Looks like the Clinton camp has finally begun to accept the truth due to the superdelegate haul Obama racked up yesterday, according to the San Jose Mercury News. The paper reports that the campaign is changing it's tactics as a result. Quotes below...

Oh my God!!!Yes, they have already called it based on exit polling alone. CNN states that this is big, because it is a bigger state with a lot more delegates. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOt.

This means it's a big win folks. When was the last time Hillary won a race this way? Was Arkansas called as soon as the polls closed?  

Ok guys, I didn't see any other diaries up for Obama's appearance on MTP yet so here goes. The show will begin in less than 10 minutes on the East Coast, so those of us who are early risers out here, and "unchurched" need to pitch in here for our fellow kossacks in later time zones and without cable.

Will Russert jump on the Wright bandwagon, or will he ask some questions that really matter? Has Obama turned a corner, or will the MSM continue it's efforts to take Obama down and elevate Hillary in his place?

And most importantly of all, how will our guy do?

Update [2008-5-4 10:1:52 by PLS]: Obama hits it out of the park! Timmeh stuck to Wright questions and other bullshit for the first 22 minutes before moving on to the gas tax pander, ethanol vs food etc. Obama handles all questions very well, and showed a great grasp of the real issues when Russert finally moved on.

After days of bad news perhaps things are looking up. Today sure started out bad, with all the cable shows babbling about Wright nonstop. But now the results from Guam look great and Obama is on track to pick up 3 more Supers next week according to Sweet;

Washington...When the Democratic party of Illinois meet next week to finish  filling out the delegate slate, Sen. Barack Obama will pick up 3 more Superdelegates, according to Steve Brown, a spokesman for the state party chair...

The three are Daley, Currie, and Stroger.

Earlier on Hardball Tweety talked to "folks on the ground" from Indiana and NC, one each, as it turns out. I am a little shady on the details, due to my habit of reading this blog while Hardball is on, but I think the guy from Indiana was a reporter from a major Indiana Paper.

What he told Chris down below.

Update [2008-5-2 20:32:10 by PLS]: Kind commenter's have set me straight. The guy from NC was the reporter. The guy from Indiana is Howey, of the Howey Politics Indiana; Daily briefings on Indiana politics blog.

http://www.howeypolitics.com/

Seriously, what does "Activist" mean anyway? Someone who is politically active instead of passive. And what's another word for a person who is active in the public sphere? Citizen. It's really that simple. Hillary doesn't want active citizens, the kind of citizens our founding fathers were relying on to preserve democracy, she wants the majority to remain "low information voters" who can be easily distracted and led around by the nose. She wants the system to continue that allowed George Bush to win because "There isn't a dimes worth of difference between Al Gore and George Bush", and because he would be more fun to drink a beer with.

Who is the elitest now, Hillary?

Interesting how these people always project their true natures onto the opposition, isn't it?

Thank god, a slight ray of light appears. Yes, Russert started off with the "awful" mistake Obama made by bringing up the wedge issues in a very in artful way... and the discussion pissed me off royally. Obama's only defender was Bob Shrum, of all people.

The LA Times has put out a blockbuster piece detailing the back story on Richardson endorsement, from the man himself, Bill Richardson. This is a must read, as Bill gives a blow by blow account of how he strayed. As with more and more folks, his shift after nearly endorsing Clinton was a combination of being won over by Obama... combined with a growing unease about the Hillary campaign. What really fascinated me though, was the fact that the more I read the more it reminded of a love triangle, with the Clinton's in the roll of the jilted spouse that Richardson left for Obama.

More plus quotes below.  

Ok, so the actual story was about the dismal superdelegate math, which has turned against Hillary too. Sure, she still leads by 32, but that ain't much of a cushion when 2 or 3 supers seem to be breaking his way per week. The latest is Margaret Campell, a Native American state legislator in Montana, according to the Times. Campell was the 69th superdelegate Obama has picked up since "super" Tuesday, while Clinton has lost a total of 2.

CW has always been that Richardson would be a good VP pick for Hillary, but not for Obama because we could not have two "minorities" on the ticket. I must confess I thought so myself, until I saw them together on the stage yesterday. Tweety actually brought this idea to mind when he commented about how proud he was to see them up there together, having such an impact  in America, and I had to admit that they did look great side by side. Just like the Clinton/Gore ticket, in which two "Southern new Democrats" ran together, a Richardson pick would fit perfectly with Obama's "unity" theme.  

How close? 2,591,401 views, only 8,599 shy of the mark. This thing is still taking off, after all, this is only Friday. Barack gave this speech on Tuesday. Perhaps it is slowing down a bit, as it had been viewed 1.6 million times in the first 24 hours I believe. That number has more than doubled though, as of 7:30 pm EST this Good Friday.

And as Rashomon diaried earlier, a new CBS/NYTimes poll found that 7 in 10 voters who had been exposed to Obama's speech, thought he did a good job talking about race and explaining his relationship with his pastor. That's a big 70% folks! Actually, coincidentally (perhaps) that's roughly the same percentage of voters that Barack won in his victorious race for the Senate.

http://www.dailykos.com/...

Keep pushing the video guys, e-mail it to your friends, or harass your fellow employees like I did. The good news is that our guy is going to prevail here. There is plenty of time for Obama's views on this to filter down to the "low information voters".  

The State Department is implicated. Someone in the Bush Administration has rummaged through his file. Two contract employees supposedly are being implicated by a Spokesman for the State Department. Apparently you are denied access unless you have a "need to know". This is on Keith currently, and Howard Fineman says "This is highly significant", and it "overshadows the other stuff we have been talking about the last few days". The breach occurred in January, just when Obama was on the rise. The two employees have been fired, and there is a investigation going on.

Say goodbye to Wright, this will shift the debate.

Olbermann has this as the 4th story I think. Story up now is about Clinton's embrace of McCain, and her belittling of Obama. This is going to be a great show folks.

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Cheesy I know, but I wanted everyone to see this before it was too late.

Obama is holding an event in Parma Ohio, in a school I think. Larege enthusiastic crowd, although it does appear to be a high school. He had to work very hard to get the crowd to settle down. This will be a "Town hall" style meeting, so he is giving a short speech, and then he will answer questions.

I am going to fill in with some X's now, so you guys miss as little as possible.

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According to the Dallas Morning News, Gore and "other Senior Democrats" are discussing getting involved in the race to prevent the dreaded Super delegate clusterfuck. Quotes from the DMN below;  

Right up front, this diary was inspired by "Where I call your butt out"... and I would have commented there if not for the 400+ comments already, and besides the whole freak-out over "personality cults is a pet peeve of mine anyway.

I am a Deaniac, having gotten involved for the first time in '03... and I fit the stereotypes of a Deaniac very well. If we can get people into office that actually represent me, I will probably no longer live on this blog. I care about GLBT rights, because I am an L, I care about abortion rights because I am a woman and because both my mother and my sister had backstreet abortions, etc... But I don't care enough to live here full time. I will always be more active than I used to be, but that's because I am more conscious now of my responsibilities as a citizen. I am here because I am a citizen, not because I am an "activist" in a traditional sense, or because I am a rabid partisan. In the past, the guys I got excited about never got off the ground, but they could be Dems or Republicans. They were Powell, Cuomo, and McCain. What does all this have to do with my provocative title? Answers below.

My guess is that this is a very important time for the campaign as we shift from retail to wholesale. I know Obama has  organized well in many states, but Obama is a retail politician, Hillary has been sold as inevitable for way over a year, and she has universal name recognition. Clinton is a resume, Obama a persona. In order to close the sale at this stage will take ads. Now, I have heard that neither campaign has the money to really do the traditional ad blitzes, but We can change that.

Commentary later, from The Nation;

Great speeches don't matter if no one hears them. Barack Obama delivered a riveting speech about America's moral crisis this weekend, calling for a united movement to overcome the nation's moral deficit and mounting economic inequalities. Political observers praised the address, the reporters covered it--53 mentions in major papers--yet it's been largely overshadowed by the escalating fight between Obama and the Clinton's... But it turns out the public found Obama's speech anyway...While cable news shows gorge on campaign sparring, Obama's uplifting speech is absolutely dominating YouTube. The 34-minute address from Ebenezer Baptist Church is currently the fourth most viewed video in the world on YouTube, trailing two Britney Spears clips. Not only is that unusual traffic for a long political address – people also like it. On Tuesday, viewers voted it the second most "favorited" video in the world.