Obama, Macon, heavily African-American and near Montgomery, and Lee, where Auburn University is located. Obama won the delegate count in CD-7 and CD-3, 5-2 and 3-2. But he lost most other congressional districts in Alabama and won no others. I expect he will lose all but Bennie Thompson's 7 delegate congressional district in Mississippi. And that is a bad result for Obama, because the other 3 Mississippi Congressional districts are 5 delegate districts, insuring AT LEAST a 3-2 split for Clinton.

More . . .

By Big Tent Democrat

(Original Post here.)

Yesterday, Barack Obama won Wyoming by 2,000 votes of 8600 cast. He gained a 2 (and with the add on delegate to be added later likely 3) delegates to his pledged delegate lead. Last Tuesday, Hillary Clinton won Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island, while Barack Obama won Vermont. The difference in the popular vote that day was was 334,000 in favor of Hillary Clinton, as she garnered 2.84 million votes to Obama's 2.51 million. We are told that Hillary gained a net 4 delegates that night.

This is because Ohioans choose one pledged delegate for every 15,000 Ohioans voting, Texans choose one pledged delegate for every 22,373 persons voting, Rhode Islanders choose one pledged delegate for every 8800 persons voting and Vermonters choose one pledged delegate for every 10,066 persons voting. By contrast, Wyomingians choose one pledged delegate for every 725 persons voting (not counting the add on delegate.)

The Democratic nomination system is institutionalized vote dilution. It is undemocratic. It is a travesty. It is no way to pick a nominee. The will of the people is reflected in the POPULAR VOTE, not the pledged delegate count.

More . . .

Four not to miss, and I'm just getting started:

• The New York Times: Obama in Senate: Star Power, Minor Role. I've read another article like this in the past few days but didn't write about it because the person critical of Obama was a Republican. This one has some meat from Democrats on page 3.

• The Washington Post: Influential Democrats Waiting to Choose Sides. The Post does a survey of undeclared superdelegates, finding most will wait until the primaries are over. And 100 votes or so difference is no big deal. They'll exercise their independent function not just vote the way the voters do. Why have them if that's their only purpose? Some, like Sen. Salazar of Colorado, say the decision will based on which candidate can better bring it home for the Dems in their state in November.

• The Washington Post: Philadelphia Mayor's Endorsement Suddenly Matters: Philly's African American Mayor explains why he's staying with Hillary. When asked about Philly being 45% African American, after noting he won both the black and white vote, he said:

  "We feel a certain sense of freedom and progressiveness here," Nutter said of the City of Brotherly Love. "The notion that all black people vote one way has to be destroyed."

More...

The Washington Post reports on today's Wyomining caucuses:

With 100 percent of the vote in, Obama won 61 percent to 38 percent for Clinton. The victory netted Obama just two delegates (7 for Obama, 5 for Clinton).

The win was expected, as Obama has dominated most of the small-state caucuses during the nomination fight.

His 59 percent of the vote -- if it holds -- would be slightly under the sorts of vote totals Obama wracked up in caucuses in places like Alaska (74 percent), Kansas (70 percent), North Dakota (61 percent) and Idaho (79.5 percent). Of the remaining nine states left to vote, none will hold caucuses.

So, two delegates, a lesser margin than in several other of his caucus wins and there are no caucuses left. I doubt it will sway any superdelegates.

There's been a long discussion about numbers in comments to Big Tent's earlier post about the differential in voter power among states when it comes to selecting delegates.

For those of you who are number crunchers (and I'm not) here's some new stats on primary voter turnout and age differential among voters from George Mason University's U.S. Elections Project. (hat tip to Red Star Blog.)

NYPD Blue actor Esai Morales has been cleared of an allegation that he raped his ex-girlfriend, Elizabeth Mazzocchi. I'm glad. I like him.

I read about the allegations for the first time today, although his girlfriend held a news conference (transcript here)in December to accuse him publicly and she had (who else?) Gloria Allred file a civil suit against him. Allred since dropped out and Mazzocchi has new lawyers.

In the complaint filed by Allred, available here(pdf), Mazzocchi says Morales began physically abusing her in April, 2006 about a month after they moved in together. She says he raped her on May 19, 2006. She continued to live with him for months after that. She also claims he gave her a s.t. disease.

I spent several hours with Esai in New York taping a Montel Williams at the beginning of May, 2006. I wrote a long post about it at the time. At the end of the day, as we were leaving, a very pretty woman came up and he introduced her as his girlfriend. They seemed really happy. [More...]

I wrote so many posts last week like this one about Ohio and the rural vote, both from a historical perspective and for this year. I feel vindicated -- here's a new AP article today that explains how well Hillary did in the Ohio rural vote, how it was her intentional strategy, how John Kerry failed to go after it or win it, and more.

Bottom line: The Dems can take Ohio in November. But not without that rural vote, which went astonishingly for Hillary.

Decades have passed since Ohio last saw a competitive Democratic primary, and the interest showed in a record turnout of 48 percent of registered voters.

Clinton still garnered more interest than Kerry in his primary four years ago. Where she won 81 percent of the vote in Scioto County, Kerry got 55 percent in his 2004 primary. Where she got 80 percent of the vote in Jackson County, Kerry got 64 percent. Where Clinton got 78 percent of the vote in Lawrence County, Kerry got 59 percent.

This is what Hillary did in her New York Senate races. Howard Wolfson says it's been her strategy in all the primary races. [More...]

Rasmussen has updated its electoral college map of how each of the 50 states should go in November.

It moves Tennessee into the "safely Republican" category but says that has no effect on the total. Including the "leaning states,"

Democrats [are]leading in states with 284 Electoral College Votes. Republicans are favored in states with 229 Votes.

Here are the toss-up states:

Eight states with 97 Electoral Votes are either a pure Toss-Up or just slightly leaning to one party or the other. These are likely to be the early battleground states of Election 2008: Florida (27), Ohio (20), Virginia (13), Missouri (11), Colorado (9), Iowa (7), Nevada (5), and New Mexico (5).

Anyone want to weigh in on the significance or lack of significance of Rasmussen's new map?

Final Update: 100% now in, Teton went for Obama, final delegate count, Obama 187.5, Hillary 129.5, Uncommitted 2.

Update: Obama wins Sheridan, only Teton left, and that should go to Obama as well.

Update: Last five caucus results now coming in. Hillary wins Weston County. Obama won Big Horn and Johnson. Only Sheridan and Teton are left. The delegate count is now at 160 for Obama, 116 for Hillary, 2 uncommitted. Again, these are delegates to the state convention to be held in late May. CNN now projects Obama to win. Sheridan has 18 delegates and Teton has 17. The caucus ends at 6pm MT in Sheridan. (A 4 hour caucus?)

Update: I think I've found the answer as to why the race hasn't been called by CNN, thanks to McJoan and Pocket Nines at Daily Kos. Four counties start caucusing in 5 minutes at 2:00 pm MT. One starts at 3pm. That's it for me, I'm willing to call Wyoming an Obama win.

Official Wyoming caucus results will be here. They will also appear on CNN's page here. [More...]

The Chicago Tribune today reports that more states are considering lowering the drinking age to 18 or 19. Discussions have been taking place in Vermont, New Hampshire, Missouri, South Carolina and Wisconsin.

Here's a graphic of where the states stood in 1984 before the feds passed a law requiring the age to be 21.

When I turned 18 (in New York)the drinking age was 18. It seemed ridiculous to me that the states raised it. Here's more. What do you think? Take our poll below.

By Big Tent Democrat

Via Sargent, Newsweek finds Dems divided on what the Super Delegates should do:

But Ras has this:

In the craziness of the race for the Democratic Presidential Nomination, it is possible that one candidate might finish the Primary Season with the most pledged delegates while another could end up with the most popular votes. If that happens, . . . [a]mong Democratic voters, 59% believe the candidate with the most popular votes deserves the nomination.