By Big Tent Democrat

While some worry about the DLC jumping on the Obama bandwagon, I find the old Deaniacs now jumping on the bandwagon as the much more hilarious phenomenon. This Ari Berman article is a hoot. Look at supposed Edwards operative Joe Trippi do the Obama two step:

[A] number of his top supporters believe the Clinton-Obama contest has become a referendum on the kind of grassroots party building and citizen empowerment Dean pioneered as a presidential candidate and continued as DNC chair. On that issue most Deaniacs, not surprisingly, side with Obama. "Ever since the TV era began in 1960, every single presidential campaign in America has been top-down," says Joe Trippi, Dean's '04 campaign guru and an adviser to John Edwards before he dropped out of the race. "Only two have been bottom-up. One was Dean. The other is Obama."

This so trivializes what Dean REALLY did in 2003, that I am insulted on his behalf. There was SUBSTANCE to the Dean Revolution. It was about Democrats being proud to be Democrats again and standing up for Democratic values. Apparently, that had nothing to do with Joe Trippi. Does anyone remember this?

Jack Nicolson makes a video for Hillary Clinton. It's great -- as much for the Nicholson movie clips as the message.

(Via MisforMich at Daily Kos, hat tip to Magster in TL comments at the thread below .)

Update: The video was made by Nicholson and Rob Reiner, without the Clinton campaign's endorsement. "They decided to do this as something on their own to assist her campaign."

I've been learning a lot from the commenters on this site the past few weeks. Yesterday I wrote up this this New Yorker interview with Barack Obama from November, 2006, before he decided to run for President. I missed this statement by Obama, noted by Facta in Verba in the comments:

“By the way,” just as an aside. You know, I’m not a historian, so— There’s a hotel, I think it’s the Capitol Hilton, in Washington; and downstairs, where there are a lot of banquet halls, there’s a whole row of all the presidents. You walk by the forty-three that have been there and you realize there are only about ten who you have any idea what they did.

That's pretty funny. Especially coming from someone who taught Constitutional Law and is running for the Presidency. I wonder which ten Presidents they are.

After last week's debate when Barack Obama acknowledged he hadn't held a single hearing on Nato and Afghanistan during his year as chair of the European Affairs subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee because he was running for President, he's now giving lectures to Europe in his campaign speeches.

[He said] European governments had to pull their weight in Afghanistan and not rely so much on the United States to do the "dirty work" against Taliban fighters.....

He said the US needs more support from its NATO allies in Afghanistan and implied Germany should lift its ban on combat operations in the dangerous south.

More....

An ineffectual order purporting to shut down the website Wikileaks has been vacated by the judge who imposed it. The judge who entered the order apparently realized that the First Amendment prohibits a court from shutting down an entire media outlet simply because it published information that was arguably private.

On Feb. 15, the judge, Jeffrey S. White of Federal District Court in San Francisco, ordered the American address of the site, Wikileaks.org, to be disabled at the request of Bank Julius Baer & Company, a Swiss banking company, and its Cayman Islands subsidiary. They charged that Wikileaks had posted confidential, personally identifiable account information on some of the bank’s customers. ... In reversing himself at a hearing here on Friday, Judge White acknowledged that the bank’s request posed serious First Amendment questions and might constitute unjustified prior restraint.

Apart from his belated recognition of the First Amendment, Judge White expressed frustration that the site is mirrored elsewhere, effectively rendering his order a nullity. If anything, the publicity that followed the court's ruling probably sent many more readers to the site than it had before the court acted. [More...]

First Missouri and California. Now Ohio.

While some African American superdelegates have switched to Obama, others who support Hillary say they are receiving pressure they don't appreciate and are holding firm.

African-American superdelegates said Thursday that they’ll stand up against threats, intimidation and “Uncle Tom” smears rather than switch their support from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to Sen. Barack Obama.

“African-American superdelegates are being targeted, harassed and threatened,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II (D-Mo.), a superdelegate who has supported Clinton since August. Cleaver said black superdelegates are receiving “nasty letters, phone calls, threats they’ll get an opponent, being called an Uncle Tom.

In Ohio, some superdelegates are angry:[More...]

A new poll of likely Democratic voters from C-Span, Reuters and the Houston Chronicle, by Zogby shows a dead heat in Texas and Ohio with Hillary gaining and stemming Obama's recent lead there.

Democrat Hillary Clinton stemmed her losses and solidified her base in Texas, reversing a slide against rival Barack Obama in the race for their party’s presidential nomination, while Obama continued his thrust to catch her in Ohio as voters in these two big states prepare to vote on Tuesday, the latest Reuters/C-SPAN/Houston Chronicle two-day rolling telephone tracking polls show.

Hillary has closed the gap on the male vote, with Obama only leading in that category by 5%.

More good news for Hillary:

Clinton had a big day Friday in the Zogby call center, leading Obama by double-digits in the Texas survey. She retains a significant lead among Hispanic voters there, a key demographic in the Democratic primary.

In Ohio, the latest poll shows Hillary and Obama in a dead heat. [More...]

By Big Tent Democrat

I am tired of the delegate mathematicians ignoring the elephant in the room -- that the Super Delegates will decide the nominee. You see, here is the dirty little secret, neither Obama nor Clinton will be anywhere near the total necessary to put them over the top after all the contests are over.

All of the arguments are about what should guide the decision making of the Super Delegates. I have mine - the Super Delegates should vote for the popular vote and pledged delegate leader. But what if there is one popular vote leader and a different pledged delegate leader? My preference is for the popular vote leader. But what if the leads are insignificant? Well you can look at who Democrats preferred. Or you can look at who won the key states in the general election. Or you can look at who runs better in head to heads. Or you can vote for the candidate who won your state or congressional district. Or you can look at who you think would be the better President.

More . . .

By Big Tent Democrat

Your turn. Go Gators! Beat the MSU Bulldogs!

This is an Open Thread.

By Big Tent Democrat

Markos on the impending Texas caucus fiasco, from an unnamed source:

I imagine that will be the case in most of the polling places in XXXX County and probably most polling places around the state. Nobody is prepared for the turnout, and until several weeks ago there was almost certainly a majority of voters who didn't know about the caucus, and probably a lot of precinct volunteers who didn't realize there'd be caucusing. Ninety-eight percent of those showing up will be first-time caucusers.

In short, it's going to be a nightmare.

. . .

Still loving those Texas caucuses Obama supporters? More . . .

By Big Tent Democrat

File this NYTimes article under Duh. But there are two especially disturbing parts in the article. First the NYTimes publishes a falsehood:

[T]he Clinton campaign . . . only a few weeks ago released a letter signed by Mrs. Clinton calling on MSNBC to fire a reporter who had made an off-color reference to her daughter, Chelsea . . .

That is blatantly false. No such letter exists except in the mind of biased observers. And among the Media whining that they are too fair, is this statement that even if they were not, it is the Clinton campaign's fault":

“Part of it is her campaign’s fault,” Andrea Mitchell, the longtime NBC political correspondent, said backstage at the MSNBC debate in Cleveland in Tuesday. “They started with this notion of inevitability. And they were very arrogant.”

Excuse me, Mrs. Greenspan, there is NO excuse for Media bias ever. Your duty is to your readers. Not to your need to be treated with fawning love. What a reprehensible statement from Andrea Mitchell.

By Big Tent Democrat

Via Turkana, Dana Milbank reports:

Chief Justice John Roberts was pained. Exxon Mobil, the giant oil corporation appearing before the Supreme Court yesterday, had earned a profit of nearly $40 billion in 2006, the largest ever reported by a U.S. company -- but that's not what bothered Roberts. What bothered the chief justice was that Exxon was being ordered to pay $2.5 billion -- roughly three weeks' worth of profits -- for destroying a long swath of the Alaska coastline in the largest oil spill in American history.

"So what can a corporation do to protect itself against punitive-damages awards such as this?" Roberts asked in court. The lawyer arguing for the Alaska fishermen affected by the spill, Jeffrey Fisher, had an idea. "Well," he said, "it can hire fit and competent people." The rare sound of laughter rippled through the august chamber. The chief justice did not look amused.

The strange thing about this is this is precisely the rationale for punitive damages. The Chief Justice's concern is a curious one for a judicial minimalist. I'll explain why on the flip.