When you add the incredible actions taken by the RBC yesterday it makes the Democratic Party and its chosen nominee, Obama, that much worse.

There's just something skeevy about a grown man who's so willing to let other people do the heavy lifting then step into the spotlight to take the bow and accept full credit.  And it's even more troubling to see this behavior aided and abetted by the yuckity-yucks in "power".

Oh well.  Power is an ephemeral thing.  And I suspect Dean and Brazil know that when Hillary gets the nod and becomes President, they're out the door and will have to saddle up for their respective book tours.

If nothing more than the fact that, on principle, arbitrarily apportioning delegates via "intent" violates the will of Michigan voters.

As a Michigan voter, I will not, nor ever, support the DNC for violating the will of the voters.

If rules are rules and the primary was so flawed, you stick with 0% and deal with the public relations heat for not counting the votes.  You do not try to have your cake and eat it too while arguing "voters' intent" and reach some arbitrary decision.

Hillary is ahead in the popular vote.  She is still the stronger candidate in states such as Florida, Ohio, and yes -- Michigan.

I could be wrong, but I don't think even Jimmy Carter was in as much trouble with his own Party in 1980 as Obama is today, or even Jerry Ford in 1976. You have to go back to 1968 to find a Party as divided as ours, and worse, the divisions may be even more acute among the voters than they are among the activists. The activists, after all, can more readily rationalize a vote for Obama come November, but I fear what we're seeing among the voters are genuine doubts about Obama's leadership.

In the gloom though you can see a glimmer of hope. In 1968, Humphrey's position looked completely hopeless in September; the Democratic Party has still not entirely recovered from that summer's Convention in Chicago, now 40 years ago, and his campaign was woefully underfunded and derided as inept in the media. Somehow, Humphrey and the Party took a step back, revitalized the campaign, and came roaring back from 15 points down in the polls with three weeks to go to a tie by the final week-end. Some classic Republican ratf***king of the Paris Peace talks by getting the South Vietnamese generals to be intransigent let Nixon sneak through by a whisker.

Times have changed of course, but the key was that Humphrey stopped campaigning as Vice President of the United States and started campaigning like Harry Truman in 1948. I hope the Obama team can take a step back and recognize that while they may have the inside track to the nomination, continuing to campaign the way runs the risk of losing the presidency. While his campaign insiders still seem relatively oblivious, I do see some encouraging signs that the candidate himself recognizes what's at stake.

Then again, he doesn't have to refer as far back as 1968 for a good example -- he need only refer to February 2008, when Hillary Clinton shed the useless weight of campaigning as The Frontrunner and found her true voice as an authentic Democrat. What a contrast that has been to the pinched, condescending and self-important blather we heard from the DNC's finest yesterday, the sort of blather that has sadly been only too prevalent among our Democratic congressional leadership since the voters gave that leadership the unexpected bonanza of an historic midterm election win in 2006.

17,829,358 to 17,684,116  or just 0.004% according to RCP.

You all are trying to spin this vote count to HC's favor. It is completely disingenuous to change the rules of the game after everyone has agreed to them and say, "Well, the delegate vote doesn't matter because of the popular vote."

But let's go there...

If you include all the popular vote of the states THAT THEY COMPETED IN (include Florida, but not Michigan), Obama has more popular votes. Period, end of story. If you want to change the rules and say the delegate vote doesn't count, then THE ONLY MEASURE YOU CAN COUNT AND COMPARE would be the states where they completed. THAT is what the Superdelegates need to look out.

Or, let's say you want to include Michigan. The only way to do it is to ask yourself, "Would Obama have gotten more then 78,000 votes (current difference) if he had been on the ballot?" That is the margin if you include Michigan and the answer is of course he would have. By any measure, he would have had 75% of her vote (240,000). By this measure, Obama has a 170,000 vote lead.

Will she take it to the convention and fight for her to be the nominee?

Will she concede to Obama?

Will she ask for the VP and then and only then concede to Obama?

Will she just go away and casually support Obama if he is the nominee and hope for a run in 2012?

According to Real Clear Politics, a must-bookmark for political junkies, Obama actually has 166,186 vote lead over Clinton in the popular vote -- 17,267,658 to 17,101,472. If Michigan's primary is included, where Clinton received 328,307 votes and Obama none due to the fact he removed his name from the ballot, Clinton takes a 162,123 vote lead.

So, there is a bit more dispute about the popular vote leader than might initially be apparent in the Clinton ad. To the campaign's credit, however, the narrator says only that "17 million Americans have voted for Hillary Clinton...more than for any
primary candidate in history" -- a statement that is entirely true.

Remember that even if you grant Clinton the popular vote edge -- and many within the party do not do so -- the metric by which the Democratic nominee is chosen is delegates.