I don't doubt my numbers are wrong--but I don't think anyone actually has the numbers. Texas' bizarre system requires advanced degrees in logic. You should fiddle around with that excel sheet I link to--it's fun to see how they shake out. And you begin to see the brutal reality of proportional delegates for someone who's fallen behind.

When we went home after Super-Tuesday, my wife didn't know who was going to win. I told her then, "It's Obama's to lose".

Hillary is hanging in right now hoping that Barak makes some sort of horrible rhetorical blunder. Not likely for a master orator.

Sure, anything could happen, but at this point I don't see Hillary catching up with Obama on pledged delegates. With some polls showing the two candidates in a statistical dead heat in Texas.

Some of the counties with high Dem turnout in the past have large populations of college students and African Americans, populations that are turning out well for Obama.

What will be interesting are those communities that are Dem, but have large populations of racists. My experience with these communities, having lived in one for 22 years, is that they dislike African Americans, but they hate the Clintons. It may be we see these communities with lower turnouts, or with higher than normal Republican turnouts (in Texas you declare your party when you sign in to get your ballot).

I think Huckabee has overplayed his hand at this point, and probably blown what chance he ever had at the VP spot, as well as any future as a politician of national stature.

Sadly, Clinton is on the verge of doing the same thing, especially if she goes negative now--the only damage she'll do at this point is to the party. She has no chance of winning pledged delegates or supers, but seems to be the only one who hasn't done the math.

It's telling that what people least like about her--her "win at any cost" reputation--is what she's now apparently falling back on with the negative ads and attack-by-proxy groups.

The time for her to concede with dignity is rapidly passing.

If I see the word "meme" one more time on this blog I'm going to barf.

The meme meme!

Thanks, Bill. The McCain story has its own post now.

Math Teacher:

Yea, there was an article about Hillary's people being shocked earlier this month when they learned how things work in Texas. They act as if the process had changed recently, when in reality those have been the rules for quite some time. I worked the polls for the first time in a presidential race in 1992 (the first time my parents had voted in a general election in my lifetime). I attended the caucus that night with my mom. The following election, 1996, I was 18 and had the chance to vote for myself. So not only did I get to work the polls for my candidates, but I got to participate in the caucus and was elected secretary. In 2000, I went again and was chair of my caucus.

I think part of the reason why they allocate delegates the way they do (using previous election turnouts) is that there is a big problem with Republicans trying to throw things off in primary elections. Since you don't have to register with a Party, you can vote with a party different than your own on primary day. This meant we had a lot of far right wingers voting in the primary when it was obvious who their candidate would be. But since delegates are allocated according to previous Dem turnout in major elections, it takes a lot more than a few conservatives to throw off the delegate allocation.

I bet turnout at the caucuses will be a lot better than when I used to go. In '92, '96, and '00 there wasn't that much of a contest on who the candidate would be - so most of the people attending either had a resolution they wanted to pass or wanted to be a delegate.

Jenni, Thank you for explaining the connection to the previous election for who can vote. I wondered how they controlled the possibility of abuse there.

SupercalifragilisticexpialiTuesday

Yes, that's it!

Jeff,

A tall but not impossible order.

The biggest hurdle that has arisen, in my opinion, is the youth Hispanic vote in Texas. Just like this race has exposed a divide between older, established African American leaders and their mass following (esp. young African Americans), Obama exposed another cleavage in the Latino community.

This may be on full display in Texas, which, if the numbers I've seen are correct, has a much higher percentage of younger (and second generation) Latinos than previous primary states. Obama has done well in this segment.

Still, Texas has a long and storied tradition of hardball machine-like politics, and Clinton should do well in this setting. Similarly, Ohio is a rock for working class union members, a group among, at least two weeks ago, we'd think she'd do well.

The size of the Obama ground force, and his large advantage in money, should be enough to make up the difference. But I'm far from saying Clinton is "toast". I'd give her about a 25% odds at this point. She must win both OH and TX decisively--10% or more--or the superdelegates will begin to peel off and she's out.

BTW Rant=ON Steve Maurer STOP WRITING "BARAK". Rant=OFF.

Dale, you make a point that has passed the shadowy part of my mind, in that netherworld between consciousness and ... well, whatever's out there. It is a good thing that we have these two candidates in the race right now. The fact that so many voters are having a say in the process keeps energy very high and keeps the whole affair in the family. Had we gone quickly to the nominee following SC, say, the past month would have been the start of the poisonous general contest, which would have depressed energy.

That's all the more so because constituency after constituency is being drawn into the party. Young and first-time voters are being wooed; blacks first and now Latinos; there's even some suggestion that it's blue-collar whites who will be next (the NASCAR vote as Dem demographic--wonderful).

So yeah, it's great. There's a point of vanishing returns, and I think it falls on March 5 if Obama does well, but we're not there yet.

Paul, fascinating comment on the young v old Latino vote. I do wonder if you're overestimating Hillary's ability to control machine politics--so far, that's exactly the area the old Chicago community organizer has outgamed her. (I think he may have been paying attention to Harold Washington back in the day.)

My view is that Hillary's chance is somewhere between the 5% and 25% you and Dale cite, but not great. I think the biggest disadvantage now is time. Obama has the luxury of stumping for two weeks, and that has really helped him in the past.

I trust Chuck Todd, who really is some kind of delegate wizard it seems. His analysis during the WI/HI primary was that she would need upwards of 65% of the delegates in the states she could win (TX, OH, PA, WV, RI, KY). Todd gave Obama theoretical wins in several smaller states (WY, ND, OR, et al), but basically penciled the delegates out equally there, which seems properly conservative. In fact, he repeated a couple times these were conservative estimates that attempted to give Hillary the benefit of the doubt in a number of sitautions. 65%. Not. Gonna. Happen. If I were to predict right now, she's not even going to get the most delegates out of Texas, and that will kill her campaign.

"I bet turnout at the [TX] caucuses will be a lot better than when I used to go."

A good bet, it seems:

Turnout on the first day of early voting was up all across Texas, according to initial numbers from the Secretary of State’s office. But Houston and Dallas were off the charts — the numbers show a 10-fold increase over 2004. In Harris County four years ago, only 728 people showed up for the Democratic primary on the first day of early voting. Yesterday it was 9,243.

In Dallas, the first-day turnout jumped from 913 in 2004 to 8,615 yesterday. That would seem good news for Obama. Other urban counties such as Travis (Austin) and Bexar (San Antonio) showed six-fold increases. In El Paso, it tripled.

Turnout was up too in the Rio Grande Valley, an expected Clinton stronghold, but the increase wasn’t as dramatic. In Hidalgo County, the number of voters rose from 3,858 (2004) to 5,793 (2008).

10fold!!!

Higher turnout in the primary portion doesn't necessarily mean higher turnout in the caucus portion. A lot of people don't know about the caucus, and at the caucuses I attended, the only early voters there were those of us who worked various sites and voted early so we could campaign all day.

And I think early voting has really caught on more now than it had a few years ago.

However, I think the Obama campaign volunteers have been doing a good job of informing people about the caucuses and their importance for some time now. Unlike the Clinton campaign, which apparently just found out about all of this recently (so I don't know how much work they've been able to do on that front).

So hopefully all this added coverage, talking about the caucuses, etc., will increase the number of people participating in the caucuses there. And that's a good thing, as the people will be more likely to then go to the county convention and maybe even the state convention. All of this could mean a potential rebirth of the Texas Democratic Party if they play things right, which I certainly hope they do.

Personally, I'd have a volunteer at every caucus I possibly could to get information into people's hands about that county's dem party, them signed up on mailing and e-mail lists, etc. And I'd do the same at any early voting locations I possibly could, you just have to make sure you stay a certain number of feet away. Because winning thus year won't just be about who wins the primary. It will also be about activating Dems through the parties, building our parties, etc. so that we win the White House, more seats in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate, etc. And one of those U.S. Senate seats we can win is in Texas - plus they have to defend Lampson's seat.

Iowa Electronic Markets

I heard he had 175,000 volunteers signed up in Texas.

Interesting thing about the Obama campaign is that this is probably the first "internet" presidential campaign. Dean laid the groundwork, to be sure, but it is Obama who has been able to use small donations to completely change the financial picture AND used it to create a grassroots volunteer organization that is overwhelming a centralized party leader based system.

Well this comment got rejected before, but here's the link to Iowa Electronic Markets latest quotes on the nomination. They have Clinton as a long shot at this point.

http://iemweb.biz.uiowa.edu/quotes/Nomination08_quotes.html

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