A new look at the election results from Super Tuesday could end up giving Barack Obama a few more delegates from New York — it turns out that hundreds of voting machines in New York City initially reported zero votes for him, the New York Times reports, but those numbers are now finally coming in through a formal review.

The executive director of the city's Board of Elections said that while such counting errors often happen as a result of human error, "they're not usually that big."

Indeed, even a Hillary-supporting state Assemblyman said that a margin of 118-0 in one precinct "has to be a mistake."

In a sign of just how much effort Barack Obama is putting into the Wisconsin primary, he's vastly outspending Hillary Clinton on ads for the Madison and Milwaukee media markets, which make up the two biggest Democratic strongholds in the state. All in all, Obama has spent $831,880 on TV ads for those two media markets, compared to Hillary's $180,990 — a 4-1 margin on the spending.

And speaking of Obama's Wisconsin ads, here's his latest one rebutting the "same old politics" of Hillary Clinton's charge that he's dodging debates:

Ben Smith thinks the fact that we've had four ads in Wisconsin on this subject, two from Hillary and two from Obama, means the issue could be getting some real traction.

The Democratic National Committee has given me what appears to be Howard Dean's most extensive and detailed answer to date on the role of super-delegates amid the ongoing battle between Hillary and Obama for their support.

Dean's verdict: "Their role is to exercise their best judgment in the interests of the nation and of the Democratic Party."

Yesterday, I posed a question to the DNC: Does Dean think that the super-dels should support the candidate who ends up with the most pledged dels, or should the super-dels feel free to support whichever candidate they think is best for the party and the nation?

The DNC sent over this answer from Dean, which I'm quoting in full:

Some commentators have misrepresented who the “superdelegates” are and what their role is supposed to be. While it's premature to speculate what will happen as the process continues to unfold given that there are still over 1,000 pledged delegates yet to be selected, let’s look at who Undpledged delegates or "super delegates" are.

They are a diverse group of individuals who come from all parts of the country and all walks of life. They are local grassroots activists, county Party chairs, and local elected officials. They include all members of the DNC, all Democratic Members of Congress and all Democratic Governors, and a few former party leaders - all of whom have been elected by the people of their states and districts. Virtually all members of the DNC have been elected by their state party committees or Conventions, who in turn have been elected by grassroots Democratic voters. These members of the DNC have earned their positions by doing the difficult, unglamorous work of building the party organization day in and day out, when nobody is paying attention, year after year.

Their role is to exercise their best judgment in the interests of the nation and of the Democratic Party. I am confident that they will carry out that duty responsibly and in accordance with the highest values of our democracy and our Party.

So, unlike other party leaders, such as Nancy Pelosi and John Lewis, Dean is not calling on the super-dels to follow the pledged dels. He doesn't explicitly endorse the position of either Obama or Hillary -- which is perhaps to be expected, given his position -- but he does say that "their role is to exercise their best judgment."

Late Update: Ben Smith argues that Dean's position "seems closer to Hillary's."

On Wednesday we brought you a post totaling up the popular votes cast so far for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, concluding that Obama's lead to date is so strong that it still holds even if you include Michigan and Florida — which is to be expected, considering that Democratic primaries allocate pledged delegates on a roughly proportional basis, and he currently has a big lead with pledged delegates. But this invites another question: How would the two candidates be doing if Dem primaries were winner-take-all, like many Republican contests?

We did the math over here, hypothetically assigning all delegates from a state to whoever won that primary or caucus, and here's what we get:

States With Recognized Delegates

	Delegates
Obama	1,096
Clinton	1,075

Including Florida And Michigan

	Delegates
Obama	1,096
Clinton	1,414

Further analysis after the jump.

Read more »

This seems significant, as it may be the first real dissent by a high-profile neutral party from the emerging notion that the super-dels should feel compelled to base their choice on the popular will:

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- House Majority Leader (sic)Jim Clyburn said Friday some of his fellow Democratic Party superdelegates have been too quick to endorse presidential candidates and said he disagrees with those who base their support on election and caucus results.

"We're supposed to be unpledged delegates," Clyburn said during a discussion with reporters. "We are not supposed to be pledged."...

While Clyburn said he'd prefer superdelegates not announce their support until much later in the nominating process, he said he also doesn't agree with superdelegates shifting support from one candidate to another based on how their constituents vote in a primary or caucus.

Clyburn said superdelegates are not in place simply to mirror the popular vote. "I don't think people are really thinking through what they're saying," he said.

Not in line with what we've been hearing from many other quarters, to be sure -- and this is coming from someone who considered endorsing Obama. Full story here.

Late Update: The most super delegate, Nancy Pelosi, who will chair the Democratic convention, says that the super-dels should follow the people's will:

"It would be a problem for the party if the verdict would be something different than the public has decided."

A spokesperson for MoveOn, which is backing Obama, tells me that their petition calling on super-delegates to follow the will of the people and back the leader in pledged dels has pulled in ...

...over 257,000 signatures and counting...since yesterday.

A milestone? For the first time, Obama passes Hillary in Pollster.com's comprehensive aggregation of national polls, leading her 47.1%-46%...

Special thanks to TPM Reader MF for the catch.

Here's another new Hillary spot in Wisconsin -- unlike two other ads she released in the state today, this one doesn't hit Obama, instead emphasizing the populist tone she's been striking of late...

Since super-delegates appear to be the only topic (aside from the Illinois shooting) that anyone wants to talk about these days, here's a quick roundup of today's super-delegate news...

* A block of New York super-delegates in districts that went for Obama say they nonetheless plan to stick with Hillary.

* Super-delegate Christine Pelosi, Nancy's daughter, tells The Huffington Post that super-dels should follow the will of the voters, and recalls what happened to Al Gore in 2000 as a cautionary tale.

* Obama picks up a couple more supers -- Rep. Brian Baird of Washington state, and State Rep. Pete Jorgensen of Wyoming.

* On another delegate question, Ben Smith flags an eye-opening quote from Hillary supporter Bob Kerrey about Florida and Michigan: “You don’t change the rules in the middle of the game. Period.”

* Obama tells reporters that he hasn't heard from Rep. John Lewis and doesn't know whether Lewis is supporting him. On this score, his spokesperson is still supposed to release a statement today clarifying whether he's definitely switching to Obama at the convention. Stay tuned.

After a relatively low-profile stretch, Bill Clinton re-emerged today with a vengeance as Hillary's Surrogate-in-Chief, hitting Obama on health care by arguing at an event today in Texas that he would "deny us universal health care" for "the first time."

The Dallas Morning News has the story...

"Her opponent excites more Americans ... but would in fact deny us universal health-care coverage for the first time," the former president said. "She represents the solution business."...

"It would be truly tragic if the Democratic Party walked away from universal health care for the first time in 60 years when we finally got the business community and the medical community in line behind us," Clinton said, drawing applause.

As Mark Halperin notes, between this and her new radio ad the Clintons appear to have unveiled a new health care offensive today. It seems perhaps like a bit of an odd play for Bill to make the health care case in these particular terms, given his administration's high-profile failure to get a health care bill passed in the nineties.

Suggesting once again that Camp Hillary thinks they have a winner in Obama's refusal to debate in Wisconsin (or suggesting that this is one of the few avenues left to them), Hillary again goes up on the air in Wisconsin with an Obama-won't-debate-and-Wisconsin-residents-deserve-better ad...

The ad also hits Obama on a number of other fronts -- criticizing him for a past attack ad and repeating the claim that his health plan would leave 15 million uninsured -- making this to our knowledge the harshest criticism of Obama yet in a Hillary TV spot.

With Hillary under tremendous pressure to draw a sharp contrast with Obama in Wisconsin, where he's leading in the polls in the crucial contest, Hillary has hit the radio waves in the state with a new ad emphasizing that only she has a plan for universal health care.

"With John Edwards out of the campaign, Hillary is now the only candidate for president — Democrat or Republican — who supports universal healthcare," says Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin, who represents the liberal stronghold of Madison. "With Hillary this isn't just talk. This is about solutions."

Note that the campaign seems to have re-edited their "solutions business" catch-phrase, something the campaign had been pushing earlier this week, and are now simply saying that Hillary is the candidate of "solutions," as opposed to "just talk" from Obama.

An mp3 of the ad is available here.

(Via WisPolitics)

A new Research 2000 poll in Wisconsin gives Barack Obama a small lead going into Tuesday's primary, with 47% to Hillary Clinton's 42%. If Obama wins this primary plus the Hawaii caucuses on Tuesday night, then he'll have had ten big wins in a row, giving him that much more momentum going into Texas and Ohio.

The demographics: Hillary leads 47%-42% among women, but Obama makes it up with a 53%-36% lead among men. The two are in a dead heat for the white vote, with Hillary at 45% and Obama at 44%, while Obama has an 84%-5% lead with black voters, and Hillary wins Latinos 54%-34%.

Jeff Zeleny, the writer of The New York Times's disputed story today reporting that Rep. John Lewis, a Hillary supporter, will vote for Obama at the convention, just went on CNN and stood by his reporting, offering some key clarification.

He said:

When I talked to Congressman Lewis last night, he said, "look, the voters in his district on Super Tuesday in Georgia overwhelmingly supported the candidacy of Senator Barack Obama. And he said he would quote, "never ever do anything to go against the action of them." So he says, if this comes down to be a super-delegate vote — which he hopes and believes it will not — that he will support Senator Obama. But even more than that, he says he's concerned about this campaign going into a long fight to the convention. He said it would be damaging to Senator Obama and to Senator Clinton. And he said unequivocally that he would cast his vote for Senator Obama.

So according to Zeleny, Lewis said that if this comes down to a scenario where super-delegates will be required to decide the outcome, he will definitely vote for Obama. This appears to suggest that he'll vote for Obama whether or not he wins the pledged delegate count, because he wants to honor the wishes of his own constituents. In other words, Zeleny is standing by the story.

There was no direct quote from Lewis on the vote in the Times story. And according to The Washington Post, a Lewis spokesperson earlier said the Times story was inaccurate, though she didn't specify precisely what Lewis did say. She could have meant that it was inaccurate to say that this constituted a switch in endorsements, for instance, a version that wouldn't be at odds with what Zeleny said above.

Lewis' office will be releasing a statement with further clarification today. We'll keep you posted.

A black supporter of Hillary, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, has given an interview in which he sheds light on some pretty interesting efforts by Obama supporter Jesse Jackson, Jr., to privately persuade him to rethink his support of Clinton:

In an interview, Cleaver offered a glimpse of private conversations.

He said Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois had recently asked him "if it comes down to the last day and you're the only superdelegate? ... Do you want to go down in history as the one to prevent a black from winning the White House?

"I told him I'd think about it," Cleaver concluded.

Jackson, an Obama supporter, confirmed the conversation, and said the dilemma may pose a career risk for some black politicians. "Many of these guys have offered their support to Mrs. Clinton, but Obama has won their districts. So you wake up without the carpet under your feet. You might find some young primary challenger placing you in a difficult position" in the future, he added.

Some big news came out last night that Congressman John Lewis (D-GA), an elder statesman and hero of the civil rights movement, was switching his super-delegate vote from Hillary Clinton over to Barack Obama — a huge blow to Hillary's super-delegate strategy.

But is Lewis really switching? Two other reports say he hasn't yet made that decision.

The Washington Post reported late last night that a Lewis spokeswoman said he was misquoted — but there was a caveat or two in their report:

But the Clinton campaign reported having no word from Lewis on the subject, and a spokeswoman for Lewis, Brenda Jones, said the Times story and a similar one by the Associated Press, saying he was contemplating such a switch, were inaccurate. Both the Times and AP stories quoted Lewis directly after speaking with him; he was not available for comment later Thursday. The Obama campaign also said that Lewis and Obama had not talked recently about a change of heart.

On MSNBC's Morning Joe today, Andrea Mitchell backed up the Post's version of the story, saying that Lewis hasn't actually switched yet, but also added that it was "only a matter of time" until Lewis came out and endorsed Obama.

For our part, we've contacted Lewis' office and hope to get more information soon, so that we can sort out the conflicting reports.

The influential conservative Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) now has some reason to reconsider his decision this week to retire from the House, Roll Call reports, and it's because of some very intense lobbying by his Republican colleagues. In an extraordinary move, the paper says, over 130 House Republicans signed a letter asking him to stay on.

The most interesting aspect of this is that Shadegg represents a relatively safe Republican district, which voted 58% for President Bush in 2004. So while there isn't too much risk of the GOP losing this seat, they're obviously very concerned about the appearance of so many members dashing to the lifeboats.

A new poll of Texas shows Hillary Clinton with a lead over Barack Obama, but not a huge one in a state that has become part of her new firewall strategy along with Ohio, and where she'd need a big win in order to make the race for pledged delegates truly competitive again.

The Public Opinion Strategies (R) poll gives Hillary 49% to Obama's 41%. As in many other primary states, Hillary leads with women, Latinos and older voters, while Obama wins with men, African-Americans and younger voters. In short, neither candidate has really eaten into the other's base here, and this looks like it's going to be a close race.

Late Update: Two more polls for the Texas primary have come out today, as well. Rasmussen has Hillary up 54%-38%. American Research Group — whose track record this primary season has been less than stunning — puts Obama ahead 48%-42%.

Late Update: The poll was conducted by Public Opinion Strategies (R), not Texas-based pollster IVR.

This is big news, and may well be the beginning of the end for Hillary Clinton's super-delegate strategy. The New York Times reports that Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), a legend of the civil rights movement who had endorsed Hillary last year, is switching his super-delegate vote from her over to Barack Obama.

Lewis stopped short of formally switching his endorsement over to Obama, but said he would make a decision on that matter within a few days. Lewis also said that he and other lawmakers would meet soon to decide just how they should involve themselves in the nomination fight — and he cited the super-delegate battle as a pitfall that could weaken the party's hopes this Fall.

In short, it looks like the Hillary campaign probably can't count on the super-delegates to save them, should they lose out in the elected delegate race. So if it becomes clear that Obama ends up with an insurmountable lead — or Hillary, for that matter — there could be a strong message from super-delegates that the loser has to concede defeat and close up shop.

Here's a video of Mitt Romney's press conference earlier today alongside John McCain, endorsing McCain for president after the often bitter campaign the two fought through up until last week:

Obama picks up the support of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, a significant get because it boasts a potent presence in coming battleground states like Wisconsin, Ohio, and Texas.

Meanwhile, there are more suggestions that things are breaking Obama's way.

First, Ben Smith reports that he's also set to snag the endorsement of the SEIU, whose organization could give Obama a boost in Texas.

And the Associated Press reports that one of Hillary's Congressional black supporters is going to switch to Obama at the convention, and a second key supporter -- Civil Rights icon John Lewis -- has been confiding to colleagues that he's growing increasingly torn about his early support for Hillary. If he were to go public with a switch, it would be a big story.

It's official: Hillary Clinton has been declared the winner of Super Tuesday's New Mexico caucus, after a wait of more than a week while provisional ballots were being counted.

State Democratic Party chairman Brian Colón announced at a press conference today that Hillary received 73,105 votes to Obama's 71,396 votes, a margin of victory of 1,709. Given the close result, the final allocation of the state's 26 pledged delegates is likely to be somewhere around an even 13-13 split.

Late Update: The final delegate count is 14 for Hillary, 12 for Obama.

Here's some interesting context to the behind-the-scenes battle that's underway between Hillary and Obama for the support of super-delegates. It turns out that the super-delegates have received campaign contributions from both sides, though its unclear whether this money has had any impact on any decisions they've made.

The Center for Responsive Politics has a new study out which finds that the two have donated a total of more than $890,000 to those super-delegates who are elected officials in the past three years. Who's donated more? Obama has, by far.

According to the study, Obama's PAC and campaign committe have given out $694,000 to such superdelegates. Some 40% of the supers who support Obama received cash from him, the study finds.

Hillary's PAC and campaign committee, meanwhile, have donated only $195,000 to supers, less than a third of what Obama has, and only 12% of supers supporting her have received her money.

So, Obama's financial apparatus appears to have given out far more cash to the supers than Hillary's has -- though again, it's not possible to assert at all conclusively that there's a direct link between donations and the decisions by the SDs.

Late Update: I should have made it clear that these numbers refer to donations in the 2006 and 2008 cycles, so many of these could have been ordinary contributions to fellow Democrats before either was running for President. I've revised the above accordingly.

Hillary advisers are really, really upset about Chris Matthews, and it turns out that they've repeatedly made their grievances directly known to MSNBC.

Proving, once again, that the controversy over the "pimped out" comment was never really about David Shuster. It was all about Chris.

Barack Obama has a new ad running in Wisconsin, rebutting Hillary Clinton's attack ad that says he's dodging debates. "It's the same old politics of phony charges and false attacks," the announcer declares:

The Wisconsin primary is being held this Tuesday, with 74 delegates up for grabs. Recent polling has put Obama narrowly ahead. Could the lack of a debate held in Wisconsin itself be enough of an issue to change the situation?

(Via Ben Smith)

Late Update: And speaking of phoniness, the Hillary campaign's rebuttal to the ad makes a very interesting point. The Obama ad cites the AP in saying Obama's housing plan "stems foreclosures" — when in fact the AP was quoting the Obama campaign on that score.

In recent weeks, the Obama camp has repeatedly charged that Hillary was pro-NAFTA during her husband's presidency, an allegation the Obama campaign has used to try to weaken her support among a critical constituency, working-class voters. The Hillary camp has responded by saying that Obama's sourcing for the charge was flimsy at best.

Well, a new report says that the Hillary camp is right on this one. The Huffington Post talked to biographers of the First Lady and former advisers to Bill Clinton, and they all said Hillary was against the trade deal the whole time, even if she was constrained from saying so publicly.

The full piece is available here.

A new report from inside the Hillary campaign says that tensions between top advisers Mark Penn and Mandy Grunwald are at full boil:

Maggie Williams, a confidante of Mrs. Clinton from when she was first lady, has moved to assert her control following the departure last weekend of former campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle. Ms. Williams is running a daily conference on what ads to put up and expanding the inner circle with advisers from the old Clinton White House.

But the campaign has something of a shellshocked feel, as staffers privately chew over a blowup last week where internal frictions flared into the open. Clinton campaign operatives say it happened as top Clinton advisers gathered in Arlington, Va., campaign headquarters to preview a TV commercial. "Your ad doesn't work," strategist Mark Penn yelled at ad-maker Mandy Grunwald. "The execution is all wrong," he said, according to the operatives.

"Oh, it's always the ad, never the message," Ms. Grunwald fired back, say the operatives. The clash got so heated that political director Guy Cecil left the room, saying, "I'm out of here."

The frustration with Penn's messaging seems noteworthy. Even more so, perhaps, is the fact that insiders from notoriously well-disciplined Hillaryland are now leaking to the press about what's happening in private meetings.

Mitt Romney is officially joining in the Republican effort to unite behind John McCain. CNN reports that Romney will endorse McCain today at an event scheduled for 3:30 p.m. ET in Boston, and will ask his delegates to vote for McCain.

When he dropped out last week, Romney said that a continued primary fight would delay the launch of a national effort against the Democrats. After a brief period of mourning for his campaign, endorsing McCain was the next logical step, and definitely a necessary one if he wants to remain in the good graces of the Republican establishment.

The other day, in an oddly overlooked post, CNN's Political Ticker reported that two sources close to Al Gore had said he'd ruled out endorsing during this Dem primary season.

I've just spoken to a source close to Gore myself, and this person confirmed that the report is correct: Gore will not endose.

Gore spokesperson Kalee Krider declined to comment to Election Central.

CNN reported this as the reason for Gore's decision:

With Sen. John Kerry and Bill Clinton both aligned to a candidate, Gore has a role to serve as the neutral elder statesman in the party.

If an agreement needs to be struck between Clinton and Obama down the road, Gore is in position to be the likely facilitator of that discussion.

My source says the report is correct. Basically, Gore appears to be preserving for himself the option of stepping in and declaring a winner in the event of a war over superdelegates, and thus being seen as a kind of mediating figure, rather than as someone trying to influence the outcome.

Today's Rasmussen tracking poll for the national Democratic race is even worse for Hillary Clinton than yesterday's was: Obama 49% (+3), Clinton 37% (-4). This is the first time ever for this poll to have shown Obama with a double-digit lead.

Rasmussen's general election match-ups show Obama to be clearly the stronger nominee against John McCain for now:

Obama (D) 46% (+0), McCain (R) 42% (+2)
McCain (R) 48 (+2)%, Clinton (D) 41% (-1)

In a sign that the spin wars over the super-delegates are starting to heat up in a big way, MoveOn has just jumped into the fight, sending out a mass email asking supporters to sign a petition urging super-delegates to back whoever wins the popular vote.

"The superdelegates are under lots of pressure right now to come out for one candidate or the other," reads the petition from MoveOn, which has endorsed Obama. "We urgently need to encourage them to let the voters decide between Clinton and Obama -- and then to support the will of the people."

MoveOn says that if they get 200,000 signatures this week, they'll publish the petition as an ad in USA Today.

Late Update: A MoveOn spokesperson says that the criterion the supers should use to determine the will of the people is whoever is ahead in pledged delegates at the end of the day.

The mystery endorsement that the Obama campaign has been touting all morning turns out to be former GOP Senator Lincoln Chafee, the Associated Press reports.

It's been known for some time now that Chafee was mulling an endorsement of Obama.

Rhode Island's primary is on March 4th. While Chafee's endorsement reinforces Obama's unity theme, it bears mentioning that the guy who unseated Chafee -- Senator Sheldon Whitehouse -- endorsed Hillary.

The new Quinnipiac poll shows that Hillary is hanging onto big leads in Ohio and Pennsylvania, two of the three firewall states that are now key to her hopes of stopping Obama's momentum and turning the race around.

Among likely Dem primary voters in Ohio, Hillary leads Obama 55%-34%. And in Pennsylvania she leads 52%-36%.

Tellingly, Hillary leads among women by more than 20 points in both states. Quinnipiac frames the challenge for Obama ahead this way: "With Sen. Obama closing the gap, the winner in Pennsylvania probably will depend on whether blacks, young people and college graduates in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh can turn out in sufficient strength to overcome Sen. Clinton's strong lead among blue collar voters and women."

Key point: These polls were taken from Feb. 6th-12th -- before Obama's resounding wins in the Potomac Primary. So whatever momentum he gained then is not reflected in these numbers.

Hillary Clinton has a new ad running in Texas, touting her work to secure health benefits on behalf of National Guard veterans:

Given her losses this past weekend and in the Potomac, plus expected defeats in Wisconsin and Hawaii, Hillary has made the March 4 contests in Ohio and Texas, where she currently leads in the polls, into her new firewalls. Whether she can win big enough victories to undo Barack Obama's overall lead remains to be seen.

(Via Ben Smith)

Some comments yesterday from John McCain will do nothing to stop a rumor that's been going around, that he plans to resign from the Senate in order to campaign for president full time, just as Bob Dole did in 1996.

Asked by the Arizona Republic whether this is true, McCain said that he has no plans to resign "right now," but he was clearly leaving the door open:

"Look, if I have the nomination, then we will decide whether I would remain in the Senate until after I'm elected president, if I'm elected president, or not. And the time to begin that process of thinking is after I have the nomination of the party. But right now, I have no inclination to leave the United States Senate early. So that's my position at this time. But ... if and when I win the nomination, I will then make that decision. But, right now, it is my intention to remain in the United States Senate."

If McCain were to resign, state law dictates that Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat who supports Barack Obama, would have to appoint a fellow Republican to replace McCain.

An interesting statistic coming out of the Potomac Primary: Not only is Barack Obama ahead of Hillary Clinton in the total popular vote for the primaries and caucuses so far, but he's ahead even if you factor in Florida, which wasn't contested, and Michigan, where his name wasn't even on the ballot.

Here are the numbers from NBC News:

States Awarding Delegates

	Total	Vote %
Obama	9,373,334	50%
Clinton	8,674,779	46%
Others	726,095	4%

With Florida

	Total	Vote %
Obama	9,942,375	49%
Clinton	9,531,987	46%
Others	984,236	4%

With Florida and Michigan

	Total	Vote %
Obama	9,942,375	47%
Clinton	9,860,138	47%
Others	1,249,922	6%

Notice that Obama's lead holds even without counting the "Uncommitted" votes in Michigan into his column — when in fact, the Uncommitted campaign was waged by supporters of his and to a lesser extent John Edwards.

Hillary Clinton could still retake the national popular lead with strong victories in Ohio and Texas, two very large states. But even then, there would be more contests on the calendar where Obama is favored to win, leaving Obama a good chance at the vote lead when all the contests are finally over.

With stats like these, one would almost think he's become the frontrunner...

On that conference call earlier, Hillary spokesman Howard Wolfson signaled what will be the Hillary camp's main argument when the spin wars over super-delegates start in earnest: Neither candidate can win this race without super-delegates.

Wolfson repeated variations of this point multiple times on the call.

Just doing the math quickly on this, NBC calculates that Obama leads Hillary in pledged delegates, 1,078 to 969. To get to the required total of 2,025, Obama would have to win virtually all the remaining 1,000 or so non-super delegates. So, yes, the winner will obviously need super-delegates.

The Obama camp will frame the coming argument, then, by saying that as a whole, the supers should follow the will of the people and back the leader in pledged delegates. The Hillary campaign will counter that super-delegates should be left to make up their own minds as to who they think can better lead the country.

But the argument is going to get messy.

Read more »

In the wake of the news that Hillary will debate on NBC later this month, an MSNBC spokesperson confirms that Shuster won't be fired and will return to the network.

My take: As dumb and crude as Shuster's remark was, in the end this mainly was all about Chris Matthews.

Hillary Clinton's previous aura of inevitability is definitely gone — even James Carville is saying her back is against the wall now.

Speaking today to the International Builders Show, a trade conference held in Florida, Carville gave this blunt assessment of Hillary's campaign: "She's behind. Make no mistake. If she loses either Texas or Ohio, this thing is done."

Barack Obama is up on TV in Wisconsin, with this standard ad against plant closings that relocate jobs to other countries — a message that could potentially get some votes from the more blue-collar areas of the state, cutting into Hillary Clinton's usual base:

Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, is running her own ad attacking Obama for not debating her in Wisconsin.

On a conference call with reporters just now, Hillary pollster Mark Penn unveiled the campaign's new message: Hillary, he said, is in the "21st Century solutions business," while Obama is in the "problems business."

The new message coincides with a reworked stump speech that Hillary made this morning, in which she used strikingly similar language.

Separately, on the call Hillary spokesperson Howard Wolfson made it clear that he thinks the campaign has something of a winning message in the demand that Obama agree to more head-to-head debates, something the campaign desperately wants in order to blunt the impact of Obama's superior oratory on the stump.

Wolfson, in what perhaps signals recognition of the more than a dozen debates we've already had, pointed out that the two have only had a single head to head debate. "Is Senator Obama hiding from the direct comparison that voters deserve?" Wolfson asked, adding: "He will have a difficult time explaining that."

One other interesting tidbit: Penn flatly put a hard number on where the delegate count would stand after the big contests on March 4th: He said that she would be within 25 delegates of Obama.

Democrats in the red states where Barack Obama has defeated Hillary Clinton are reacting with scorn to Hillary's dismissal of the importance of those states in general elections, The Huffington Post reports.

Hillary has argued in the week since Super Tuesday that her wins in states like California and New Jersey should be seen as the greater victories in consolidating the Democratic base, and that it would take a "tsunami change in America" for some of Obama's states to ever become competitive for Democrats.

But Matt Connealy, executive director of the Nebraska Democratic Party, dismissed her spin on the situation. "I don't think even Clinton should leave these predominantly red states alone," Connealy said. "I think that is a recipe that has not proven to be effective in the past."

Connealy added that a genuine 50-state strategy would benefit the party in multiple ways, in that it would "get the base motivated and force the Republicans to spend resources."

Full piece here.