If independents comprise 23% of the registered voters in FL, yet 36.6% of 2009 registrants, then either people are discontent with both parties, or there are "conservatives" who see the Republican brand as tarnished, but may still vote Republican.

If 65% or more of new independent registrants leaned Republican, then there would be no growing vote advantage. That may not be the case, but I would not categorize this as a growing Democratic advantage until polling is done to show how recently registered FL independent voters lean.

I'm elated, but I hope Obama is as aware as I think he will be that the Republicans will claw, steal, and manipulate with every fiber of their being to get back in power, damned be the nation.

I also hope he is smart enough to have all the privately installed and maintained White House computers replaced with NSA secured computers and that the NSA people involved are highly vetted and in no way associated with any neoCons - especially Cheney.

I also hope that once Bush is out of office and can no longer pardon anyone, Obama greenlights the investigation and prosecution of anyone who committed serious crimes against the American people during the Bush administration.

motors after November 4th.

Someone should get a court order to preserve all documents, even though they I believe are legally required to do so. Not that that will stop them from hiding the piles of evidence from the mountains of crime.

that lobbyists won't get past the front gate with something like.

"Of course they're not going to get past the front gate. They won't even get out the front door - heck I bet they won't even make it out of the Oval Office before John McCain pulls them back in and hands these lobbyists who are running his campaign your life savings, and your pensions and your health care and your social security and your sons and daughters to fight in a war that should never have been waged and all for their own corporate profits."

For a limited time only, a once in an election year offer to believe that Hillary Clinton has won the popular vote!

* Offer excludes the states of Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, the Texas Caucus, Washington, and Wyoming.

Offer also excludes any votes for Obama in Michigan.

A 403,195 NET vote advantage for Obama does not apply.

Offer expires June 3.

The important thing about the entire situation is to NOT MENTION OBAMA OR CLINTON. While the outcome may ultimately be affected by the decision of the committee (though numerically it appears that it will not be), the individual candidates are not relevant to this situation. The matter needs to be determined as a matter of precedent so that states do not break DNC rules at will in the future because there is no enforcible penalty for doing so, and so that no candidate is punished for following the rules, and so that candidates who don't will realize that they can't change the rules mid-course or undermine the process knowing thay get away with it. The DNC must impose some penalty on violating states and simultaneously not undermine candidates following the rules to have any credibility to oversee this process in the future. The precedent set is separate from the candidates and the committee should make it clear that the positions of the candidates in this matter is not relevant because they will be arguing from the passionate position of their own campaigns, not from the reasoned position of ensuring that punitive measures are enforced sufficient to give weight to the rules and authority of the DNC and to ensure that states in the future see it in their best interest to follow those rules and recognize that authority.

Ironically, if all the caucus states had primaries instead, the projected popular vote lead for Obama would be 1.3 Million, instead of 750 Thousand.

Anyway, since Obama is winning EVERY metric, (except he is losing the states won by Hillary Clinton - she is winning among those states), then Senator Clinton being chosen by the superdeletates would be far more like the Supreme Court's choice for Bush over Gore, even though Gore won the popular vote, and upon recounting Florida, the electoral vote.

RE MI: I find it laughable that Clinton claims a huge victory in MI, and given her assertion of how the primary wins somehow predict GE performance, then clearly Obama should put "uncommitted" as his choice for VP, since next to Clinton, that's the candidate who did best in MI and would help Obama carry the state.

I guess Illinois is a "small state"? And Hillary did grow up in Park Ridge, IL after all - native daughter?

How do you define "win" in Texas? If you don't consider a delegate win a victory, then would you subtract Rush Limbaugh's Project Mayhem Republican crossover voters from Senator Clinton's totals?

(Using the same logic of Obama has to win California and New York in the Democratic Party primary) If Senator Clinton can't win a large number of smaller states in the primary whose electoral college total is greater than the big states and that are collectively critical for a Democratic win in November, does that not make her unable to win?

Oh, and don't forget Senator Clinton's massive 55 point blow out of Obama in Michigan. Wow - that had to be one of the hardest fought races ever! I can't believe Obama got zero votes. They must really, really hate him in Michigan. Maybe he should offer "Uncommitted" a spot on the ticket to help carry MI for the Dems in November.

I don't understand. What does the Party owe Clinton - the nomination?

Were she any other person than who she is, everyone would have been demanding she exit the race by now.

If Clinton had won twice as many states as Obama and nearly a million more popular votes and a dozen contests in a row and led Obama in delegates and won more delegates in every single election day since New Hampshire and Obama needed to win 70 percent of remaining districts to win and was polling better than Obama against McCain in nearly every matchup, and yet Obama vowed to take it all the way to the convention for a floor fight and was repeatedly talking up McCain - what would the reaction be of every Democrat in power? They would be demanding he exit the race immediately. I think Clinton is cashing in on her equity. She may be burning through it, but she is getting equity for who she is.

And many loyal Democrats still believe the triangulating, centrist, swing-state policies of the Clintons are what lost the Democratic Congress, governorships, and "red" states for nearly a generation. In fact, the DNC only recently rejected the Clinton 50% + 1 swing state strategy and went with a 50 state strategy that is paying huge dividends and we are actually winning - and a lot of people have had it with Mark Penns and Terry McAuliffes, and the ineffectiveness of their strategy that is partially responsible for the fall from inevitability of the Clinton campaign. Darwin is once again vindicated.

What else, pray tell, do 'we' owe her?

Okay, then show me the vetting of the Clintons for all of their activities SINCE 2001. I guess $109,0000,000 is nothing in personal gain?

They have only just released parts of their tax records which have been undisclosed since 2001. They have not revealed details of multi-tens of million dollar donations to the Clinton Library. They have not released details of the First Lady's documents and schedule. I'm not saying there's any scandal hidden within, except that it has not yet been vetted and to claim that Republican nastiness from 1993 to 2000 means that it has been vetted is false. And to think that the Republicans would unleash anything they know now rather than waiting until she had the nomination and was irrecoverably close to the election is to not appreciating their nefarious cunning.

I think the whole nature of politics is more base and Machivellian than ever, and as much as I think the harassment Clinton has received from the Republicans is wrong and often nefarious, I do not believe that she has been more vetted than Obama for her activities over the past 7 years. I don't think I owe her any added unconditional support because of Republican attacks and it is not my place to be a Clintonbot loyalist and ignore the conduct and management of her campaign. As I've said a million times before, I was a supporter, advocate, and defender of Hillary Clinton right until she started campaigning like Rove. Her repeated bolstering of McCain while attacking Obama made it clear that she puts her own ambition above the Democratic Party or the nation, and I find it VERY upsetting how people in her campaign have not stepped back and demanded more from her than trying to prove she can campaign like a Republican.

I laugh at the idea that Clinton has faced the GOP. I laugh at the concept that she has been vetted. Were she able to somehow acquire the nomination at this point, I'm willing to bet the Republicans have been sitting on 7 years of dirt that will make the Ken Star investigation look like a Q&A session. Every business deal, associate, hundred million dollar library donation, trip, pardon, indiscretion, misstatement, distortion, and tactic will be exposed and exploited. Not to mention that Clinton will now have to defend her own false claims with regard to Northern Ireland, Kosovo, Bosnia, China, her healthcare nightmare story, her "criticism" of the war, her initial vote on Iraq, false anti NAFTA claims, and her Colombian trade dealing lobbyist campaign strategist - in addition to the mass of dreck we can expect the Republicans to dig up or assert.

Now it's possible that Clinton has some dirt on Obama that would end his campaign, but I have the strange feeling that she is just the type of person to have already used it. If Obama can endure and succeed against the opposition research of the Clinton machine, when his own Party's primary challenger is bolstering the Republican over him, and he can survive all the back-door dealing, push-polling, Nevada shenanigans, Muslim claims, Rezko claims, Wright claims, drug use claims, false claims about his abortion record and NAFTA record by Clinton all the way back to digging up his kindergarten papers - barring that Clinton has thrown the kitchen sink except for the faucet - I'm willing to bet he's been pretty well vetted.

And as for facing the GOP - better to face the GOP than to "triangulate" and become them. Better to take them on in your own battle field than to try to out-hawk and out-experience and out-national security credential McCain. With one self induced blunder after another, if Clinton can't even beat 'Mr. Inexperienced' with all of the overwhelming advantages she started with, then how could she ever hope to take on the full force of the GOP?

Clinton has run her campaign versus how masterfully Obama has run his, I would argue it is Clinton that needs the seasoning on how to be an effective leader. That she started with every single advantage from money to party machinery to name recognition, to a front loaded primary schedule to having a former President who was formerly widely respected campaigning for her to having a large number of early and substantial endorsements to having all the people and generals and operatives President Clinton ever appointed to call favors from - and yet, she is being toppled by an "inexperienced" kid from Chicago?

Being a leader does not mean knowing everything - it means being able to pick up a phone or call a meeting and get any information you need, then having the qualities that allow you to make effective and forward thinking decisions, to surround yourself with people who are supremely competent and knowledgeable rather than people who are supremely loyal. It means being able to put the nation and the Party's interests and the minority and oppressed and underrepresenteds' interests  above your own and do what is for the greater good in the longer term. It means being able to inspire, motivate, unify, and energize citizens and peoples and nations to actually do the things you want, lest your solutions die on the vine, and to combine their energies in the synergistic effort that put us on the moon and won WWII rather than exploit the divisions of humanity and act as the spike in the crack that divides further with each blow of the hammer.

Judging by the effectiveness, inclusiveness, enthusiasm, and outreach and movement building of the 3 contenders campaigns thus far, I'm willing to bet that Obama, with his leadership style, could get more done in a better way with longer lasting and deeper reaching results than Clinton and McCain combined. But that's only based on the common denominator of building 100+ million dollar organizations of hundreds of thousands of stakeholders in a competitive nationwide race. I could be wrong.

HIGHLY superstitious. He has all kinds of quirks and rituals that would get in the way of someone making serious, critical, rapid, and well reasoned judgments. As noted on MyDD previously.

Certainly, he would have to deny any superstition he's accused of that seems possible to assuage voters fears that in a time of crisis, he could go scrambling for his lucky underwear, or have to say "yes" three times before saying "no" or wait for a clock to say 12:34 or on the hour before making an important decision. Superstition is great if we were electing our chief priest of the Mayan sun god, but this is the President of the United States and we don't need someone playing superstitious crazy games with nuclear warheads.

Then again, we have to see how many Republicans vote for Senator Clinton.

After all, 24% of her support in Mississippi was from Republicans, as were 50,000+ in TX. With so much time to switch party affiliation before the election, there could be a lot of Republicans voting for Clinton in the closed Democratic primary and swinging the vote towards her by a fair margin.

There should be a provision that you had to be a registered Democrat as of the day McCain secured the Republican nomination.

See this story in DailyKos for more complete analysis.

Exactly! The press should vet E V E R Y B O D Y ! ! !

Of course they will do it in a one side at a time manner (to the leader) intended to bring the race to as close to a dramatic 50%/50% brawl as they can, but they should do it none the less, on a continual basis, and without bias - exclamation point!