Barack's really, really big night

This year, every state matters. Even D.C. matters.

The margin of Obama's victories tonight in D.C., Maryland and especially Virginia are nothing short of astonishing. He won across demographics. And, he beat expectations -- even the very high expectations that were being set over the past couple of days.

Today, it looks like Democrats are coalescing around their new front runner.

Let's keep this in perspective. Just a couple months ago, no one was predicting this outcome. Barack Obama went up against the Clinton machine, and their aura of invincibility. Yet, he keeps winning. Wait, not just winning. He is dominating the races. Obama's margins in the primaries today are close to what he got this weekend in the caucuses.

Hillary Clinton got barely 35% of the vote tonight in Virginia. Hillary Clinton. The margin of victory tonight cannot be dismissed.

And, no. Ohio and Texas are not the new Iowa and New Hampshire. All the states matter. The Clinton campaign spinners can spin away the losses all they want. The media, which loves a horse race, will try to convince us that only Ohio and Texas matter. Not true.

The Clinton campaign is running out of options -- they had better not get ugly(er) now. That's the reaction we might expect. But, Hillary and Bill best think long and hard about that. Do they want to fracture the Democratic Party? Do they want to destroy Bill's legacy?

Tim Russert has been giddy tonight about something happening at an upcoming debate that will change the dynamics of the race. This year, the pundits have tried repeatedly to change the dynamics of the race. They haven't. The voters have.

On Sunday, I went to watch an Obama event at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia. I needed to see if it was real. I got there early, waited in line, sat for two hours, then saw the candidate command the stage. It's real.

This isn't over. Both candidates are far from securing the nomination -- and I would never underestimate Hillary Clinton. But, it doesn't look good.

One last thing: The speeches of Obama and McCain. Wow. McCain doesn't compare. Obama commanded the crowd of thousands and thousands in Madison. McCain was speaking before a small group of GOPers in Virginia with no energy and no enthusiasm. The difference couldn't be more stark. Read More......

Excellent analysis of the state of the Dem race, from AP

A really excellent news analysis piece from the Associated Press, looking at the challenges Hillary faces from here on.

Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has found a lot of ways to explain her string of losses to Sen. Barack Obama....

By this logic, only certain states really matter, such as New Hampshire and New Jersey, states that Clinton has won. Or Texas and Ohio, states she must capture to stay in the race.

The list of excuses is long, but the justifications are wearing thin as Obama was expected to win primaries in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia on Tuesday after a four-state sweep last weekend plus the Virgin Islands. All the contests Clinton has suggested don't count are proving in size and scope that they do.

"Every day the numbers show the true state of the race," Democratic strategist Jenny Backus said. "Obama is moving and gathering a bigger coalition, and Hillary's coalition is diminishing."....

But to do so is to ignore all the other measures of campaign success — all of which now favor Obama. His campaign has brought in more than $1 million per day from more than 650,000 contributors, allowing him to flood the primary states with television ads and staff. Clinton, meanwhile, is still climbing out of a financial hole that forced her to make a $5 million personal loan to the campaign.

Obama also continues to draw arena-sized crowds to his rallies, dwarfing Clinton's smaller but still enthusiastic gatherings.

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Obama and McCain win Maryland by "significant margins"

Waiting to see what those significant margins are. Read More......

NBC calls for Virginia for McCain

Way, way closer than anyone expected. Read More......

Clinton's Deputy Campaign Manager resigns

Mike Henry, the Deputy Campaign Manager, resigned according to Chris Cillizza. I've known Mike for years. He is a really good guy. Smart and strategic. Ran Bill Nelson's successful Senate campaign in 2000 and steered the election effort of Tim Kaine in 2005. Read More......

Obama projected to win DC

No surprises there. GOP race too close to call in DC as in Virginia. Read More......

Voting in MD extended until 9:30 because of weather

It's cold and icy in our neck of the woods. Read More......

NBC projects Obama "substantial win" in Virginia

VA EXIT POLLS (per NBC):
- Obama wins voters who make less than $50k, 59% Obama, 40% Clinton - this was a constituency that's been hard for Obama to get
- Obama won Democrats 59-41
- Obama won independents 66-33
- Obama won Republicans 70-26

GOP election too close to call in VA. DC and MD polls don't close till 8pm Eastern. Hillary's people were hoping to keep things close in Virginia, but exit polls suggest Obama got a pretty big victory.

From NBC:

- Obama took 90% of the black vote, and 48% of the white vote (Hillary got 51% of the white vote).
- Obama won white men 55% to Hillary's 43%, and Hillary won white women 58% to Obama's 42%.
- Obama took 62% of independents

From the Wash Post:

At one time, the Potomac Primary was considered an afterthought by the two Democratic rivals, with so much riding on the Super Tuesday contests in 22 states including New York and California. But with the race for the nomination a dead heat, the 168 combined delegates in Maryland, Virginia and the District loom as an important political prize....

Virginia was the state in which Clinton, reeling from a staff shakeup and a series of defeats in primaries and caucuses last weekend, had hoped to perform beyond modest expectations.

Obama's win in Virginia bodes well for his chances in Maryland and the District of Columbia, both of which held primaries today and where polls close at 8 p.m.

Should Obama sweep the Potomac Primary -- and pick up most of the 168 delegates at stake in the three states -- he will have claimed eight straight contests since Feb. 5's Super Tuesday votes. He is also well positioned in Wisconsin and Hawaii, both of which vote a week from today.

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DiFi voting against FISA

Okay, if Dianne Feinstein is doing the right thing, then Democrats really have no excuse here. Here is her statement, just released:

“I have decided to vote against the FISA Bill before the Senate. This is not an easy decision because I strongly believe that we need to modernize the law relating to the gathering of foreign intelligence, and I support many of the provisions in the Senate bill.

However, I believe this bill didn’t do enough to protect against the assertion of executive power. I have said on many occasions that without the additional language to strengthen and tighten the exclusivity already in FISA, I could not support final passage.

I offered an amendment on this very issue. My amendment, which would have made it clear that FISA is the excusive authority for wiretapping U.S. persons for foreign intelligence purposes, received well more than a majority of this body – 57 votes. But it did not receive the 60 votes required. Given this strong vote, I remain hopeful that similar language will be included in a FISA bill that goes to the President.

There should never be another warrantless surveillance program. And I continue to believe that there should be a strong statement in law making it crystal clear that FISA must be followed, period.

Unfortunately, the bill before the Senate did not include such language and simply didn’t go far enough in protecting against executive power. That’s why I voted against the Senate bill.”

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51% of Republicans "satisfied" with McCain as their nominee

Yikes.

The most ominous number in the poll for McCain comes on the question, "Would you be satisfied if John McCain ended up the winner in the Republican race, or would you have preferred to see one of the other Republican presidential candidates win?" Right now it's 51 percent satisfied, 45 percent "would have preferred another."

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Conyers: Still No Justification for Telco Amnesty

Thank God someone has the nerve to stand up to these people. I was asked by one of our readers why so many Senate Democrats are caving on this issue. It's the same reason they cave on the war and everything else that matters. It's because they have no backbone. They're afraid that the Republicans will say that they're soft on terror, so they vote for legislation that they know is wrong. That's pretty much it. They're afraid for their jobs and the other guys scare them more than we do. Read More......

The nation's youngest superdelegate

Junior in college and he's gay. How about that? Read More......

Top Hillary supporter: Racist Pennsylvanians won't vote for black Obama

Let's hear from the only black person present at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial board meeting where Hillary supporter Ed Rendell said this:

[O]ur voluble governor weighed in on the primary fight between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama and what the Illinois senator could expect from the good people of Pennsylvania at the polls:

"You've got conservative whites here, and I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate," he said bluntly. Our eyes only met briefly, perhaps because the governor wanted to spare the only black guy in the room from feeling self-conscious for backing an obvious loser....

I know I have a habit of sometimes zoning out in these meetings, but it sounded to me like Mr. Rendell had unilaterally declared Pennsylvania to be Alabama circa 1963. Was he suggesting that Pennsylvanians are uniquely racist in ways that folks in the states Mr. Obama has won so far aren't? By the way, Mr. Obama won Alabama on Super Tuesday, thank you very much!

What accounts for Mr. Rendell's overweening confidence that, no matter what, he'll always find a way to overcome the odds by at least 17 points even in a racist commonwealth, but that Mr. Obama can't?

If Mr. Rendell, a Clinton backer, is right about Pennsylvania's racial attitudes, maybe we should get a new state slogan. How about: "You've got a friend with a pointy white hood in Pennsylvania"?

How many of these race eruptions do we have to have from the Clinton campaign before people finally accept that they're all simply random misunderstandings? (Hat tip, TPM Election Central.) Read More......

Senate moves towards shielding phone companies for illegally spying on you

No one could have predicted that our own party would sell us out and cave to the Republicans. Read More......

Does this guy really deserve the government's help?

The NYT has an article today about how the mortgage 'crisis' has spread to even people with good credit and prime loans. This is an example of one of the 'innocent' people caught up in the mortgage mess:

An example of the spreading credit crisis is seen in Don Doyle, a computer engineer at Lockheed Martin who makes a six-figure income and had a stellar credit score in 2004, when he refinanced his home in Northern California to take cash out to pay for his daughter’s college tuition.

Mr. Doyle, 52, is now worried that he will have to file for bankruptcy, because he cannot afford to make the higher variable payments on his mortgage, and he cannot sell his home for more than his $740,000 mortgage.

“The whole plan was to get out” before his rate reset, he said. “Now I am caught. I can’t sell my house. I’m having a hard time refinancing. I’ve avoided bankruptcy for months trying to pull this out of my savings.”

My take on this, after the jump...

He took a loan that he knew he couldn't afford because he planned on selling and making a profit before he had to pay what he knowingly agreed to pay. How is that worthy of our sympathy?

I've been looking for a condo for years and refused to buy because prices were too high and I was most certainly not going to get an ARM. I pity this guy, sure, but I don't think the government (i.e., you and I) should bail him out. He gambled and lost. He didn't have to get an ARM. He didn't have to buy such an expensive house. And from all accounts, he wasn't cheated or lied to. He knew that his rates were going to go up, he knew that when they went up they'd be more than he could afford, he just figured he'd cash in before his obligation to pay more kicked in. He knowingly gambled and lost. Not our fault. But clearly his. Read More......

Virginia

Washington Post:

In Maryland and D.C., Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is expected to win easily over Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.). Virginia is the battleground of the day, as Obama has Gov. Tim Kaine and a polling lead on his side while Clinton is banking on a strong focus on the economy in recent days to convince voters in the state's southern reaches that she is the better choice.

On the Republican side, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) seems to have the nomination fight wrapped up, but former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee's wins in Louisiana and Kansas over the weekend keep him in the mix. Like the Democratic race, Virginia looks to be the lone point of contention between the two Republican candidates.

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Why the book matters

Writing a book is a funny thing, especially for someone who has a large audience of readers every day. I'll probably reach more people in a week on this site than I will with the book, and yet the book is a much more effective way to permeate the "mainstream" dialogue on the issues of Iraq and intelligence -- issues which I consider to be among the most important we face today. The inimitable Glenn Greenwald put it best when discussing his own book:

I wrote the book for the same reason I blog: because I believe that arguments can be advanced, evidence marshaled and facts revealed which can serve as an antidote to our deeply dysfunctional political discourse and, through reason-based (though impassioned) persuasion, constructively influence our political process. A book's success can force media outlets to provide a platform for the book's arguments and to expand the range of voices and perspectives which are heard.

The fact that I was able to write about what I saw and did first-hand makes it especially relevant, I think, and it's still too rare that progressive voices have access to the opinion-making structure. Of course, Glenn has also weighed in on my book specifically, saying:

A. J. Rossmiller has emerged as one of the most insightful and sophisticated foreign-policy commentators in our country. He combines a passionate patriotism and irreplaceable real-life experience with the U.S. military in documenting the profound corruption and ineptitude driving our Iraq policy. Rossmiller served his country nobly during the war, and does so again with this important and moving new book.

If this kind of perspective is important to you -- and especially if you think it's a perspective worth sharing with others -- please consider picking up a copy. Read More......

GM sets record for largest loss in US auto history - $39 billion

Thankfully they have plenty of enablers in Congress who help them go down the drain. Instead of pushing Detroit to offer products of the future, they helped GM stay locked in the past, becoming less and less competitive. In addition to the massive financial loss, GM is also announcing 74,000 hourly jobs are disappearing. Read More......

Maine's Democratic caucuses allowed absentee balloting

This is getting annoying. Maybe it's because my parents, both in their 70s (very early 70s, I better add) waited in line outside of Portland High School for two hours in the snow to get to their caucus.

The Clinton campaign has been spinning away the loss in Maine, blaming the caucus system. The candidate herself bashed caucuses again yesterday

Clinton argued that caucuses are "primarily dominated by activists" and that "they don't represent the electorate, we know that."

Someone on the campaign staff should have told Senator Clinton that Maine's Democratic caucuses don't just cater to "party activists." In order to increase participation, Maine Democrats actually allowed absentee balloting. That would seem to negate the Clinton campaign's spin at least for Maine -- but I haven't see anyone in the traditional media rebut the point.

More after the jump... Thousands of Maine Democrats availed themselves of the absentee voting opportunity according to the state party. So, Maine isn't just a run-of-the-mill caucus and that Clinton talking point fails:

[Howard] Wolfson was asked at one point why Hillary wasn't more competitive in Maine, where the demographics seemed to favor her. His short answer: It's a caucus. We do better in primaries, where the maximum number of voters can show up and express their preferences.

Rep. Jim McGovern made the same claim in Maine on Sunday:

US Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, who addressed caucus-goers in Sanford and Freeport on Clinton's behalf, said the caucus format, which requires voters be present at a prescribed time and stay for as long as two hours, gave Obama an edge.

"The people that Hillary’s reaching out to, those are the people who can’t afford to stay there for two hours," McGovern said. He said Democrats had "two great choices" but that Clinton had more experience.

People didn't have to spend two hours at the caucus. They could have voted absentee. Either the Clinton campaign didn't know that -- or they couldn't round up the votes. Read More......

Tuesday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

Today is the primary in DC, Virginia and Maryland. And, it matters. Besides the presidential race, there is the very important Democratic primary in Maryland's Fourth Congressional District. Donna Edwards is a better Democrat -- and we sure need more of them.

Already 7:30 am and I haven't seen a Mike Huckabee interview, yet. But I know I will. He's everywhere.

Start threading the news. Read More......

Coming to an economy near you

As bad as the news is in the UK, keep in mind that their currency is much stronger than the 98 pound weakling US dollar so purchasing gas for the UK is cheaper. (The US dollar is used globally for buying and selling oil.) Also keep in mind that oil, though slightly down yesterday, has slipped back into the 90's closing yesterday at $93. The more the Bank of England cuts the lending rate while oil is this high, the higher the rate of inflation and the same applies to the Federal Reserve in the US.

The Office for National Statistics said factory gate inflation rose at its fastest annual pace in more than 16 years, after the annual rate shot up to 5.7% last month from 5% in December.

The rise was driven by an all-time high annual inflation rate in ingredients for home-produced food of 36%, mainly due to soaring wheat costs. Bread prices rose by 7.5% last year, while milk, cheese and eggs surged by 15%.

Record oil prices which topped $100 a barrel pushed crude oil costs up by 70% over the year - the highest rate in nearly eight years. Even stripping out volatile items such as food, drink, tobacco and petrol, core output price inflation increased by the fastest monthly rate since records began in 1986.

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Fake food and weight gain

For years I've heard people talking about the parallel rise of weight gain and fake food such as sweeteners and other strange concoctions produced by the chemical industry. There has been little interest on the part of the current administration to study or report facts related to the impact of fake food but this Purdue study raises some interesting questions. Maybe when we have an administration that is curious about something(science, food, economy, foreign policy, pharma, anything) we might start to discover what is really going on with what we're putting in our bodies.

The report, published in Behavioral Neuroscience, presents some counterintuitive findings: Animals fed with artificially sweetened yogurt over a two-week period consumed more calories and gained more weight — mostly in the form of fat — than animals eating yogurt flavored with glucose, a natural, high-calorie sweetener. It's a continuation of work the Purdue group began in 2004, when they reported that animals consuming saccharin-sweetened liquids and snacks tended to eat more than animals fed high-calorie, sweetened foods. The new study, say the scientists, offers stronger evidence that how we eat may depend on automatic, conditioned responses to food that are beyond our control.

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362,669

Number of people who watched the anti-McCain parody on YouTube today. Man, people hate McCain. Read More......