It's pretty clear why Clinton is staying in the race: delegates. And it's also clear now that Florida and Michigan will have delegates that count. Even Obama is now saying that Florida's delegates will be seated prior to the convention:

Obama's got his caveats: A proposal is about to come forward from Florida, "recognizing all, or part, of Florida's 211 delegates."

As for Michigan, a proposal has been close, but it is being blocked by Clinton:

Clinton does seem to have the upper hand here, at least for now. The Obama campaign would like to end the fiasco, as shown by Obama's nod to Florida, and would like to move over the top in delegates. Clinton's position that she will not give up a delegate that she's gotten through the votes already counted, is also, like it or not, a strong argument.

The upshot of all of this is that talk of 2025 delegates being the number needed for the nomination is incorrect. Both sides are now agreeing that FL and MI will be seated prior to the convention. Whether it will be the full 2209, or somewhere in-between, isn't yet clear.

Dan Balz has a good read on the scenarios left for Clinton.

Clinton will continue on in the remaining states, trying to limit her own super delegates from flipping to Obama, and keeping the remaining ones from choosing. She will focus on gaining as many possible pledged-delegates in the remaining states, and in the MI and FL deals. It'd be best for all concerned, to wrap up FL and MI on the 31st of May, but whether that's doable is in the details.

Bowers has a look at what the delegate spread could be with the above MI proposal and FL being seated, and Obama ends with about a 100 seat pledged-delegate advantage. There are an additional 217 delegates that will also be chosen by early June, leaving only the remaining 300 super-delegates to choose.

Todd's right, that there's no reason for Clinton to believe that the SD's would then flock to her, even in the best case scenario that she closes with 3, or even 4, victories and a lead in the popular vote. What's more likely, at that point, after having gained as many pledged delegates as possible, is for Clinton to stand down and wait. At some point soon thereafter, enough SD's are likely going to give Obama a majority of whatever the final number winds up being.

That's assuming nothing between now and then drastically changes the landscape. Or even after, all the way to the convention. And that's why Clinton will wait, with as many pledged delegates as possible, because everyone knows that the SD's like Joe Andrews can change their mind, all the way up to the convention.

Chutzpah:

Cindy McCain says she will never make her tax returns public even if her husband wins the White House and she becomes the first lady.

"You know, my husband and I have been married 28 years and we have filed separate tax returns for 28 years. This is a privacy issue. My husband is the candidate," Cindy McCain, wife of Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting John McCain, said in an interview aired on NBC's "Today" on Thursday.

Asked if she would release her tax returns if she was first lady, Cindy McCain said: "No."

I believe Cindy McCain's tax returns ceased being a private issue right around the time when she kept her husband's presidential campaign alive with heavily discounted use of her own corporate jet - a practice that exploited a campaign finance law loophole and saved the campaign hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more.

She says her "husband is the candidate." But remember - last summer, McCain's candidacy was money-poor and fading. If not for the help of Cindy's vast, undisclosed wealth, John McCain might not have gone on to become his party's nominee.

John McCain has some pastor problems of his own. Certainly glad the media is holding him to the same standard...oh right...

What's going on tonight?

Update [2008-5-8 22:0:18 by Todd Beeton]:John McCain's new campaign slogan: "Vote For Me, I'm Creepy As Hell!"

On The Today Show this morning, Terry McAuliffe predicted the Democratic nominee will be known by early June.

"It'll be over early June," McAuliffe said. "We've all said we'll be together at the end. If Hillary doesn't win, Hillary, (former) President (Bill) Clinton, myself, we'll be over there helping Senator Obama. And, likewise, Senator Obama will come together to help Hillary if she's the nominee."

Despite the brave face McAuliffe and other Clinton surrogates and campaign officials are projecting in public, however, Lawrence O'Donnell says the campaign officials he's spoken to are privately resigned to the conclusion that it will be Hillary Clinton conceding the nomination to Barack Obama in June, not the other way around. He says it will all be over by June 15.

A senior campaign official and Clinton confidante has told me that there will be a Democratic nominee by June 15. [...]

Everything about our conversation implied that he had already had this reality-based discussion with Hillary. He said the Clinton campaign plan is to collect as many votes and delegates as they can right through June 3, then take no more than a week or so to make their case to the superdelegates.

As TPM reports, though, Bill may not have gotten the memo.

Indeed, today's Wall Street Journal  reports -- albeit with very weak sourcing -- that Bill Clinton is privately urging that Hillary take this all the way to the convention. And on the trail today, Bill  said that she could still win:

"We are gonna have to resolve Michigan and Florida and when we do she can win the popular vote," Clinton said...

I tend to believe O'Donnell's take on Hillary's intentions going forward. At this late date and with 3 big wins coming her way, there really isn't any reason for her to stop short of June; at the same time though, once the process is complete, there's really no reason to think superdelegates would be compelled to deliver the nomination to her, either prior to the convention or during it, and the Clinton campaign knows this.

Sam Stein at HuffPo breaks a big story - Obama is considering a campaign-imposed private donation maximum below the $2300 legal limit per individual in the general election. This is a huge signal away from public financing:

During a private fundraiser last month, Sen. Barack Obama said he was "considering" voluntarily restricting the amount of money he could raise in a general election from campaign donors.

"We need to separate money from political influence. It's an experiment in open source politics," Obama told a crowd of supporters in Silicon Valley. "One thing that I am considering, and my advisers might not like this: I may limit campaign contribution amounts per person to less than the federal limit in the general election."

As Ambinder pointed out previously, Obama could raise $150m even with the self-imposed cap. Ambinder also predicts the messaging around such a decision:

[Obama] could argue that the collective action of 1,000,000 people voluntarily deciding to contribute money to his campaign is much more democratic than a government-imposed levy on the taxpayer

Just like his rejection of PAC money, this move clearly reinforces Obama's good-government message, and provides heavy contrast to his opponent's previous spousal-fortune exploitation strategy.

SEIU bringing their considerable resources to bear on behalf of progressives in Democratic primaries could dramatically improve our party. Nate

Ned Lamont.  Donna Edwards.  Jon Tester.

Some of the most important moments in our emerging progressive movement have come during primary election campaigns.  It's in large part where we have the most leverage to shape the face of the Democratic Party.

That's why SEIU is set to endorse a "Justice for All" platform during our June Convention -- a plan that includes $150 million and a 1/4 of our organizing staff budgeted to win health care, restore the middle class, work towards ending the war, and hold politicians accountable AFTER the election.

This also includes SEIU running and RECRUITING primary challenges in some cases.  We consider our support of Donna Edwards to be a dramatic preview of the "Accountability Project."

Learn more about the central issues in the campaign, and how this works.

You should also know that in addition to Donna Edwards,  SEIU sponsored a group of relatively unknown pro-worker candidates who ousted seven incumbent Chicago Alderman allied with the Chicago Mayor Daley political machine.

We really hope to foster a partnership with you in this project.  SEIU is already a founding member of "They work for us," and we see this as a financial and organizational extension of that commitment.

I'll be around to answer any questions you might have about the program.

~Michelle Ringuette, speaking for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU)

The Politico reports that an Obama aide has confirmed the Obama campaign's plans to declare victory on May 20th, the date on which they expect to have won a majority of pledged delegates.

Their math goes like this:

According to DemConWatch, Obama has thus far won 1590.5 pledged delegates. Per the Obama projection spreadsheet, by May 20, they expect to win 13 of West Virginia's 28 pledged delegates, 23 of Kentucky's 51 and 28 of Oregon's 52 giving him a new total of 1654.5, putting him over the 1627 pledged delegate majority threshold.

Problem is, 1627 is only a majority if one assumes the total number of pledged delegates in play is 3,253, which is only the number if you don't count Michigan and Florida. The Clinton campaign, of course, rejects this number and instead insists the number of total delegates needed to win is 2,209, which would make the majority of pledged delegates threshold 1,784 (assuming a total universe of 3,566 pledged delegates including Michigan and Florida.) If the remaining contests go according to the Obama projection spreadsheet, Obama will fall well short of this number, maxing out at around 1700.

Does the Clinton campaign have an argument here? The Politico doesn't seem to think so. Look how they frame the Obama position:

The Obama campaign agrees with the Democratic National Committee, which pegs a winning majority at 2,025 pledged delegates and superdelegates--a figure that excludes the penalized Florida and Michigan delegations. The Clinton campaign, on the other hand, insists the winner will need 2,209 to cinch the nomination--a tally that includes Florida and Michigan.

But Howard Dean, chairman and mouthpiece of the DNC, had this exchange with Keith on MSNBC the other night:

Keith Olbermann: Isn't it still 2,025 according to all the rules?

Howard Dean: There's going to be a Rules Committee Meeting on the 31st of May where we're going to take up the issue of Florida and Michigan and how to deal with them. [...]

So, there's going to be some kind of a compromise is what I would predict. I can't tell you what's in it but right now the number is 2,025. On May 31st, we'll find out what the Rules Committee does and how they plan to work out seating a delegation from Michigan and Florida.

In other words, he qualified the 2025 number, allowing that the mere fact that the Rules Committee is meeting on May 31st to determine the outcome of Florida and Michigan makes the question of how many delegates it takes to win actually sort of ambiguous. This shouldn't come as much of a surprise as Dean has long rhetorically erred on the side of Michigan and Florida inclusion so as not to alienate those states' voters but in the process he may give Clinton the winning argument as Obama tries to spin a win on May 20th.

Either way, though, there's no getting around the fact that declaring victory with simply a majority of pledged delegates qualifies as moving the goal posts and changing the rules in the middle of the game, something Obama supporters have long chided the Clinton campaign for doing. So, while the Obama campaign will try to end it after Oregon and Kentucky vote on May 20, I suspect this thing will only end when Senator Clinton says it does.

So much for the notion that Barack Obama is uniquely weak among White voters. New Gallup polling puts that theory to rest as well.

Barack Obama's current level of support among white voters in a head-to-head matchup against John McCain is no worse than John Kerry's margin of support among whites against George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election.

[...]

Kerry, the Democratic nominee in 2004, lost to the Republican Bush by a 51% to 48% margin in the popular vote. In Gallup Poll Daily tracking data from May 1-5, Obama is losing to McCain among registered voters by a 46% to 45% margin. Although there is a sizable component of undecideds in the Gallup Poll tracking data (and obviously no undecideds in the 2004 exit-poll data), the margins in these two races are quite similar, with Kerry losing by three points, and Obama by one point.

This overall comparison, in and of itself, suggests that Obama, assuming he captures the Democratic nomination, begins the general-election contest in roughly the same position in which Kerry ended his unsuccessful quest in 2004 -- that is, with the prospect of a very close race.

So at a point when Obama was getting hit as hard in the media (both paid and nonpartisan) as he ever has, attacked for his relationship with a neighbor (Bill Ayers) and his former pastor (Jeremiah Wright), Obama still runs about as well as did John Kerry, who only narrowly lost the last presidential election (give him 100,000 votes in Ohio or 100,000 spread across the Mountain West -- Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado -- and he would be in the White House today). For reference, Al Gore received 42 percent of the White vote in 2000, so Obama does not run too far behind him either.

Now it's worth pointing out that neither Kerry then nor Obama today ran or runs as well as the Democrats as a whole did in 2006. According to nationwide exit polling from the midterm House elections, Republicans only carried the White vote by a 51 percent to 47 percent margin. This is to say that there appear to be a whole lot of voters within this demographic who could find themselves amenable to voting Democratic in the fall if the party can figure out its key to success during the previous election. That said, the notion that Obama is a particularly weak candidate in regards to the White vote simply just does not play out in the data.