Guess the underlying question would be: Who does George Soros want as the Democrat nominee?? And he will make it happen.

I'm just amazed at the possibility - however remote - that Oregon's primary might actually matter this year. Bonkers.

(I'm still too pissed off about HB2614 of 2005 to register as a major-party voter, though.)

Howard's gonna have a lot of thinking to do between now and Denver. He desperately wants this whole thing to go away, but it's not. The convention is going to be a mess if the superdelegates steal the nomination for one candidate or the other. We're talking WTO, only this time with bloggers.

Since that NYT article was published, there's been rumblings that the the superdelegates will all swing to whomever has the delegate edge in their district/region.

The fella from southern Minn flipped from Hillary to Obama when his district overwhelmingly went for Obama.

I could be wrong, but they're not gonna support her out of loyalty if he leads in delegates, momentum, and ESPECIALLY given the fact he beats McCain in most polls while she loses.

Jack,
Yes you are correct and Mr. Obama has all of these cards stacked up against him. But he is living the American dream and giving it his all.
From what I have read, there are a number people and myself who do not want another Clinton in the White House. I will do everything in my power, by sending him money, lick stamps, making phone calls to get people out there to vote for Barack.

Let's just look at the following scenario:

Barack leads in delegates going into the convention. The super delegates hand the nomination to HRC. The following happens:
1) Riots in Denver
2) Dems loose African-American base forever
3) Barack launches independent campaign
4) Barack takes WH in a landslide
5) Both GOP & Dem party loose all relevance for 20 years as America embraces progressive populism.

I can dream can't I.

Is it not clear to everyone that to be President Hillary would accept ANY scandelous means.
What an innaguration that will be.

Howard, no matter what happens, it can't possibly top 2000 for scandal.

"Who does George Soros want..."

Time to trot out the ol' Soros bogeyman, eh? Some magical, lone kingmaker he is. The thing is, this laughable GOP talking point focuses on one moneybag while ignoring the thousands of tycoons that support the conservative movement. Tycoons that reside both in this country and abroad. You can't ignore that the captains of industry, big investors, and nearly every big money interest overwhelmingly favors Republican candidates. And all the influential conservative thinktanks, the very ones that thrust Cheney and Bush into our highest office, have been funded by a who's who of these very same people.

Yeah, go ahead and focus on Soros. But do it because he's the exception, rather than the rule.

This has shades of the 1968 National Convention in Chicago when the party was fractured over the Vietnam War and the recent assassination of Robert Kennedy. The party establishment came up with Hubert Humphrey as the candidate over Eugene McCarthy, and we ended up with Richard Nixon in the White House. The consequences of allowing HRC to walk away with this one courtesy of the arrogant anti-democratic party elite are too dire. The way this thing is shaping up I just might find myself doing a little camping out with a bullhorn in Denver come late August.

"Howard, no matter what happens, it can't possibly top 2000 for scandal."

OH?
Suppose Hillary gets re-counts of selected counties till she wins and the SCOTUS doesn't stop her?
Or she is behind and gets Michigan and Florida reinstated in the primary to get her nominated?

I realize many of you insist Gore won, but get real, there was little scandal involved in his losing.

But it looks like the Obama train will be rolling over Hillary anyway.

So it's almost time to start turning McCain into a demon.

Oh please, Jack, save the race baiting. This has nothing to do with race and everything to do with Clinton being the president's wife, with all the connections that come along with that.

The only way race is entering this equation is in terms of electability, and Hillary Clinton has as much baggage as a woman as Obama has as a black man.

If the superdelegates see polls in July like the one released yesterday--that has Obama beating McCain by 10 points but Clinton losing or too close to call--then they'll swing right over to Obama.

I have been telling people for weeks Hillary was was going to be chosen by party leadership no matter what happens in the primaries, and nobody believes me.
I get answers from "they have faith in the system" to "Democrats dont do things like that, that is something Republicans would do."

They're all the same, folks.

Last I checked, Obama is as white as he is black, his mother I guess does not count.

Ahh, super delagates.

I want the cigar concession for the Denver convention. All those smoke filled oomswoth pols and party bosses making secret deals and pushing their candidates.

Why, we dDems have'thad a brokered convention with party bosses making choices since, well, Kennedy in 1960, or Truman for VP in 1944 or FDR in 1932.

And we all know what lousy presidents each of those folks were.

Super-Delegates: All at the Animal Farm were equal, only some were more equal than others.

Meg, I totally agree with you. If anyone were playing the race card, it is Obama. Anyone who looks at his website will see lots of mention about his "African American" root with zero mention that his American mother is white.

May be I don't understand other people with color's mentality. I would hope Obama or anyone with mixed race heritage are proud and celebrate all their heritages all the time instead of highlighting only the one that seems more beneficial to them. It is not a good example we want to set for those who are biracial. Obama’s behavior only perpetuates the divide between the whiteness and blackness of America.

If you ask Tiger Woods, he will tell you he is “International.” If Obama is as good as he claims to be, he should trumpet his white American heritage as much as his African half.

BTW I actually saw an item today where some Virginian Republicans are going to vote for Hillary in the primary because their primary is open and they can cross party lines if they want to. The thinking goes that McCain is already a lock and they want Hillary to be the Democratic candidate because McCain will do so well against her in the general election.

If the superdelegates are stupid enough to pick Hillary over Barack, then they deserve defeat at the hands of John McCain.

Because that's what is likely to happen.

My predictions:

Obama obviously sweeps the rest of February, the only question is low large the margins will be.

If Hillary ekes out narrow wins in Ohio and Texas that still leaves Obama ahead going into the convention and a deal is worked out behind the scenes with a bunch of arm twisting by Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Tom Daschle and Howard Dean. Hillary's prize for bowing out gracefully is Senate Majority Leader.

If Obama wins either Texas or Ohio it is over, if Hillary is smart she bows out and still has clout, she could force a fight, but she not only loses but also loses any power she had in the Senate.

If Obama wins Texas and Ohio then what Hillary does doesn't matter, she is toast.

The comments by Meg and Tchow are wholly without merit. With respect to Meg: the vast majority of African-Americans in the United States are descended from the Africans who were enslaved in this country. And the vast majority of them have Caucasian, as well as African, ancestors. They are self-identified as "black," and indeed for much of American history they were legally classified as "black" (or, more often, "colored"), even if their ancestry was predominantely Caucasian.
With respect to Tchow: you are simply mistaken. Look at the "Meet the Candidate" statement on Obama's website: it gives equal prominence to his father and to his mother, and it does not say a word about being "black." To accuse Obama of playing the "race card" in this campaign is absurd.

Not to get too far off topic -- although, to parody-phrase Will Rogers: this thread is not an instance of an organized political topic, it's about Democrats -- here's about a jerk joker who did NOT play the race card when he coulda and shoulda. Ya' take this sort of meta-information understanding of personalities and psychologies and the corrupting intoxication of power, and ya' look through that prism of knowledge going back over the historic twists and turns in 20th century America, and suddenly ya' see all yer vaunted reputable institutions in a new light -- moonlight, I'm thinking, where zombies and vampires walk about. On second thought, maybe this is about Rocky Mountain-high Democrats.

J. Edgar Hoover had black ancestors.

From the OP, “Obama, ain't that just like being an African-American man? The white woman gets a couple hundred delegates' head start.”

This post implies Obama as the “African-American man” in a contest with the advantaged “white woman” Hilary. With all due respect to Charlie and the professor, Obama portraits himself as if he were like the “real” black African American and many of you just follow right along. If one looks closely at Obama’s story, he experienced little to none of the cultural up bringing, discriminations, and degradations of a real African American. He may be black (yet only 50%), but neither he nor his parents lived through the experience of growing up as a colored American.

Obama did not use the “black” word in “Meet the candidate.” The word “white” is not used anywhere on his web pages either. On the contrary, African American is used liberally to highlight his blackness which implicitly identifies him as one of the American African American who endured through the years of discriminations and now rising to the top.

Obama’s father grew up in Kenya. Kenya was a successful model African nation and a British Commonwealth back at that time. His father lived and grew up in his own country where his color was the majority. His father probably came from a family with some means or proud tradition for him to choose to go to Hawaii for college. And don’t let anyone tell you only poor foreign students get American college scholarships. American public and private colleges spent lots of money actively recruited foreign students and offered them significant scholarships back in those days. Of all the states in the U.S., Hawaii was and probably still is one of the most diverse states. Obama’s father probably did not encounter much of the prejudice and discriminating deeds in Hawaii.

He “grew up with his mother in Hawaii, and for a few years in Indonesia.” Both Hawaii and Indonesia are places where he would have experienced little discriminations. In fact, I would be very surprised if he were not brought up to feel more equal and superior to the native Hawaiians and Indonesian of that time because of his “whiteness.”

If Obama/his website does not intend to mislead, Obama should proudly proclaim his true root, which is 50% White American and 50% Kenyan American! Obama lived and grew up as a white person in a white family in places where he did not experience most of the sufferings and degradations color people in the U.S. mainland endured. A real Kenyon/White American man he is, but an American African American in the traditional sense with all the history of black Americans on his back he ain’t.

That said, I will probably vote for Obama if Oregon's votes are still relevant then...