What we're going to find out February 5th is which candidate can win democratic voters.  Right now it appears to be Clinton, but that could certainly change.  To me, as much as I dislike Obama, the most important thing is the democratic voters and those are the people who should be deciding the nominee.  The most damaging thing to the democratic party is if the nominee loses the popular vote, but somehow wins on delegates.  I will complain equally loudly if Clinton does that to Obama as I would if Obama does that to Clinton.  I thought the focus on delegates in Iowa and New Hampshire made sense because it put those states somewhat in perspective to keep them from swamping the system and deciding the nominee.  We're beyond that now and will soon have a good number of democrats who will have voted.  It's critical that the party listen to them.  

We have all these new voters coming out to vote - young folks, hispanics, etc. - the worst thing Democrats could do is to make their votes not count.  The delegate counts in Nevada (where Clinton apparently got one fewer than Obama even though she won) and Iowa (where Clinton got one more than Edwards even though she was a bit behind him in the vote) highlight what a disgrace the delegate system is.  I'll say the same thing for Super Delegates, if they get to decide it, they should line up behind the popular vote winner.  It is bad enough when Republicans disenfranchise Democrats, the party has no business doing it to its own voters.  If it does, it shouldn't be surprised if it struggles to get those voters don't show up in November.

One of the things I think might work against him, at least out West, is that I get the sense - based on bits of anecdotal stuff, so take it for the very little that it's worth - that hispanic organizers in California are really committed to trying to put Clinton over the top here.  I think they are determined to be a factor in this election, to show both political parties that they have arrived in electoral politics.  Whether they will succeed or not is another question.  They certainly did a great job in Nevada.

First, those who don't want to nominate Hillary Clinton because they don't want to return to the nastiness of the 1990s -- a sizable group, at least in the punditocracy -- are deluding themselves. Any Democrat who makes it to the White House can expect the same treatment: an unending procession of wild charges and fake scandals, dutifully given credence by major media organizations that somehow can't bring themselves to declare the accusations unequivocally false (at least not on Page 1).

The idea that Obama will somehow get a pass from outlandish made-up scandals and innuendo if he wins the nomination; and that he can unite a large enough bloc as president that he can enact "change" (whatever that is) seems so naive I can't believe that he gets such a huge pass on it.

And then this:

Yes, Bill Clinton has been somewhat boorish (though I can't make sense of the claims that he's somehow breaking unwritten rules, which seem to have been newly created for the occasion). But many Obama supporters also seem far too ready to demonize their opponents.

I only see that happening when one pulls out of the primary.

He said MO is seen as a bellwether state on Tsuper Tsunami Tuesday, since some of the largest -- California, Illinois, etc. -- are seen as skewed by other factors, such as disproportionate Hispanic vote, home states, etc.  And, of course, MO is in the heart of the country -- although I would note that even though the census bureau puts it in the Midwest, MO is about the most atypical state there is in the Midwest, with its heritage of (legal) slavery and for other factors.

On the other hand, that does mean Missouri is close to the national norm in terms of race, with 15% AAs there, he said (vs. 12% nationally).  But it is only 5% Hispanic, below national norms.  Of course, we also saw that immigration can be a huge factor in states just beginning to see Hispanics in numbers, such as Iowa -- more significant there, per exit polls, than in states that have been heavily Hispanic for some time (since, after all, those states were part of Mexico first:-).