I live in a deep blue section of Austin. Travis County has over 300 precincts, and my precinct sends the third-most delegates to the senatorial convention. I arrived about fifteen minutes early tonight, but because many people were in line to vote at 7 p.m., we didn't get started with the precinct convention until probably 8:30 p.m. After everyone had signed in and stated their presidential preference, the meeting was called to order and we went through the resolutions proposed by the Texas Democratic Party. Most of the proposals were standard Dem fare-- initiatives on health care, social security benefits, green energy, war on drugs, Iraq, etc..--and once our precinct chair had finished tallying the votes we broke up into our respective groups to select the individual delegates to go to the county convention.

I feel like tonight demonstrates significant general election weakness in Obama, but the delegate totals are going to remain the same. She can't touch his delegate numbers.

That's very problematic.

If you asked me what I wanted most in the world right this second as an Obama-supporter second and a Democrat first, then I want it to be a Hillary/Obama ticket so that my guy gets the seasoning he needs, the party is united, and we trounce the Republicans in the fall.

Though she got some traction in the last few days the way she did it was by going negative, or at least I think that's what the campaign will think worked.

Bloodying her opponent as Rush Limbaugh said.

I'm sure many SDs aren't going to sit back and let her do that for weeks. Her negatives are at 48% and have no place to go but up if she continues going negative. Sen. McCain's negatives are around 30-35%. No way to beat him  if the difference in those numbers gets worse. No way to beat Sen. Obama in a way that won't make those numbers worse.

So on the surface it looks good for Sen. Clinton but I believe that the campaign has set a trap for itself and will believe that going negative is the way to win this thing when it's not.

I think Goolsbee was actually the big problem for Obama. That Sen. Clinton was able to use that episode to her advantage, despite the appearance of Canadians meddling in our affairs, was a bonus for her campaign but I believe a short-lived one. The timing was just bad for the Obama campaign.

Now there is plenty of time to shore up support and as the polls show he can erase double digit deficits in a matter of weeks.

I doubt Sen. Obama will go very negative, it's unlikely that he'll start dishing the dirt that's out there waiting to be dished and I don't think it would help him that much if he did, so we'll see how he responds.

Unfortunately I don't think much will change and we'll have a nasty convention with the nominee so weakened that he or she will lose to an untouched McCain, the real media darling, or a bloodied Obama who will lose in the GE. If either of those things happens I don't think Sen. Clinton will be able to run in 2012 because too many bridges will have been burned.

Maybe a bad night for Obama supporters!  

And all the doom and gloom about the GE is making you all look like sore losers. He may be up in delegates, but last time I checked, he didn't have the nomination wrapped up by any stretch.  He NEEDS HRC to drop out so he can take the nom unconstested. But she won't. And this will go to the Convention.

Obviously, Barack has tended to do much better in the caucuses.  I'm just curious whether taking the caucuses out of the equation is enough to seriously change the outcome thus far...