Excellent breakdown of the numbers (via the Jed Report) which prove that Obama can call Clinton's patently ridiculous bluff on MI and FL, and simply have them be seated at full strength. The little known gem spelled out in this diary:

Now, everyone knows that there were 55 uncommitted delegates in Michigan.  But what few seem to realize is that on April 19 in Michigan, the district conventions were held and Obama claimed 31 of the 36 uncommitted district-level delegates.  He already has them.  Here, look at the comments in this Bowers Open Left diary back from April 20th to get specific names.  Or this diary.  It's slightly painstaking, (here are 27 names, here are 3 more, here's where emptywheel cites 31) but they clearly exist.  Plus the 67 Florida Obama delegates mean that there are 98 living, breathing pledged Obama delegates from those two states.

There is no such thing as a scenario where Obama gets 0 delegates in Michigan (and DCW should really do away with Scenario 5 because it is no longer operative).  Chris Bowers has been writing about this for a long time.

Time to take out the trash.

- dave //

Hard not to sit up and take notice of stories like this from the Washington Post (via MSNBC). Given the apparent antipathy of Appalachia and the Rust Belt (see, e.g., DHinMI's post or Al Giordano's before it), which the Clinton campaign hasn't shied away from stirring up--with nods and winks and sometimes even bald-faced race/racial-baiting--I just wonder how much more shrill such voices will become in the months ahead. Hate, especially the insidious and dormant kind, when woken up and cornered, can lash out in unpredictable ways.

Let's all keep an eye on this; it, too, is still very much a part of who we are, Obama's conciliatory eloquence notwithstanding.

- dave //

No wonder Hillary has lately found common cause among anti-intellectuals: people who think have a nasty habit of paying attention to those annoying little things called 'details' and tend to find bald-faced contradiction and hypocrisy anathema. Thanks, Keith, for telling it like it is.

"But, eh, what can you do?" so the argument goes. "All politicians engage in convenient prevarication and hyperbole, no?" Actually, no: not all politicians are made of the same stuff. I reject the argument of equivalence between Obama and Clinton unequivocally.