The Idaho primary was last night. In the Feb. 5, caucuses, Barack Obama won 79% of the vote to Hillary's 17%. A total of 21,224 Idahoans participated.

In last night's primary, Obama won 56% to 38%, with 42,000 voting.

Twice as many people voted in the primary as the caucus and Obama got 23% fewer votes.

The same thing happened in Nebraska, Washington and Texas, the other three states that have held both primaries and caucuses.

DaveOinSF at MyDD has a new graphic up showing the trends. [More...]

For the first time SUSA included Hillary Clinton among the potential VP picks for Obama. This was in Michigan and with the exception of Edwards, every other one of the names being floated in the SUSA polling got Obama destroyed against a McCain/Romney ticket.

Michigan is actually the kind of state where you might think John Edwards might help Obama more than Clinton but it simply was not the case. More and more it becomes clear that Hillary Clinton is the must pick VP should Obama become the nominee.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

Barack Obama said today the nomination for President is effectively his to claim on Tuesday or Wednesday. I heard him say it on CNN, here is the Wall St. Journal:

Is the long Democratic primary finally over? Barack Obama says it will be on Tuesday. When asked by reporters if the general election begins on June 3, Obama gave a one-word answer: “Yes.” When asked if he will be the nominee, he said “I hope so. I believe so.”

So, to Obama, the one plus million voters in Puerto Rico, South Dakota and Montana are irrelevant to the outcome. He perpetuates the myth that the nomination is decided solely on the basis of pledged delegates when the superdelegates can consider pledged delegates merely as one factor, also considering the popular vote totals, electability and the electoral map.

There simply is no requirement that superdelegates vote by the pledged delegate total in their districts or state. Obama may not have 2035 or 2210 (or whatever number in between it turns out to be)in pledged delegates by Tuesday. [More...]

Hillary Clinton got more support in Puerto Rico today.(in Spanish, my translation skills are minimal but here is what I get):

The president of the Office of Dominican Subjects in Puerto Rico, Luis Aguasvivas, today exhorted to his compatriots in the Island to vote for Hillary Clinton.

....“The triumph in Puerto Rico of the senator Hillary Clinton will contribute to the development of social projects in favor of our community, in the fields of migratory reform… federal aid to programs of improvement of health, education, allocation of resources for the development of micro-enterprises, as well as of technical-vocational programs of education”, it maintained in an official notice.

Singer Ricky Martin issued this press release in Puerto Rico today, urging voters to mobilize and vote for Hillary. [More...]

The defense you will hear to my strict DNC rules argument is that the early states received "waivers." In fact, they did not until AFTER they had scheduled their primaries in violation of DNC Rule 11, which was never formally amended. According to the DNC Memo of today, this makes these "waivers" against the DNC Rules. But worse than that, there is nothing in the circumstances of those waivers that are in any way different from the Florida situation. In short, the rules are rules for the DNC, except when they are not. Wayne Barrett told the story well: [More...]

Bump and Update: Here is the 11 page memo (pdf)that accompanied Hillary's letter today that went out to more than 800 superdelegates and party officials. Some good points:

On February 8th, Senator Obama said that if someone had the most pledged delegates and the most votes in the country, that “it would be problematic for political insiders to overturn the judgment of the voters.” It appears that when all the votes are counted on June 3rd, Hillary Clinton will be the candidate with the most votes. The automatic delegates then face the choice between one candidate with more pledged delegates and another candidate with more popular vote

Rich Lowry:

[T]he Democrats’ attachment to the unadulterated popular will has gone the way of the hanging chad. Suddenly, Democrats are sticklers for rules. . . . A mere matter of timing has been enough to “disenfranchise” — to use the 2000 argot — 2.3 million Democratic voters.

It’s easy to imagine what Democrats circa 2000 would say about this. Denying the votes in Florida and Michigan would betray the “generation of patriots who risked and sacrificed on the battlefield” in the American Revolution, and be tantamount to “the poll taxes and literacy tests, violence and intimidation, dogs and tear gas” of the Jim Crow era. Counting the votes — ensuring “that every voice is heard and every vote is counted” — would be a cause worthy of the abolitionists and suffragists.

And if the DNC Memo (which states that any violation of DNC Rule 11 on primary timing requires at least a 50% stripping of delegates without exception) expresses the views of the Rules and Bylaws Committee then the following action should occur on May 31:

Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina must be stripped of at least 50% of their delegates. As Florida Representative Ted Deutch states:

Rule 11 clearly prohibits primaries or caucuses from being held prior to the first Tuesday in February, except in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, each of which is assigned very specific limits on when they may hold their contests. Florida Democrats were penalized for violating Rule 11 when our state moved the primary seven days too early. Michigan Democrats, whose state moved 21 days early, were penalized, too. Oddly, Democrats in three other states [the three states were Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina] that violated the rules were not.

More . . .

A new Univision/El Vocero poll of Puerto Rico has Clinton ahead by 13 over Obama, 51-38 (59-40 among LVs). However, the reporting of the results makes it somewhat difficult to interpret what it all means. For example, the poll says it found that 50% will not vote. Now, that sounds bad for Puerto Rico (where turnout is usually over 80% of the electorate), but imagine 50% turnout in the states in a primary. That is remarkable. I would add that that would project that a million voters will vote on Sunday.

If Clinton wins by 13, and a million voters come out, then Clinton would gain 130,000 in the popular vote contest. Not a bad day at all for her.

The was a Greenberg poll done in the way Puerto Rico polls generally are done - in face to face at home interviews. the likely voter numbers are actually 59-40 for Clinton. This is a meaningful poll.

By Big Tent Democrat

Bumped: Yesterday I presented a report by Peniel Cronin on the disparity between the caucuses and primaries this year. (The actual report is here, pdf.)

Today, it's time to examine pledged delegates and remind everyone that pledged delegates are only part of the equation in a superdelegate's decision who to vote for.

Superdelegates were intended to act as brakes on a system run amok. That's what we have here, and it will be further derailed if rumors about only seating half of Florida's delegates are true.

The pledged delegate total is one argument for nomination. It is not a qualifying event. By itself, a majority of pledged delegates is not enough to win the nomination. This year, in particular, the legitimacy of the pledged delegate count is uncertain.

Here is a second graphic and fact-filled, number crunching report (pdf). [More...]

Bump and Update: I just received permission to publish the materials. Here they are. By the way, TalkLeft will have a live-blogger credentialed at the meeting. S/he is BackFromOhio. So we will have two live-blogs going, BTD and I will live-blog together watching tv and BackFromOhio will live-blog from the meeting room.

******

I have just received the 38 page DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee Meeting Materials on Florida and Michigan. The DNC asks that we not publish them so I will honor their request. Here's what their e-mail says about them:

• This document contains copies of the MI and FL challenges, a staff analysis of each challenge, and the overall timeline.

• The documents are intentionally neutral. They do not make specific recommendations. The analysis seeks to provide a rules framework for each argument and the issues raised within each challenge.

• The analysis maintains that the RBC did have proper authority and jurisdiction in imposing the 100% sanction. The RBC had wide latidude in that decsion.

• According to the rules, the automatic sanctions was 50%, the RBC has within its authority to impose a sanction up to 100%.

We will go review them and update here with any observations. Here's what Big Tent Democrat wrote this morning on their conclusions. Comments are closed on his post, but you can comment here. [More...]

Gallup has a new analysis out on Hillary Clinton's swing state advantage over Barack Obama.

In the 20 states where Hillary Clinton has claimed victory in the 2008 Democratic primary and caucus elections (winning the popular vote), she has led John McCain in Gallup Poll Daily trial heats for the general election over the past two weeks of Gallup Poll Daily tracking by 50% to 43%. In those same states, Barack Obama is about tied with McCain among national registered voters, 45% to 46%.

In contrast, in the 28 states and the District of Columbia where Obama has won a higher share of the popular vote against Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primaries and caucuses, there is essentially no difference in how Obama and Clinton each fare against McCain. Both Democrats are statistically tied with him for the fall election.

....All of this speaks to Sen. Clinton's claim that her primary-state victories over Obama indicate her potential superiority in the general election.

Superdelegates, are you listening?