Well, I am here. Signed in as an Obama delegate to the Washington 41st Legislative District Democratic Caucus. It is hot. It is crowded. There are political signs everywhere. They are about to start.

And yes I stood in the right line to put my name in to run for delegate for the next level. My odds are not good though. Judging from the lines there are a few hundred people running for 49 spots. In theory each person gets to speak one minute to try to convince people to vote for them. One guy is giving out candy with his name on it.

I have no candy.

The original site, linked from MyDD, looks like it is no longer has the bit quoted, but the relevant bit is still here:

History Lesson
(Jerome Armstrong, MyDD)

A historically minded reader has suggested that the Democrats end their fratricidal battle by taking a cue from what the Whigs did in the 1836 election when they couldn’t decide between the Northern candidate and the Southern candidate: they ran both. The Democrats could do this, too: put Obama on the ballot in the Western states in which he did well and put Clinton on the ballot in the big Democratic states like Ohio where she won solid victories. Of course, if successful, this strategy would split the electoral votes three ways and nobody would get a majority. Then the newly elected House would choose the President, with each state getting one vote. The Democrats will almost assuredly control the new House. Of course, the battle between Obama and Clinton would then be reignited in the House Democratic caucus so the Democratic members of the House would end up choosing the nominee. But that is going to happen now anyway. However, by doing it that way, the House Democrats would be sure their choice would become President, without having to bother beating a pesky and popular Republican. Of course, the party would need enough discipline to make sure every member of the House voted for the winner of the House caucus vote and normally herding Democrats is like herding cats. The one downside to this strategy is that it didn’t work for the Whigs in 1836; Martin van Buren, Andrew Jackson’s Vice President, won a majority of the electoral vote outright.

I can’t describe just how exciting a scenario like the above would be to watch play out. Of course, the results of 1836 pretty much killed that strategy forever… uh… until now?

Nah, of course not. But it would be fun damn it!

Two really long and detailed articles giving good insight into the Democratic race:

The Law of Rules
(Josiah Lee Auspitz, Washington Monthly)

For almost four decades I have been inflicting on friends, family, airplane seatmates, straphangers on the subway and other random acquaintances my stupefying knowledge of party rules. To me this is a subject so enthralling that I cannot understand anyone’s being indifferent to it.

I have written scholarly articles and op-ed pieces, testified, lobbied and litigated, presented maps, tables and charts, consulted, advised and given interviews on the topic. About twenty-five years ago I directed a project analyzing party rules in all the fifty states. My young assistant in this task later foreswore politics and entered a monastic order.

In other words, I am a complete party rules bore. I suppose it would be more dignified to present myself as a political scientist, but I have no illusions.

Still, every two or three quadrennial elections events conspire to give rules minutiae a wider audience. This is one of those rare moments.

(via Kevin Drum, Washington Monthly)

No Really. Hillary Has a Decent Shot
(Sean Oxendine, RealClearPolitics)

It has become something of a pastime among polling geeks like myself to use Jay Cost’s primary vote calculator to predict the outcome of the Democratic race. Most who have played with it have come up with some kind of scenario where Hillary leads in the popular vote.

Now, I don’t mean to pat myself on the back, but a few days before Jay’s calculator came out, I had my own estimate coming to this conclusion. But this calculator provides some more concrete ways of estimating the popular vote. Let’s look at this in more detail (especially given all the calls for Hillary to drop out).

(via Instapundit)

Looks like the pollster.com trend lines in PA now show Hillary’s lead in PA to be less than 10%. 9.9% at the moment. One poll today actually shows Obama ahead, although it is clearly an outlier. As usual, Obama is narrowing Clinton’s lead as we get closer.

Now, I still don’t expect Obama to win. That would be an amazing stretch from where we are (even though we have almost a whole month yet to go). Although with the lead narrowing like this, you are going to see people start to talk about that. We shall see.

But keep in mind, in terms of the REAL race (as opposed to the spin) Clinton needs to win by better than a 58% to 42% margin (in delegates, not popular vote) in order to make it so that after PA she is closer to winning rather than further away from winning.

The current split on pollster is 50.9% Clinton, 41% Obama, 8.1% Other (Presumably mainly undecided). If we just split the undecideds at the same ratio as Clinton and Obama have among the decided group to “normalize” this, you get: Clinton 55.4%, Obama 44.6%.

Assuming delegate counts will roughly follow popular vote, she has *already* lost the level of lead she needs to be on a pace to catch up with Obama by the convention. With a 55/45 “win” after the delegates are counted, she’ll need to get an even HIGHER percentage of the remaining delegates to win. She needs more than 58% of all remaining delegates (including supers) to win. A 55% “win” is really a loss.

Of course, if she wins by even 50.0000001% in the popular vote, even if she loses in delegates, the spin coming out of that night will still be about her “win” and how she has the momentum now, etc…

Don’t believe the spin, watch the numbers.