Hi, Everyone - and my reply to Josh Marshall ...

Thanks, Alegre, for the invite to join as a blogger here!

Since I'm certainly not posting diaries - or anything else - at DKos these days, I'll take the lazy person's opportunity to jump in by posting a reply I just wrote to some Josh Marshall items at TPM.

Josh --

Putting up those emails from frustrated Hillary supporters is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel - when a candidate is behind, you can always count on their shrillest supporters for some intemperate primal screaming. I'm embarrassed to be supporting the same candidate as MR, let alone DT. All the same, shouldn't you be a bit embarrassed to be running this stuff? When you run similar wince-inducing emails from Republicans - be honest - what is the intent? To illuminate a perspective, or to hold up the enemy for ridicule?

My own Plan B is what it has always been, to support the Democratic nominee. The delegate arithmetic heavily favors this being Obama, and if he is the nominee I will support him. I won't support him until then, because he has chosen to identify himself with the strand of progressivism that moves me least, "good government" concern with process rather than purpose. (The New Deal never worried very much about "good government;" it was too busy getting things done.) Seeing Bill Bradley's face recently on CNN reminded me of everything annoying about that sort of politics, and why my own early interest in Obama faded.

A lot of Democrats - pretty close to half, in fact - have opted for Hillary rather than Obama, largely I suspect for variations of this reason. His speech about race and Wright answers nothing, because Wright is significant only as a potential GOP cudgel. There's some schadenfreude in seeing a politician who so sedulously avoids all controversy having to explain a preacher's red hot rhetoric, but the real unanswered question is what Obama intends to do as president, besides make everyone feel good for a while.

As for the state of the nomination race, in spite of Obama's hefty lead in elected delegates, the popular vote is razor close. According to RCP, Obama leads in the official tally by some 700,000 votes out of 26 million cast. Adding estimated caucus voters boosts Obama's margin to 800,000, while adding the FL popular vote reduces his margin to 500,000. (Adding the far more dubious MI vote reduces his margin to 200,000; RCP doesn't say what results from crediting MI's "uncommitted" vote to Obama.) No one count is going to be universally acknowledged as fair, but a big Hillary win in PA alone could cut whatever gap you choose more or less in half. If the momentum for the rest of the primary season goes Hillary's way, she could well end up getting more total votes than Obama did, even ignoring MI.

Suppose that the the overall momentum does continue going Hillary's way - with Obama generally on the defensive, parrying individual thrusts effectively enough, but slipping significantly in primary polls and trial heats against McCain, and especially losing ground with those independents who were his big general-election selling point. This is scarcely a given; perhaps not the most likely outcome, but it requires no miracle. For Hillary to overcome Obama's pledged delegate count would indeed take a miracle, but what are the cross pressures on the superdelegates if Hillary has pulled even by reasonable measures of the popular vote, and Obama is not looking good for the general?

Vandehei and Allen are really saying that the superdelegates, broadly the party establishment, will never "risk a backlash of historic proportions from the party’s most reliable constituency." African American Democrats, however, are not isolated from the factors that play out with other Democrats. It is hard to imagine them abandoning Obama in large numbers - indeed the trend thus far in the primary season has been the other way - but if the air goes substantially out of the Obama balloon, their support might drift from passionate to dutiful. He is a momentum candidate with no long-established base anywhere outside of IL, no one he has "been there for." For most of the country, black and white, his entire public career amounts to his presidential campaign. His magic is not deep rooted, and could fade.

How likely is this? Vandehei and Allen say "virtually no chance," and you evidently agree. The betting markets give Hillary a one in four or one in five chance, but it is hard to give meaningful odds about something as subjective as momentum. For those of us who support Hillary, and don't feel the Obama magic, no great leap of faith is needed to suspect that it will indeed fade, and that time is on our side - as much time from now till Puerto Rico, some 10 weeks, as has elapsed since Iowa. (!) She cannot overcome his lead in pledged delegates, but that is dispositive only by the Obama spin. If his magic has faded by summer, and Hillary has pulled even in the popular vote, the Politico piece may end up as one more item on the overfilled dumpster of wrong predictions about this campaign.

-- Rick Robinson

One collateral casualty of this primary campaign is Josh Marshall, sad to say. He has been assimilated not so much by the Oborg as by the greater Borg of Respectable Opinion.

And finally, I hope you'll forgive a little shameless pimp of my own science fiction related blog, Rocketpunk Manifesto.

-- (On edit, I'm) al-Fubar