Eric, please stop with the unnecessary editorializing and speculation. I doubt that you have any particular insight into what makes a "good case" to the super-delegates. And please remember that she not only has to make a case that Obama is a weak candidate, but also that she is a stronger one--a nearly insurmountable task.

Recent polls have shown Hillary closing the gap here, though she still trails in even her best numbers. However, if she can win Indiana and deprive Obama of a North Carolina landslide, that would go a very long way in making her case to super-delegates that Obama is really a weak candidate.

My local impression is that black voters are really determined to see Obama elected. This is a waste of resources, and there are very few persuadable black voters left.

The way I see it, Clinton's folks aleady set the bar for a "big" victory at 9.2%. A perfect storm for Hillary would hold Obama to 35% of the white vote, 85% of the black vote, with black voters only 35% of the electorate. That gives Obama a NC floor of 52.5%, without taking heavy early voting into account (which even SUSA pegs at 57/39 Obama).

As with the national delegate count, there's just way to get around the math.

shameless eric, shameless

that would go a very long way in making her case to super-delegates that Obama is really a weak candidate.

I deride your prognosticating abilities. No prognosticator you!

"that would go a very long way in making her case to super-delegates that Obama is really a weak candidate."

Didn't you just post about Obama having most of the super delegates already supporting him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41nDcTF9iC0

Second try to post the link.

Eric, you had to know that last line would make a bunch of people crazy.

Why, because it is BS editorializing just designed to stir the pot. Hillary by 2 in Indiana, Obama by 10 in NC....where does that leave us? Right where we are now, with Hillary behind, and no path to the nomination that doesn't involve splitering the party.

Yeah, she's practically a shoo-in.

And what, exactly would make the case to the superdelegates that Hillary Clinton is really a weak candidate? Being 150+ behind in pledged delegates, maybe? Losing 30 out of 45 contests, perhaps?

That makes sense, Obama wins twice as many states as her, and he wins many of his by huge landslides, and HE is the weak candidate.

I do love that you eat up their spin.

Here's Maya's tribute to Hillary written after the Potomac primaries when the media was saying all was lost for Hillary - simple, heartfelt and steeped in simple truths. Another reason why I love Dr. Angelou:

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may tread me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise.

This is not the first time you have seen Hillary Clinton seemingly at her wits' end, but she has always risen, always risen, don't forget she has always risen, much to the dismay of her adversaries and the delight of her friends.

Hillary Clinton will not give up on you and all she asks of you is that you do not give up on her.

There is a world of difference between being a woman and being an old female. If you're born a girl, grow up, and live long enough, you can become an old female. But to become a woman is a serious matter. A woman takes responsibility for the time she takes up and the space she occupies. Hillary Clinton is a woman. She has been there and done that and has still risen. She is in this race for the long haul. She intends to make a difference in our country. Hillary Clinton intends to help our country to be what it can become.

She declares she wants to see more smiles in the family, more courtesies between men and women, more honesty in the marketplace. She is the prayer of every woman and man who longs for fair play, healthy families, good schools, and a balanced economy.

She means to rise.

Don't give up on Hillary. In fact, if you help her to rise, you will rise with her and help her make this country the wonderful, wonderful place where every man and every woman can live freely without sanctimonious piety and without crippling fear.

Rise, Hillary.

Rise.

Is it just me, or does the ad sound like it's describing Obama more than Hillary?

"She dares to say, human beings are more alike than we are unalike."

I mean, Obama doesn't have a monopoly on this kind of talk, obviously, but I wonder if people will see this as an honest ad, or just a blatant appeal to Obama voters.

They can't let it go, their candidate is so gone at this point in terms of electibility that they can't figure out what has happened. Look, he just hasn't worn well and the chickens are coming home to roost. Dennis Kucinich, where are you?

How would that show that Obama is a "weak candidate?"
My what a short memory the media has: was it really just seven months ago that Clinton led by double digit in all national polls; was called "the inevitable candidate"; had outraised everyone else; has a former President campaigning her and now SHE is losing in contests won; delegate count: and popular vote by an upstart - an African American man raised by a single mother ?

You tell me who's the weaker candidate!

Who's Maya Angelou ? Somehow I don't think she's gonna be swayin' too many AA voters in North Carolina.

Well, I guess maybe poetry doesn't appeal to everyone, but maybe that's because they haven't really read much of it.

There are millions of people that do read it and enjoy it.

Poets have always had their critics, as like visual artists, they reflect their times. Although the ones that endure also capture something of the commonality of those experiences.

Reading Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, and Charles Sorley helped me to understand the tragedy of war more than any graphic news program could have.

Poetry isn't something most people get in their educations. For instance, "Fog" is in every school kids textbook, but very little, if anything else of Sandburg is taught. Maya Angelou, onoh, is a staple in High School Literature Books, and rightly so. I find it hard to believe that people haven't heard of her.

The great, perhaps greatest, poet of the 20th Century, William Buster Yeats, was very politically involved, indeed. It is a good platform to address social injustices, and their voices are generally infuencial, as their readers, like them, tend to reflect on matters both great and small.

Belittling the talent of Ms. Angelou only exposes the writer to the observation that they aren't terribly familiar with her writings. That's a shame.

http://www.poemhunter.com/maya-angelou/

Try reading some. Enlightenment comes to those that seek it out.

Maya Angelou with her friend Rev. Wright.

OK. Clintoniacs; start your guilt by association engines on this one. You know, since Maya and Wright are friends, then what does that make Hillary. You know the rules of the smear game. You invented them. I dare you to now apply them to Hillary.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41nDcTF9iC0

Fair enough, Betty. Top two poets? Top two novelists? Top two short story writers? Give us a frame of reference. Three is okay if they flip around on you sometimes. Mine do that to me. Also fair to group by period.

How about one book on a desert island for the rest of your life?

Last time I thought about it: Blood Meridian.

You?

A poem from William Butler Yeats. Mr. Yeats was a snob, a great one, but a snob never the less. He was the keener at the wake for feudal Ireland.

A PRAYER FOR MY DAUGHTER

ONCE more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregory's wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack- and roof-levelling wind.
Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
And for an hour I have walked and prayed
Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.

I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour
And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,
And-under the arches of the bridge, and scream
In the elms above the flooded stream;
Imagining in excited reverie
That the future years had come,
Dancing to a frenzied drum,
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.

May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend.

Helen being chosen found life flat and dull
And later had much trouble from a fool,
While that great Queen, that rose out of the spray,
Being fatherless could have her way
Yet chose a bandy-legged smith for man.
It's certain that fine women eat
A crazy salad with their meat
Whereby the Horn of plenty is undone.

In courtesy I'd have her chiefly learned;
Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned
By those that are not entirely beautiful;
Yet many, that have played the fool
For beauty's very self, has charm made wise.
And many a poor man that has roved,
Loved and thought himself beloved,
From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.

May she become a flourishing hidden tree
That all her thoughts may like the linnet be,
And have no business but dispensing round
Their magnanimities of sound,
Nor but in merriment begin a chase,
Nor but in merriment a quarrel.
O may she live like some green laurel
Rooted in one dear perpetual place.

My mind, because the minds that I have loved,
The sort of beauty that I have approved,
Prosper but little, has dried up of late,
Yet knows that to be choked with hate
May well be of all evil chances chief.
If there's no hatred in a mind
Assault and battery of the wind
Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.

An intellectual hatred is the worst,
So let her think opinions are accursed.
Have I not seen the loveliest woman born
Out of the mouth of plenty's horn,
Because of her opinionated mind
Barter that horn and every good
By quiet natures understood
For an old bellows full of angry wind?

Considering that, all hatred driven hence,
The soul recovers radical innocence
And learns at last that it is self-delighting,
Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,
And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will;
She can, though every face should scowl
And every windy quarter howl
Or every bellows burst, be happy still.

And may her bridegroom bring her to a house
Where all's accustomed, ceremonious;
For arrogance and hatred are the wares
Peddled in the thoroughfares.
How but in custom and in ceremony
Are innocence and beauty born?
Ceremony's a name for the rich horn,
And custom for the spreading laurel tree.