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Josh Marshall has an absolute must read post tonight that explores the one and only area where Clinton has a big advantage over Obama: Appalachia.

This is something I had long known intuitively, but even so I didn't expect it to be quite so striking when set out on a national map. Click through and take a look, then ignore what all of the silly people on TV and in newspapers will tell you tomorrow.

As you listen to all of the breathless reporting about the exit polling data tonight, keep this in mind:

Big Cities (N/A%)

Smaller Cities (3%)
Suburbs (33%)
Small Towns (12%)
Rural (51%)

Its really shocking, isn't it? Racism is a problem in rural, economically depressed West Virginia. I cannot believe it!

From Team Obama and via the Swamp:

Debunking Five Myths About Obama's Support MYTH 1: The Primary has left Democrats divided.

FACT: Democrats are united behind Barack Obama, even more so than Republicans are united behind McCain
• May 12 Washington Post poll shows that Obama wins 81% of Democrats in a matchup against John McCain.
• Indeed, more Republicans crossover to vote for Obama (15%) than do Democrats for McCain (13%).
· NOTE: In 1996, Bill Clinton won 84% of Democrats.

MYTH 2: The Primary campaign has hurt Obama with swing voters and Republicans:

FACT: Obama is winning the swing voters against McCain by a wide margin.
• Obama holds a 51-42 lead among Independents in the Washington Post poll.
· NOTE: Clinton loses 46-49 to McCain among Independents.
• Not since 1988, when George Bush beat Michael Dukakis 57-43 among Independents, has a candidate won such a large margin among swing voters.
· In his two victories, Clinton only managed a 6-point margin over the Republican among independents in 1992 and an 8-point margin in 1996.
· Indeed, no Democrat has won a majority of Independent voters since exit polls were first conducted in 1976.

MYTH 3: Obama cannot perform strongly enough among white voters:

FACT: Obama's is running as well or better than past Democratic Candidates among white voters.
• LA Times (May 8) Obama: 41; McCain: 45
• Wash Post (May 13): Obama: 42; McCain: 51
• 2004 Exit polls: Kerry: 41; Bush: 58
• 2000 Exit Polls: Gore: 43; Bush: 54
• 1996 Exit polls: Clinton: 43; Dole: 46
• 1992 Exit polls: Clinton: 39; Bush: 41; Perot: 20

MYTH 4: The race against Clinton has compromised Obama's position among women:

FACT: Obama has begun attracting the support of a broad coalition of women and is poised to win historic margins.

• Wash Post (May 13): Obama: 54; McCain: 40
• New York Times (May 3) Obama: 47; McCain: 39
• NOTE: No Democratic candidate has won women by so large a margin since exit polling was first conducted in 1976. The closest any candidate has come was in 2000, when Al Gore won women 54-43 over George Bush

MYTH 5: Obama cannot win working class voters:

FACT: Obama is already winning working class voters

• In the recent LA Times poll, Obama wins every income group under $100,000.
Obama McCain
· <$40K: 43 35
· $40K-$59K 43 40
· $60K-$100K 51 42
· $101K+ 46 47

• According to the Washington Post/ABC poll released today, despite Sen. Clinton's insistence that she is stronger among white, working-class voters the data shows that Sen. Obama performs nearly as well as she does in the general election. Among white, non-college voters in this poll:
· Obama vs. McCain is 40-52
· Clinton vs. McCain is 44- 52

Just so you know...

No sooner did I hit publish on the last post than Chris Matthews said the following:

Hillary Clinton in the past few weeks has become "like the Al Sharpton of white people."

UPDATE: TPM has the video:

The Internet's Matthew Yglesias can be very, very funny:

Her campaign is rescued from the dead. As the Clinton campaign sagely points out "no Democrat has won the White House without winning West Virginia since 1916" and therefore Obama's primary loss shows that despite his large lead in the polls over John McCain, he can't possible win the election.

What's even more interesting is that no Democrat has won the White House without carrying Minnesota since 1912 (it went for Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose party) so given that Obama won Minnesota and Clinton won West Virginia, McCain is guaranteed to win the general election unless the eventual nominee can somehow completely replicate the social and political conditions prevailing in pre-WWI America. The outlook, in short, is very grim.

Brilliant!

I'm in the middle of doing some serious prep work for the upcoming Summer Semester that starts one week from today, so between now and then blogging is going to be very sporadic. And most of the time, its going to look like this...

Some things you really should be reading today:

+ You know those super evil, worst of the worst people we've been keeping down at Guantanamo? Looks like we've had to let another one go. But this one isn't just some random Afghani picked up during the early days of the war. No no. This was the man who was supposedly the 20th hijacker on 9/11. We tortured him for years because, well... it was somehow supposed to help. Except, of course, that all it did was get in the way of prosecuting him. So to repeat myself: its not just that torture is immoral, nor that it does not produce useful information, but that it directly undermines the prosecution of the people we most want to convict. It is counterproductive on multiple levels.

+ Sen. McCain's tendency to surround himself with high powered lobbyists who make their living enabling some truly wretched people isn't just about the potential for corruption. It's about McCain's startling lack of judgement. If you can judge a man by the company he keeps, then there really is very little positive to say about McCain.

+ McCain continues to oppose an expansion of the GI Bill on the grounds that it would be too good to the men and women who volunteered to serve in the wars he has helped create. This despite the fact that the American Legion has called him out for his opposition, and despite the fact that evidence shows McCain has the issue precisely backwards. Oh wait, I forgot. He's a military expert, so on this issue he is beyond questioning. Damn reality! It just doesn't understand the military like McCain does.

+ Good to see Obama taking McCain on directly on this issue.

+ George Will has some excellent questions for McCain. You would think that maybe someone somewhere would ask him these, no?

+ David Kurtz has a great take on Hillary's self-financed campaign. Unlike every other self-financed campaign we've seen, this one has been financed with money made as a result of her public service. She's using money made as a direct result of the first 8 years in the White House in an effort to get another 8 years there. That's not a healthy development for our democracy.

+ Surprise! John McCain's cap-and-trade program isn't what it appears to be. Unlike Obama, who wants to auction off 100% of the pollution permits, McCain simply wants to give them away to polluters. Study this issue for a few minutes and you will realize that this is a hugely inefficient and unnecessary giveaway to GHG emitters. But with Republican's, that's really a feature, not a bug, right?

+ There is no assimilation problem with immigrants. Just the reverse, in fact. It never ceases to amaze me how little Americans know about their own history.

+ Want to understand why Hagee will present such an enormous problem for McCain in the fall? Watch this:

+ Rep. Barny Frank is still hilarious.

Obama will lose by more than 20 but less than 30. This is far less than the predicted 35+ point loss, so the media will spin it as a positive thing for his campaign. Bill Clinton will launch into a day after tirade about how unfair the media has been to him and his wife. And we will all then return to our regularly scheduled program.

UPDATE: Oops! That's what I get for offering a prediction based on my heart and not my head. Remind me not to do that again, OK?

Barack Obama:

There is no reason we shouldn't pass the 21st Century GI Bill that is being debated in Congress right now. It was introduced by my friend Senator Jim Webb, a Marine who served as Navy Secretary under President Ronald Reagan.. His plan has widespread support from Republicans and Democrats. It would provide every returning veteran with a real chance to afford a college education, and it would not harm retention.

I have great respect for John McCain's service to this country and I know he loves it dearly and honors those who serve. But he is one of the few Senators of either party who oppose this bill because he thinks it's too generous. I couldn't disagree more. At a time when the skyrocketing cost of tuition is pricing thousands of Americans out of a college education, we should be doing everything we can to give the men and women who have risked their lives for this country the chance to pursue the American Dream.

The brave Americans who fight today believe deeply in this country. And no matter how many you meet, or how many stories of heroism you hear, every encounter reminds that they are truly special. That through their service, they are living out the ideals that stir so many of us as Americas - pride, duty, and sacrifice.

Some of the most inspiring are those you meet at places like Walter Reed Army Medical Center. They are young men and women who may have lost a limb or even their ability to take care of themselves, but they will never lose the pride they feel for their country. They're not interested in self-pity, but yearn to move forward with their lives. And it's this classically American optimism that makes you realize the quality of person we have serving in the United States Armed Forces.

This, after all, is what led them to wear the uniform in the first place - their unwavering belief in the idea of America. The idea that no matter where you come from, or what you look like, or who your parents are, this is a place where anything is possible; where anyone can make it; where we look out for each other, and take care of each other; where we rise and fall as one nation - as one people. It's an idea that's worth fighting for - an idea for which so many Americans have given that last full measure of devotion.

I can still remember the day that we laid my grandfather to rest. In a cemetery lined with the graves of Americans who have sacrificed for our country, we heard the solemn notes of Taps and the crack of guns fired in salute; we watched as a folded flag was handed to my grandmother and my grandfather was laid to rest. It was a nation's final act of service and gratitude to Stanley Dunham - an America that stood by my grandfather when he took off the uniform, and never left his side.

Abraham Lincoln once said, "I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. But I also like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him."

There is no doubt that we are a nation that is deeply proud of where we live. But it is now our generation's task to live in a way that Stanley Dunham lived; to live the way that those heroes at Walter Reed have lived; the way that all those men and women who put on this nation's uniform live each and every day. It is now our task to live so that America will be proud of us. That is true test of patriotism - the test that all of us must meet in the days and years to come. I have no doubt that this nation is up to the challenge. Thank you, and may God Bless the United States of America.

Wow.

Go see Speed Raver. If sensory overload is even remotely your thing, I promise you it will be the best 2+ hours you spend in a movie theater all year. Forget the critics - they really have no idea what they are looking at here. And looking is the key word, because the Wachowski Bros. have made the world's first truly psychedelic movie.

I'm gonna go see it again, but this time in IMAX. Because.... like wow, man. Wow.

Get out of here on a high note...

This story about garbage and recycling in San Francisco is really, really cool. Their motto? "You can recycle almost anything." And its true! Apparently you really can!

All this talk of Obama paying off Clinton's campaign debt had been really worrying me. His campaign's ability to raise small sums of money from millions of voters is unprecedented in a way that has the potential to transform our electoral process. People gave money to him because they believe in his campaign, and I suspect that a sizable percentage of them would be quite upset if their donation was used to help the Clintons repay loans they made to themselves. But Obama is a smart guy, so from the first time I heard Tim Russert suggest this idea, I had hoped that if it was to be done, it would be done very carefully.

So today I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I read this from Steve Benen:

Recognizing the obvious problems with this -- and aware that it could conceivably hurt Obama fundraising in the short term -- the Obama campaign was quick to point out yesterday that if they were to help Clinton with her financial difficulties, the support would not come from Obama's campaign account. As the NYT noted, "Instead, he would have to make a fund-raising appeal on her behalf, asking people to contribute."

In other words, people who contributed to Obama could feel confident that the money would not go to Clinton.

That makes perfect sense. As does this:

I'd just add that Time's Mark Halperin ran the "outline" of a possible deal between the two Democratic camps: "Clinton agrees to leave the race in return for help paying off her campaign debt, a key role at the convention, and a guarantee that she becomes the lead Senate sponsor of the health care reform bill under a President Obama."

All of those things are going to happen anyway, so there's no harm whatsoever in making the deal once the fundraising part has been cleared up.

As you read this, imagine how different our mass transit system would look, and by extension how different our country would look, if we had used the period of cheap energy in the 1980s and 1990s to gradually raise the gas tax to levels that impact individual behavior. Rather than having the nation shift all at once onto a mass transit system that is woefully underdeveloped, we could have gradually weaned ourselves from our dependence on cars. You know, like the rest of the advanced industrialized world...

DENVER -- With the price of gas approaching $4 a gallon, more commuters are abandoning their cars and taking the train or bus instead.

Mass transit systems around the country are seeing standing-room-only crowds on bus lines where seats were once easy to come by. Parking lots at many bus and light rail stations are suddenly overflowing, with commuters in some towns risking a ticket or tow by parking on nearby grassy areas and in vacant lots.

"In almost every transit system I talk to, we're seeing very high rates of growth the last few months," said William W. Millar, president of the American Public Transportation Association.

"It's very clear that a significant portion of the increase in transit use is directly caused by people who are looking for alternatives to paying $3.50 a gallon for gas."

Some cities with long-established public transit systems, like New York and Boston, have seen increases in ridership of 5 percent or more so far this year. But the biggest surges -- of 10 to 15 percent or more over last year -- are occurring in many metropolitan areas in the South and West where the driving culture is strongest and bus and rail lines are more limited.

Here in Denver, for example, ridership was up 8 percent in the first three months of the year compared with last year, despite a fare increase in January and a slowing economy, which usually means fewer commuters. Several routes on the system have reached capacity, particularly at rush hour, for the first time.

"We are at a tipping point," said Clarence W. Marsella, chief executive of the Denver Regional Transportation District, referring to gasoline prices.

Transit systems in metropolitan areas like Minneapolis, Seattle, Dallas-Fort Worth and San Francisco reported similar jumps. In cities like Houston, Nashville, Salt Lake City, and Charlotte, N.C., commuters in growing numbers are taking advantage of new bus and train lines built or expanded in the last few years. The American Public Transportation Association reports that localities with fewer than 100,000 people have also experienced large increases in bus ridership.

In New York, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority reports that ridership was up the first three months of the year by more than 5 percent on the Long Island Rail Road and the Metro-North Railroad, while M.T.A. bus ridership was up 10.9 percent. New York City subway use was up 6.8 percent for January and February. Ridership on New Jersey Transit trains was up more than 5 percent for the first three months of the year.

The increase in transit use coincides with other signs that American motorists are beginning to change their driving habits, including buying smaller vehicles. The Energy Department recently predicted that Americans would consume slightly less gasoline this year than last -- for the first yearly decline since 1991.

Oil prices broke yet another record on Friday, climbing $2.27, to $125.96 a barrel. The national average for regular unleaded gasoline reached $3.67 a gallon, up from $3.04 a year ago, according to AAA.

But meeting the greater demand for mass transit is proving difficult. The cost of fuel and power for public transportation is about three times that of four years ago, and the slowing economy means local sales tax receipts are down, so there is less money available for transit services. Higher steel prices are making planned expansions more expensive.

Typically, mass transit systems rely on fares to cover about a third of their costs, so they depend on sales taxes and other government funding. Few states use gas tax revenue for mass transit.

In Denver, transportation officials expected to pay $2.62 a gallon for diesel this year, but they are now paying $3.20. Every penny increase costs the Denver Regional Transportation District an extra $100,000 a year. And it is bracing for a $19 million shortfall in sales taxes this year from original projections.

"I'd like to put more buses on the street," Mr. Marsella said. "I can't expand service as much as I'd like to."

Average annual growth from sales tax revenue for the Bay Area Rapid Transit District, a rail service that connects San Francisco with Oakland, has been 4.5 percent over the last 15 years. It expects that to fall to 2 percent this year, and electricity costs are rising.

UPDATE: The Internet's Matthew Yglesias comments:

What happens next? What really shouldn't happen is for politicians to run around talking as if expensive gasoline is a temporary phenomenon. Responsible leaders will tell people that prices will fluctuate, but that as long as the Chinese and Indian economies keep growing, the general trajectory will be upward. Then they should sympathize with people who would like to take transit, but find it prohibitively inconvenient and with people who've just started taking transit and are finding it annoying and they should commit to making transit better and more available.

Alternatively, you could act like southern Florida and propose steep service reductions on your commuter rail system. But that'd be crazy. Jurisdictions with existing commuter rail lines need to make service more frequent. With transit, you can get into good equilibria and bad equilibria. On the good path, you have tons and tons of people who want to ride your line and as a result service is very frequent so as to accommodate all the traffic. And because service is so frequent, lots of people find the line convenient to use. On the bad path, infrequent service leads to low ridership which leads to infrequent service which leads to low ridership.

The idea of multiple equilibrium points is key here. Far too often, critics of mass transit point to low ridership numbers and conclude that people simply aren't interested in taking mass transit. But of course that's not necessarily what those numbers mean at all. Without any more information, the most you can say is that they do not want to take mass transit as it is currently configured. Make it more frequent, more convenient, more pleasant to use, and more cost effective, and its entirely possible that you would see a huge surge in use. Over the past few months, we've seen only one of those 4 things shift, and already people are beginning to change their behavior.

PRESCOTT, Ariz. -- Sen. John McCain championed legislation that will let an Arizona rancher trade remote grassland and ponderosa pine forest here for acres of valuable federally owned property that is ready for development, a land swap that now stands to directly benefit one of his top presidential campaign fundraisers].

Initially reluctant to support the swap, the Arizona Republican became a key figure in pushing the deal through Congress after the rancher and his partners hired lobbyists that included McCain's 1992 Senate campaign manager, two of his former Senate staff members (one of whom has returned as his chief of staff), and an Arizona insider who was a major McCain donor and is now bundling campaign checks.

When McCain's legislation passed in November 2005, the ranch owner gave the job of building as many as 12,000 homes to SunCor Development, a firm in Tempe, Ariz., run by Steven A. Betts, a longtime McCain supporter who has raised more than $100,000 for the presumptive Republican nominee. Betts said he and McCain never discussed the deal.

The Audubon Society described the exchange as the largest in Arizona history. The swap involved more than 55,000 acres of land in all, including rare expanses of desert woodland and pronghorn antelope habitat. The deal had support from many local officials and the Arizona Republic newspaper for its expansion of the Prescott National Forest. But it brought an outcry from some Arizona environmentalists when it was proposed in 2002, partly because it went through Congress rather than a process that allowed more citizen input.

Although the bill called for the two parcels to be of equal value, a federal forestry official told a congressional committee that he was concerned that "the public would not receive fair value" for its land. A formal appraisal has not yet begun. A town official opposed to the swap said other Yavapai Ranch land sold nine years ago for about $2,000 per acre, while some of the prime commercial land near a parcel that the developers will get has brought as much as $120,000 per acre.

In an interview, Betts said there is "absolutely no" connection between his contributions to McCain's presidential bids and the deal involving rancher Fred Ruskin and the Yavapai Ranch Limited Partnership. While his company's possible involvement was discussed casually before the bill's passage, Betts said SunCor did not sign on to the project until afterward. "At no time during the consideration of this legislation was there any involvement by officials of SunCor," McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said in a written response to questions.

Betts is among a string of donors who have benefited from McCain-engineered land swaps. In 1994, the senator helped a lobbyist for land developer Del Webb Corp. pursue an exchange in the Las Vegas area, according to the Center for Public Integrity. McCain sponsored two bills, in 1991 and 1994, sought by donor Donald R. Diamond that yielded the developer thousands of acres in trade for national parkland.

In the late 1990s, McCain promoted a deal in Arizona's Tonto National Forest involving property part-owned by Great American Life Insurance, a company run by billionaire Carl H. Lindner Jr., a prolific contributor to national political parties and presidential candidates.

With the federal government owning vast stretches of Arizona land, and with pressure to meet increasing housing demands, McCain now views land swaps as beneficial, Rogers said. "He certainly recognizes that there have been well-documented abuses of legislative land exchanges, but every land exchange bill introduced by Senator McCain has been written with the highest regard for the public interest."

I always love this defense of corruption. "Sure, it looks really, really bad, but really, its nothing! So what if one of my big fundraisers got special legislative treatment. Its really just one big coincidence. And even if its not, its all in the public interest, so who cares?"

Do these people not realize how absurd this defense is? In a nation of 300 million people, there is only a tiny, tiny fraction that gets treatment like this. And all of them - yes, all of them - are in some way personally connected to legislators. That's how corruption works.

Now McCain and his people say "no lobbying happened here," so its all OK. But lobbying isn't the issue. The legislation is so specific that no lobbying was necessary. It has one purpose, and only one purpose - to set up a land swap between the federal government and one of McCain's biggest financial supporters. To have not recognized that fact, McCain and his people would have had to not ever actually read the legislation they were proposing. And if that's true, that's actually worse.

Tell me something I didn't already know.

Over the years, Sen. John McCain has publicly condemned Republican Party leaders and occasionally voted against the GOP on selected issues.

But an Arizona Republic analysis of his Senate votes on the most divided issues in the past decade shows that McCain almost never thwarted his party's objectives.

The presumptive Republican nominee arguably cast the decisive vote 14 times since 1999 to ensure Republicans got their way, and he had five other close cases where his vote may have made a difference, Senate records show. By comparison, McCain effectively handed Democrats a win on roll-call votes four times in the same period. On one of those occasions, Republicans could still have won if Vice President Dick Cheney had cast a tie-breaking vote.

The numbers are based on a review of Senate roll-call votes since 1999 that ended in a tie or were settled by one vote. The closest votes in that period included momentous, partisan-charged legislation, such as President Bush's tax cuts. More often, they were procedural votes on deal-breaking amendments to bills that would otherwise pass.

They partly reflect how rarely Senate votes come down to a single person, even though the chamber has been narrowly divided on party lines most of the past decade. But the votes also suggest that when McCain broke from Republicans, others often joined him, keeping the votes from being so close.

And his chronic absence in the Senate has seldom come in the most divided debates, the records show.

"Senator McCain puts the interests of Arizonans first and supports the principles of the Republican Party," said Crystal Benton, a spokeswoman for the campaign. "He also has the courage and the integrity to do what is right."

The voting pattern seems at odds with the popular narrative that McCain's maverick tendencies make him an unreliable conservative.

"He is a conservative who votes conservative on most issues," said Keith Poole, a political scientist at the University of California-San Diego. "By no means is he a liberal or even a moderate."

No time to blog today. Here are some things you should be reading in my absence:

+ Obama picked up 8 more Super Delegates today. I'm expecting the flood to come next week. Obama will clinch things a week from Tuesday, so joining the bandwagon after that point will produce no tangible benefits for the Supers. Therefore, most will almost certainly move before then.

+ Google and YouTube are looking to force their way into the presidential debate process. If they succeed, it will be very, very good news for our democracy.

+ Barack Obama is simultaneously rebuilding and transforming the Democratic Party. Why this worries progressives is beyond me. Why this worries the Clintons is beyond clear: if he wins, their era is over.

+ Obama's campaign has a huge advantage that I think hasn't been very widely recognized: not only is their McCain response team quick, they are pretty damn funny, too. That may not matter much to voters, but within the world of the elite media its likely to play a fairly big role.

+ Obama now has the lead among the Super Delegates.

+ Publius has a must-read post on why Iraq doomed the Clinton campaign. All of what he writes is true, but it is missing one thing: in the absence of a better alternative to Clinton, even with Iraq its likely she would have run. Unfortunately for her, and fortunately for us, she happened to find herself in a situation not all that different from many future NBA Hall of Famers in the 1990s - no matter how good they were relative to the rest of the league, they just couldn't beat Michael Jordan's Bulls. Had Charles Barkley or Patrick Ewing played in any other era, for example, they likely would have won at least one championship. But in the Michael Jordan era? It was just impossible

+ Cindy McCain says she will never - never! - make her tax returns public. Her husband built a reputation as a campaign finance reformer, but no matter. Those rules are for other, less honorable people. St. John don't need no stinkin' rules!

+ Mr. Super is Ed Espinoza, a former field director for New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson's presidential campaign. The information I received last week appears to have been part of an RSS-based disinformation campaign designed to hide his identity after a previous RSS-based slip-up. Oh, and he's just endorsed Obama.

+ I really wish Krugman would stick to writing about economics. When he writes about the primary process, he turns into a hack. And not even a very good hack.

+ It never ceases to amaze me how even very educated people in the country have no idea what socialism actually is.

+ At least he finally made it explicit. The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb says that we need not concern ourselves with the impact of our policies on terrorist recruitment. So long as we keep killing them, recruitment is irrelevant, because eventually they will give up. Yes, that is precisely what human history tells us about nationalism and religious extremism, isn't it?

Kevin Drum is right: the race is over, and we ought to start acting that way. So unless it is news related to her formal withdrawal, I'm just going to ignore everything Sen. Clinton says during the remainder of her failed presidential campaign. If she does something interesting or noteworthy as a Senator, I'll take a look. But as a campaigner? Unless it is in some way related to her wrapping things up, I'm done.

So much for going gracefully. USAToday:

Hillary Rodham Clinton vowed Wednesday to continue her quest for the Democratic nomination, arguing she would be the stronger nominee because she appeals to a wider coalition of voters -- including whites who have not supported Barack Obama in recent contests.

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.

H/T: The Plank

UPDATE: And Josh Marshall is absolutely right - whatever the terms and conditions, please do not think that Obama's 1.5 million small donors will be repaying either your personal loans or your $5+ million debt to Mark Penn. you gave the money to yourself to help yourself, and there's no reason you should expect anyone other than your own friends (if that!) to help you repay it.

UPDATE II: More nonsense, this time via TPMe:

"Do you know difficult it is for women to stand up and say we are the best at anything?" Clinton said last night at a "Generations of Women for Hillary" fundraiser in Washington. "The Democratic Party has to know that women are the core, women have to be at the table and women are going to be heard as we continue in these contests until they finally end."

Sen. Clinton, do you know how ridiculous this sounds to the generation of young women coming out of college today? Do you not realize how much the world has already changed? How much you and your generation have already changed the world? Please do not project your own ideas and beliefs, no matter how widely they might be shared by those around you, out on to the entire world. Look around you. Yes, there is still much work to be done, and there always will be. But look at the success you and your cohort have achieved!

More specifically, who precisely do you think believes or has said that women don't deserve a seat at the table in the Democratic Party? Who has said that women's voices should not be heard? I'd really like to know, because to my knowledge no one in your party in this campaign has ever said such a thing. Unless, of course, you interpret suggestions that you should go away as suggestions that all women should go away. But you of course are not all women. You are one woman, nothing more. Your campaign may be symbolic, but symbols can only be taken so far.

You may not realize it, but you are doing a disservice to the movement you claim to represent. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the basic premise of feminism that all women should be treated equally as individuals? That it was a mistake to make gross generalizations about anyone based on their sex and gender? Wasn't the point to get beyond simple categories to recognize that everyone should be valued equally as an individual? If so, then why are you acting as if all women are the same, and as if your unique situation is somehow representative of the situation of all of the women in the Democratic Party?

This is as nonsensical as your "I'm a hard-working, blue collar girl" narrative that you picked up these past few weeks. You are a United States Senator. You are one of the most powerful people in the world. On a planet of 6.6 billion people, you are among a very, very tiny handful of elites. Even among the world's elites, you would be considered an elite. You are rich and powerful beyond most people's wildest dreams. Relative to the people you claim to want to represent, you are no more disadvantaged than you are working class. You are quite literally privileged in every sense of the word. To claim victimhood renders the concept meaningless. Life isn't perfect, and it never will be. There will always be challenges. But you, a victim? Please just stop. Please just go away. You aren't helping anyone with this. Please just stop.

War Room reports on this AM's Clinton conference call:

And another reporter pointed out that while the Clinton camp has repeatedly denigrated Obama for his inability to capture the white working class demographic in the primary thus far, Clinton has shown herself unable to win a key Democratic group, African Americans. The Clinton aides had little response.

Bill Clinton was once called "the nation's first black president" because it was widely believed that he both understood the black community and did not take their support for granted. Despite that enormous advantage, and despite week's of Bill's best efforts, Hillary won less than 10% of the black vote. Of course they have no response. There's nothing to say.

Via Atrios, MSN's Charley Blaine looks at the price of oil and muses:

The news got lots of attention: Goldman Sachs analyst Arjun Murti predicted Tuesday that the price of crude oil could hit $150 to $200 a barrel in six to 24 months. (Here's one discussion of the report. Another is here.)

Crude oil in New York promptly jumped to as high as $122.73 a barrel in New York before closing at $121.84. And, as I write this, crude was trading slightly lower in electronic trading. But it also had the perverse effect of pushing the stock market higher. Indeed, the biggest winners in Tuesday's stock market were oil and gas production companies, natural gas companies. (But not refiners; crude oil is rising faster than refiners can push their prices up.)

So, if crude jumps to $150 or $200, how does that translate into prices at the gas pump. Here's the scary part.

If crude hits $150 a barrel, we could be looking at $5 a gallon or so for the retail price of gasoline. That's based on Tuesday's $3.61-a-gallon national average and the rule of thumb that, for every $1 increase in crude oil, the pump price rises 5 cents a gallon.

If crude hits $200, the retail price of gas jumps to $7.52 a gallon. (Plus or minus a few cents) To fill the 10-gallon gas tank on my Honda Civic would cost $75.20, probably more because I live in Washington state, which has relatively high gasoline taxes.

Will there be any U.S.-based auto manufacturers left? The answer depends entirely on how fast they can transform their product lines. Chrysler is in deep trouble already. That probably means more stress for the Midwest.

Will there be any domestic airlines left? The so-called legacy airlines (American, United, Northwest, Delta and Continental) would either try to combine into one big carrier or simply disappear. They're having serious troubles surviving as it is. This means big troubles for cities where these airlines operate hubs that generate thousands of jobs like Atlanta, Cleveland, Newark, Houston, Chicago, Denver, Dallas, Memphis and Minneapolis-St. Paul.

How will big convention cities survive? Places like Las Vegas, New Orleans, Atlanta, Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Houston have thriving convention industries, all built around the capacity of airlines to transport conventioneers to and from the destinations relatively cheaply. Emphasis on the word "cheaply."

How will tourist destinations like Florida or Hawaii cope? Add to that places like, say, Williamstown, Mass., whose Williamstown Theater Festival is a big draw, or Ashland, Ore., home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. They're not close to major cities.

There is an almost perfect storm of bad economic news brewing, and the mortgage mess is really only a small indication of what is to come. The era of cheap oil is ending, assuming of course that it is not already over. The 1970s gave us an early warning, a chance to act and minimize the eventual pain, but it was a warning we chose to almost wholly ignore. Rather than plan for an inevitable yet still distant future, we chose instead to do nothing, doubling down knowing fully that it was future generations who would cover our losses should the magical markets not produce ponies for everyone to ride.

It's our mess, and we've no choice now but to clean it up. I do hope the Baby Boomers enjoyed their party. Because this hangover is really gonna hurt.

At least one person in DC gets it. From yesterday's White House briefing:

THOMAS: Yesterday, according to The New York Times, we dropped a bomb on a home in Sadr City and burned alive a pregnant woman and her children. How long is the siege of Sadr--how long are we going to keep bombing Iraqis?

PERINO: Well, I'm not aware of that particular report. I have not--I've not seen it.

THOMAS: Well, it was pretty buried in the story.

PERINO: Okay. Well, the operation against the militias in Sadr City will continue until they root them out. And that is expressly in order to protect people like you just mentioned.

THOMAS: Root who out, Iraqis, in their own country?

Its such a basic point, and yet virtually no one seems to recognize it. They live there. We do not. They will always live there. So long as we stay, we will always at best be guests and at worst occupiers.

The Iraqis are fighting a civil war. This is not our fight. There is no reason for us to stay. Al Qaeda in Iraq did not exist before we arrived, and it will not exist once we leave. The Iraqis hate AQI even more than they hate us. It is their country, and they want to control it. They won't allow AQI to control Iraq any more than they will allow us to control Iraq. If the combined might of the US armed forces cannot even subdue Iraq, what on earth makes you think a few thousand foreign fighters can?

It is their country. They live there. We do not. Iraq belongs to the Iraqis. Let them have their country back. We should never have gone there in the first place, and we should not be there now. Bring them home.

BBC:

The authorities in Baghdad say they are preparing for an exodus of thousands of people from eastern parts of the city. Fighting between government and US troops on one side, and Shia militia on the other, has intensified recently.

Two football stadiums are on stand-by to receive residents from two neighbourhoods in the Sadr City area.

The government has warned of an imminent push to clear the areas of members of the Mehdi Army, loyal to the anti-American cleric, Moqtada Sadr.

In the last seven weeks around 1,000 people have died, and more than 2,500 others have been injured, most of them civilians.

The fighting so far in Sadr City has been fierce - street to street, and house to house.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki is showing a determination to disarm the country's Shia militia groups - particularly the Mehdi Army - that he has never displayed before.
However, Iraqi army operations, backed by US ground and air support, have so far failed to overwhelm the Shia militiamen, who are still responding with roadside bombs, sniper fire, mortars and rockets.

The government has distributed leaflets in two key districts of Sadr City, warning people to leave.

The speculation is that government forces are preparing for a big push into eastern Baghdad to end the current fighting once and for all.

Shortages of water and medical supplies have already made life inside Sadr City extremely difficult.

NYT:

Two mortar shells exploded Tuesday morning in the Baghdad municipal building, killing three civilians and wounding 15 people. And a rocket landed in Al Mansour University College, wounding five students, according to an official at the Interior Ministry who asked not to be quoted because he was not authorized to speak on the record.

Insurgents often fire mortar shells and rockets toward the Green Zone, headquarters of the Iraqi government and American Embassy, but their misses often harm civilians.

In the Shaula neighborhood, a Sadrist stronghold in western Baghdad, Iraqi forces captured several dozen police officers who were believed to be aiding militia fighters. Some of the officers were captured in a local hospital, which was believed to have been caring for militia fighters, according to a deputy of Qassim Atta, the military spokesman for the Baghdad security plan.

Families have begun to leave Sadr City over the past several days, trickling into the grounds of a sports stadium in Baladiat, which is on the western edge of Sadr City. The families, who lived near the front lines of the fighting and the wall being built by the American military to partition the neighborhood, said they had fled because their children were terrified of the bombing.

As many as 1,500 families are expected to go to the area in the next few days, said Abu Wa'il, the informal mayor of the refugees who live in the area. Some came as recently as two days ago and others have been there for several years, squatting in abandoned buildings. The army will provide tents for the refugees, he said, but there appeared to be no latrines and it seemed doubtful that there would be enough water to supply so many families.

In Tikrit, a car bomb exploded in midafternoon, killing two civilians and wounding 26 people, including four policemen. A curfew was in effect on Tuesday evening.

In Nineveh, an American soldier died after his patrol was attacked on Tuesday, the military said in a statement. In a separate incident in the province, Sunni extremists killed three Iraqi women and wounded two others in an attack on Monday, according to a statement from the American military. The local police said the extremists were members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the statement said.

Juan Cole provides context:

AFP also reports:

' On the political front, an Iraqi lawmaker whose party is loyal to anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, resigned on Tuesday protesting the violence in Baghdad's Sadr City where street battles claim a daily death toll.

"I announce the suspension of my membership in protest at what is happenning in Sadr city," Hassan Al-Rubaie said. "The religious and political leaderships in Iraq are responsible for the violations that happen in Sadr City."

He acted even as President Jalal Talabani made a fresh appeal to the militia to lay down its arms and allow essential supplies to get into the Sadr City, parliamentary officials said.'

I take away from these grafs that Iraqi politics is in danger of collapsing. Not that many members of parliament come to the sessions, and if you start having any number of resignations, even getting a quorum may be difficult. There doesn't seem to be a mechanism for holding by-elections, so the seat that was resigned will probably remain empty until the next parliamentary elections.

Also, President Talabani's statement unwittingly reveals that essential supplies are not getting into Sadr City and suggests that al-Maliki and the US are holding the civilian population hostage as a way of putting pressure on the Mahdi Army.

And yet today she goes on. Last night's reports of a day free of public appearances must be amended. Howard Wolfson is trying to move the goalposts once again. They've loaned themselves another $6.4 million, and there may yet be a third loan on the way. They just won't quit.

Clinton may not yet realize it is over, but it is over. You want FL to count? "Fine," team Obama will say, "it counts." And MI? "OK, we'll give you that, too. Because it doesn't help you, you know. Even if we change the rules in your favor, you still lose."

They're zombies, but I know their weakness. Unless most other forms of the undead, the Clintonistas thrive in the light. Turn those spotlights off and they will go away, I promise you. Not quietly, but eventually, they will go away.

There have only been a small handful of dynasties in American history - Adams, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Bush - and the Clintons were aiming to add their names to that list. It is a dream that has consumed their entire life's work. And last night, that dream died.

We beat the Clinton machine. Unbelievable.

Marc Ambinder:

IN RETROSPECT, the decision of Clinton to contest North Carolina and give Obama an expectations victory was costly, although many analysts, including this one, believed -- still believe -- that in order for her to really give superdelegates that moment of terror, she had to upset Obama in a state where the demographics favored him. Bill Clinton parked himself in the research triangle, Clinton herself hinted about game-changing expectations, the campaign sent their best state director, Ace Smith, as a sign of their confidence in being able to reduce the margins.

And yet Obama beat her by 14 points. Despite Bill's best effort, Obama won rural NC 52/45.

Forget the talk of a unity ticket. That's not gonna happen. No way, no how. It makes no sense.

Obama isn't going to pick her as a VP, no matter what the heads endlessly talking on my TV might say. He'll let things settle down, wait until late June or July, and then make the announcement, picking someone who will either help him turn a red-state blue (Jim Webb (VA), Brian Schweitzer (MT), Ted Strickland (OH), Ken Salazar (CO)) or who can reinforce his narrative of changing a broken system from the inside out (Bloomberg, Napolitano, Webb, Schweitzer, etc). Clinton doesn't help on the first point, and on the second she's a direct contradiction. How can you turn the page on the politics of the past if one of its prime movers is your running mate? Obama's not stupid. He didn't defeat the Clintons only to resurrect them. It's not gonna happen.

And from Clinton's side, why on earth would she accept this bargain? After everything she has worked for, to spend another 8 years in the shadow of a more powerful man... Do you really think she would accept that? That Bill would accept that? That after serving as President of the United States, he would be content to serve as the nation's Second Man?

Bill Clinton will never allow himself to be second to anyone. And why should he? There are only 42 men in history who have had the honor and privilege to serve at this nation's president, and only 3 who are still alive. Bill Clinton is one of them. Do you really think he's going to trade that for 8 years as second fiddle to someone else's second fiddle? No way, no how.

It's not gonna happen. 0% chance, as they say on PTI.

0% chance.

Not all that long ago, John Cole was a stalwart Republican. But a few years back he saw the light, recognizing that his party no longer stood for the things that once made it great. And so he switched. And now he's a man on a mission. The whole rant makes for a great read - he's an Obama man now - and I particularly loved the conclusion:

If Barack Obama was not your your preferred candidate, I am sorry that person did not win, but it is time to remember that the target is John McCain and the Bush/Cheney way of doing things. If you can not accept that and help move us forward, please at least get out of the way.

I don't think it has really quite sunk in yet, but we beat the Clinton machine. I've always, ever since 2004, been confident he would win, but still... we beat the Clinton machine. I mean... wow.

UPDATE: John's on fire this morning:

Twenty years in the desert, you miserable failures. Maybe by then I will be ready to support a Republican again. Yeah, I am fucking bitter.

According to Tim Russert, Chris Matthews, and Chuck Todd, the race ended tonight.

That is all.

UPDATE: Or not. Josh Marshall reports Clinton has canceled all of her public appearances for tomorrow. Not just the morning shows. Everything.

Go read Jonathan Cohn. Now.

After describing the battle between Clinton and Obama, Cohn pivots to describe how the fall race between Obama and McCain will be different. Here's the key part of Cohn's argument:

But this fight may not play out the same way with McCain, for one simple reason: If Obama's slogan is "yes we can," McCain's is "no we can't."

Obama wants to invest heavily in better schools and public infrastructure? McCain says it will cost too much money. Obama wants to make sure every American has health insurance? McCain says it's socialized medicine. Obama wants to make free trade more humane? McCain's says no, no, no--that's messing with the free market.

Even Obama's calls to change political discourse for the better--the most familiar and, at times, most empty part of his pitch--play into this dynamic. When Obama says he wants to end the politics of division, McCain dismisses it as just a slogan.

This is exactly, precisely why I have always believed Obama will win big in the fall. It is what I've always believed about Obama, all the way back to the first time I saw him speak at the convention in 2004. As Cohn explains, it is precisely the same rhetorical dynamic that played out in 1980 between Reagan and Carter, and even more so in 1932 between FDR and Hoover. "Yes we can" always - always - beats "no we can't" in times when the nation's mood is bleak. And judging from the national polls, the bleakness has reached historical levels.

The realignment is coming. Forget the Reagan Democrats coming home. The Obama Republicans are finding their new home. It's coming...

So says Tim Russert @ 11:54pm.

Meanwhile, Indiana is down to <20k vote difference, and with about 1/4 of Lake County reporting Obama is taking 75% of the country's vote. If that holds across the remaining votes, well....

It all comes down to... sign it with me now... Gary Indiana, Gary Indiana, Gary Indiana...

Text here.

My favorite part here:

Yes, we know what's coming. We've seen it already. The same names and labels they always pin on everyone who doesn't agree with all their ideas. The same efforts to distract us from the issues that affect our lives by pouncing on every gaffe and association and fake controversy in the hope that the media will play along. The attempts to play on our fears and exploit our differences to turn us against each other for pure political gain - to slice and dice this country into Red States and Blue States; blue-collar and white-collar; white and black, and brown.

This is what they will do - no matter which one of us is the nominee. The question, then, is not what kind of campaign they'll run, it's what kind of campaign we will run. It's what we will do to make this year different. I didn't get into race thinking that I could avoid this kind of politics, but I am running for President because this is the time to end it.

We will end it this time not because I'm perfect - I think by now this campaign has reminded all of us of that. We will end it not by duplicating the same tactics and the same strategies as the other side, because that will just lead us down the same path of polarization and gridlock.

We will end it by telling the truth - forcefully, repeatedly, confidently - and by trusting that the American people will embrace the need for change.

Because that's how we've always changed this country - not from the top-down, but from the bottom-up; when you - the American people - decide that the stakes are too high and the challenges are too great.

The other side can label and name-call all they want, but I trust the American people to recognize that it's not surrender to end the war in Iraq so that we can rebuild our military and go after al Qaeda's leaders. I trust the American people to understand that it's not weakness, but wisdom to talk not just to our friends, but our enemies - like Roosevelt did, and Kennedy did, and Truman did.

I trust the American people to realize that while we don't need big government, we do need a government that stands up for families who are being tricked out of their homes by Wall Street predators; a government that stands up for the middle-class by giving them a tax break; a government that ensures that no American will ever lose their life savings just because their child gets sick. Security and opportunity; compassion and prosperity aren't liberal values or conservative values - they're American values.

Most of all, I trust the American people's desire to no longer be defined by our differences. Because no matter where I've been in this country - whether it was the corn fields of Iowa or the textile mills of the Carolinas; the streets of San Antonio or the foothills of Georgia - I've found that while we may have different stories, we hold common hopes. We may not look the same or come from the same place, but we want to move in the same direction - towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren.

That's why I'm in this race. I love this country too much to see it divided and distracted at this moment in history. I believe in our ability to perfect this union because it's the only reason I'm standing here today. And I know the promise of America because I have lived it.

It is the light of opportunity that led my father across an ocean.

It is the founding ideals that the flag draped over my grandfather's coffin stands for - it is life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It's the simple truth I learned all those years ago when I worked in the shadows of a shuttered steel mill on the South Side of Chicago - that in this country, justice can be won against the greatest of odds; hope can find its way back to the darkest of corners; and when we are told that we cannot bring about the change that we seek, we answer with one voice - yes we can.

So don't ever forget that this election is not about me, or any candidate. Don't ever forget that this campaign is about you - about your hopes, about your dreams, about your struggles, about securing your portion of the American Dream.

Don't ever forget that we have a choice in this country - that we can choose not to be divided; that we can choose not to be afraid; that we can still choose this moment to finally come together and solve the problems we've talked about all those other years in all those other elections.

This time can be different than all the rest. This time we can face down those who say our road is too long; that our climb is too steep; that we can no longer achieve the change that we seek. This is our time to answer the call that so many generations of Americans have answered before - by insisting that by hard work, and by sacrifice, the American Dream will endure.

Whew. He was on fire tonight.

Listening to and reading all of the exit poll data tonight, it looks like everyone is once again missing the point. Obama is "losing" among white voters, but only because he is losing pretty big among white voters over the age of 65, and in particular among white women over the age of 65. Among white men over the age of 65 Clinton barely wins. And among white voters who aren't of retirement age? Obama wins outright.

The problem isn't race. Or at least, it isn't just race. Its far, far more complex than that.

Now what does that tell us about the fall election? It depends whether or not you think Democratic voters over the age of 65 - most of whom have voted Democratic for their entire lives - will realign themselves out of the Democratic Party. And if you do believe that, you need to explain why.

Also worth keeping in mind: the retirement age population as a percentage of the total population is much smaller than you might think. You could lose every voter over the age of 65 and still win the election in a massive landslide.

UPDATE: In case you missed it, now we be a good time to read Al Giordano's take on race in this election. Don't have time? Then just look at this graphic from earlier this week in the NYT:

Howard Fineman reports just now on MSNBC that David Plouffe is predicting Obama will have a majority of the pledged delegates locked up when the polls close in Oregon two weeks from tonight.

Undoubtedly a turning point for Supers, no?

The question now is: with what margin?

Ben Smith does some reporting:

I asked Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe just now whether Clinton had given or loaned her campaign more money in the run-up to North Carolina and Indiana.

"Might be. Might not be," McAuliffe said, adding that the campaign would release more fundraising details tomorrow.

In the past, Clinton aides have denied a second Clinton loan, but McAuliffe said tonight his policy is not to talk about fundraising details.