UPDATED:  

Obama gets 3 supers from Hawaii

I come to DailyKos in large part because I want to be part of the Reality Based Community.

Now, there is a recommended diary up right now, with over 400 comments, claiming that in Clinton's speech tonight she vowed to carry on until the Convention in August.  Now, if this were true, it would be truly gigantic (and very discouraging) news.  Surely, it would be the lead story of the night.  Oddly, though, none of the major news organization have picked up on this.

Media conspiracy? No.  She didn't say it.

A few days ago it seemed that there was a developing consensus in favor of a mail-in re-vote in Florida and Michigan.  But that consensus seems to be breaking down.   It is going to be very hard to negotiate rules in the middle of a campaign, because the rules could easily determine the outcome and the outcome is a zero-sum game: every rule that helps one side hurts the other.  In the absence of agreement, Clinton falls back on the demand that delegates be seated as if the elections were legitimate and Obama falls back on an insistence that the delegations be seated with a 50/50 split.

I think it is now better to go back to the idea, suggested but not required by DNC rules, that 1/2 of each states delegates be seated, with the split determined by the January elections.  There is a hard problem of how to deal with Obama's absence from the ballot in Michigan.  I think the obvious answer is to treat the 55 "uncommitted" MI delegates as Obama delegates; this is not perfect, but the uncommitted votes were quite strongly "anti-Clinton" votes ("better no one than her".)

There is a recommended diary right now on delegate math that claims the Slate delegate projector is flawed because it assumes a proportional allocation of delegates, whereas the actual delegate process is highly non-linear -- you have to cross specific percentage thresholds (like 62.5% of the two-candidate vote) to gain any extra delegates.  Since Clinton is unlikely to cross these thresholds on average , the diary argues that even if Clinton goes on to win, for example, every single remaining contest by 55-45%, her delegate margin would end up much less than her popular vote margin.

The argument is quite misleading, because it looks at averages but ignores the all-important cross-district variance.  In fact, the diary is completely wrong because of that omission.  Don't just believe me -- follow me to the flip and I will illustrate.

Clinton pollster and political guru Mark Penn is a man who believes the demographics are destiny -- he can tell by your income, race, gender, occupation and place of residence exactly who you are.  In his book "Micro Trends" he tells businesses the significance of you being in one of 70 demographic categories, including

"Impressionable Elites," "Caffeine Crazies," "Neglected Dads," "Unisexuals," "America's Home-Schooled," and "Late Breaking Gay".

 On Amazon.com, his book is described as a triumph of "nano sociology."  

Real social scientists described it as a triumph of bullshit, spinning too-small samples into ridiculous generalization.  Unfortunately, Hillary Clinton has embraced his belief that demographics are destiny.  If she loses, I think this is the biggest reason why.

I am an Obama supporter, but I am an open-minded guy and I am very interested in why many of my family and friends support Hillary.   Obama says that one of our biggest problems as a nation is a lack of empathy and "lack of empathy" certainly describes much of the candidate commentary around here.   I want to tell you, particularly fellow Obama supporters, what I have learned.  Partly as a exercise in empathy and community.  Partly as a warning: don't dismiss Clinton supporters as somehow lacking in commitment or drive.  

I am an Obama supporter and therefore disappointed today.  But I am a political junkie and therefore fascinated by the CNN NV entrance poll.

59% of Dem voters were women!  A NYTimes blog item described a "casino caucus" site with all the maids lined up on the Hillary side of the room -- wearing the uniforms of different hotels but all with Hillary buttons.

All this crap about the Culinary Union dictating to employees, and yet it turns out they could think for themselves.   Most ironically, Clinton won most of the casino caucus sites.   I think an overlooked fact is: service employees are majority female and they are breaking for Hillary, so in the end the casino caucuses helped her!

More entrance poll goodies on the flip.

Prof. Brad Delong, liberal UC Berkeley Econ professor and frequent blogger, often calls for Bush to be impeached and the MSM to be replaced with something that reports the truth.  He is pretty "progressive", although within the mainstream of Econ Profs, who are not typically real "lefties".

Delong looks at the candidates' fiscal stimulus plans to fight an upcoming recession and proclaims Obama's to be the best.  Why?  Well, you could read it yourself or I summarize on the flip.  

OK, first of all, everyone really should acknowledge that HRC was trying to compare JFK and LBJ, not LBJ and MLK.  The remark was really badly phrased, so it is not surprising that folks misinterpreted it, but the full context of the quote is clear if you read carefully.  (I am leaning Obama these days, so this isn't a pro-Clinton diary.)  

However, let's also note that the JFK / LBJ comparison doesn't work out so well for Clinton.  It is just tone deaf to pick the LBJ role for yourself and the JFK role for your opponent!  JFK is a huge hero of the party (listen to Richardson in the last debate), whereas LBJ is not.

This a story of Presidential candidate who ran for office on a platform of being a "uniter" who would end the vicious partisan atmosphere of the recent past, who agreed with critics of his own party who said it lacked compassion and who emphasized that in his home state he had worked across party lines to build strong bipartisan coalitions to get stuff done.  He won his election.  How did it work out for him?

Everybody wants a solution to global warming, but too few want to pay the cost.  But what if the cost could be fully rebated to the public?  Well, it can.  I think that the "fully rebated carbon tax" is likely to have the widest possible appeal as a means of reducing carbon emissions.

Now, many folks understand that a tax on carbon emissions has a lot of very nice features: it makes us all take global warming into account when we produce & consume energy, transportation and other goods.   It appeals to a wide swath of "thoughtful" public opinion, because it avoids heavy-handed regulation.  But even Al Gore has a tendency to whisper his support for it, because everybody hates taxes.  

But what if the tax could be fully rebated?  

Won't work?  I'll show you how on the flip.

We are in the Reality-Based community here, and one part of that is not accepting Right Wing propaganda at face value, even in the very rare cases where the propanganda feeds into a story line that we like.  In the case of academic blogger Juan Cole, Right Wingers are claiming credit for his Yale job offer being turned down by an upper-level university committee.  I have inside knowledge of what happened at Yale, and it is not as simple as folks would like to think.  If you want something much closer to the real story, follow me to the extended section.

I live in CT, but I haven't been sure that Joe L. is really going to get a primary challenge, despite the rumors about Ned Lamont putting his own money into a race.  

Today, tne indepdendent new site ctnewsjunkie.com has a short interview with this waalthy entrepeneur.   It sure sounds like he is running: "I just think he's wrong. So that's why I'm challenging him."

Lieberman is very popular in CT with almost everyone except the folks who actually vote in CT Dem primaries.  At the least, it will force Joe to pay some attention to the base of the party, for at least a few months.

The most important question and answer are on the flip.

One oft-cited lesson of Judo is to use your opponents size and momentum against him.  Here's how we should apply this to the Katrina "blame-game":  

Republicans are arguing that local authorities are to blame.  "The locals should have done the planning and much of the intial rescue."  At one level, we should not just accept their statements, but amplify them:  "Republicans say they want the full  responsibility for disaster relief to fall on local communities; Democrats want the Federal Government to play a leading role."

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I see the recommended diaries about how it is just impossible for the actual results to be squared with the exit polls.  But the statistical margin of error on the state exit polls easily explains the change in Ohio and Florida.  In addition to the usual polling sampling error, there is the problem that no one knows until the final voting is complete what is the total turnout at the sampled precincts, so the precinct weights may be badly estimated.  The late exit polls in OH and FL were 51/49 Kerry, but this was hardly a guarantee of victory.  

Everyone who carefully read a description of the exit polling process (e.g. on mysterypollster.com) should have understood that 51/49 was nothing but an indication of "too close to call."    

The management of a publicly owned company has a fiduciary responsibility to manage the company in the interest of the shareholders.  

How can it be in the interest of the shareholders to give up advertising revenue for one night to pull a political stunt that will alienate a substantial fraction of your customers?

This is a fraud on the shareholders and it is going to (or ought to) result in massive shareholder lawsuits.

The move also puts the broadcast licenses of the stations at risk of non-renewal.  This risks the most valuable asset of the company and is a further fraud on the shareholders.  

Here is a very nice factcheck from the WaPo that I haven't seen repeated elsewhere and that I would like to see spread.   They call it, with typical delicacy, "skating close to the line".  I would call it more like a lie.  

Updated: WaPo Fact Check Link.

The real scandal in the Bush National Guard story is the message that he sends to current members of the Guard who are being asked to follow regulations in a time of war.  If Bush would just say, "I shouldn't have done it, I regret it and I am lucky that I didn't get in trouble", then the problem would go away.  He simply should have stuck to "When I was young and foolish, I was young and foolish."  

Is this case, the real scandal isn't the original action (which was a long time ago) or even the cover-up (which is bad enough) but the current justification.  

A reporter (or Kerry, "rhetorically", in a debate) should ask Bush:

"You say it is OK that you decided not to fly anymore and therefore OK that you skipped your required physical exam and thereore OK that you missed required drills for months at a time.  As Commander-in-Chief,  is it OK if current members of the Guard follow your example?"