Yesterday evening I had a chance to lead a discussion of the primaries at the monthly meeting of our local Democratic club in Bakersfield-by-the-Sea, California.

Follow me across the jump for my observation report on activist Dems in their natural habitat:

Continued from here.

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The most intriguing and little covered development in the primary season is something that you would think the MSM would be all over. White women are disappearing!

They disappeared from Iowa. They disappeared from New Hampshire. They disappeared from South Carolina and Florida. Many of them are surely young, blonde, and good looking - time for an all points bulletin!

Cross the jump with me to help look for them!

Even though I've been grumping at Josh Marshall lately, and will likely continue to do so, he front paged me this morning. How cool is that?

So, cutting short the pimping, follow me upstairs across the jump:

Again! This is getting to be a pattern. If he was enough of a Chicago pol to have hooked up with a guy named Tony Rezko, how come he didn't learn the Chicago style?

By now I imagine you are all familiar with this photo that turned up on NBC, of a beaming Tony Rezko standing between Bill and Hillary. Cross the jump to explore and discuss.

Hillary will do whatever it takes to win.

You hear it a lot. We have especially been hearing it around here this last couple of weeks, as the campaign goes into the trenches. The Right has detested Hillary for years. I was surprised to find it mirrored on the Left, but after the last two weeks I understand.

On both Right and Left, hostility toward Hillary is rooted in whatever it takes, but the attitudes are not simple mirror images. Follow me across the jump to explore why Hillary presents liberals with the toughest of moral quandaries.

And that is the most unspoken subject of the race: Class.

We at least have a "conversation" about race in this country, even if it's awkward at best and soon gets incendiary. We hardly talk about class at all, but it is central to understanding what is going on in the primaries - not only the voting, but the coverage, in the MSM and also here.

The upper middle class in this country hates the Clintons. Follow me across the jump to explore why, and what effect it has on the race.

Quick, pass the smelling salts!

People get the vapors over everything around here, so naturally they are heavy breathing over this, too. It's embarrassing when people I often agree with do it, but this is DKos after all; everyone gets to be lame.

Let us note first that Obama's Reagan talk is an actual, realio trulio dog whistle. Last week that term got thrown around here as a synonym for racial politics, or anything you don't like, but dog whistle in politics has a specific meaning: a message heard by some voters but ignored by most others. A great contemporary example is Huckabee talking about getting "vertical" - gibberish to most of us, but to evangelicals connoting a relationship with God.

Follow me across the jump to hear the dog whistle - and what Obama revealed about his own governing style:

Until they do. They certainly matter now, three weeks out from the quasi-national primary on Super Tuesday. And we now have several national polls taken since New Hampshire.

Cross the jump to discuss, including the obligatory question of polling accuracy/validity.

Probably not Barack Obama - and if he got a wet eye under the sheer stress of this zoo, so what? Welcome to the big leagues, kid. You threw a smokin' first inning, three up three down, but then you gave up a homer in the second. There's seven more innings to go, and that's why they call it the Show.

But don't put away those hankies just yet, everyone, because plenty of people need one this morning. Follow me across the jump, and weep for them.

I still support Hillary, and will vote for her in California on Feb 5.

I will not be assimilated by the Oborg. Not now, not in the later primaries, not at the convention, not in November. Follow me across the jump to join me in my stand. Or not.

Democrats have been trying to call spirits from the vasty deep of college campuses for decades, and they never ever showed up, till they did for Obama last Thursday.

Personally I don't feel the Obama magic. In fact, I don't believe in magic - on the other hand, if actual, demonstrable magic is available to you, it is foolish not to go with it. So even Dems who are immune to the magic can't ignore the Iowa results, which were a genuine shocker of the best sort.

However, to quote Obama last night, we have seen this movie before. Follow me across the jump to review it.

As a geek kid and history buff I stumbled one day upon a council of the Holy Roman Empire, before which Martin Luther was summoned in 1521, the Diet of Worms. To a 12 year old boy this has a special quality that lifts it above other events of the Reformation. Do even Oxford history professors really manage to discuss it with a completely straight face?

However, my subject today (alas!) is eating not worms, but words. Follow me across the jump to dine with me on a few of mine.

Or why Iowa will be razor close - perhaps less than a 1 point spread among the top three. Don't think it can happen? Who thought Florida would have come down to 0.001 percentage points? (Don't kid yourselves; if Gore had gotten even another 1000 votes it would have been out of stealing reach.)

Follow me across the jump to the Omega Point, where either Iowa has no effect at all, or space-time as we know it ceases to exist.

Everyone knows that Hillary will stop at nothing, and the full depth and scope of her plan to game Iowa is only now coming murkily into view. There's no verifiable hard data to point to, but the outlines are coming into view, like a lookout in a World War II blimp sensing the shadow of a submarine.

Follow me across the jump to evidence that Mark Penn is running the Obama campaign.

Are out that, sadly or happily to say, do not confirm the ARG poll that came out on the 23rd, cause of much heavy breathing on account of its big Hillary lead. Follow me across the jump to examine the new numbers, from Strategic Visions and the LA Times:

Is Hillary toast? The standard assumption, for which there is a basis of empirical support, is that Iowa mo will make all the dominoes fall right through to the nomination.

Hillary has already lost her NH firewall - whatever numbers you cherry pick, Obama is in striking reach, and only needs a modest Iowa bounce, with little time for Hillary to change the dynamic. It is pretty much a given that winning Iowa makes Obama the clear favorite in NH. McCain might throw a curve no one expected a couple of weeks ago, but NH is way tough for Hillary if Obama wins Iowa. Not hopeless but very tough.

Follow me across the jump to speculate about what might happen next.

It is not exactly a secret that the MSM hearts Obama in this campaign. Susan Hu diaried the subject yesterday.

No, I am not claiming some media conspiracy to elevate Obama or pull down Hillary. Though the MSM favors Obama, their coverage of the race is driven mostly by forces beyond their control - partly by actual events (if only poll numbers), but largely by the laws of narrative. Follow me across the jump to explore the role of narrative at work.