The Prodigal King Returns.

“I feel my calling here goes above basketball. I have a responsibility to lead, in more ways than one, and I take that very seriously…I want kids in Northeast Ohio…to realize that there’s no better place to grow up. Maybe some of them will come home after college and start a family or open a business. That would make me smile. Our community, which has struggled so much, needs all the talent it can get.”

Hear ye, hear ye…What a difference four years makes. With a touch of class noticeably bereft from 2010’s televised The Decision, LeBron James announces his return to the Cleveland Cavaliers. “In Northeast Ohio, nothing is given. Everything is earned. You work for what you have. I’m ready to accept the challenge. I’m coming home.”

The state of Ohio is rightfully rejoicing at the return of their prodigal son. Unfortunately, to make the math work on the deal, Cleveland also had to take on the Republican Convention in 2016. That one’s gonna hurt.

Into the Memory Hole. | For the Record.

“‘She’s no longer campaigning for president,’ said Clinton spokesman Mo Elleithee. ‘She’s focused on her work in the Senate, campaigning for Senator Obama and other Democrats.’” With the Dems back on the same team, the Clinton campaign scrubs its website of anti-Obama material from the primary era. As such, this seems as good a time as any to definitively put to rest these Penn-inspired primary fictions as well:

  • Sen. Obama won’t be able to compete in crucial swing states.“: He’s currently up in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, as well as Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Colorado, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Iowa, and Virginia…and does Montana count?

  • Sen. Obama can’t even win the big Dem states“: The most recent polls have Obama up 28 in California and up 20 in New York.

  • Sen. Obama has a ‘Latino problem’“: Obama currently beats McCain by 30 among Hispanics, 59%-29%. (This is already better than Kerry in 2004.)

    So R.I.P., goofy primary reasoning. You won’t be missed.

  • The Early Trifecta. | Here comes the Flood?

    Keeping in mind that polls five months out from Election Day are basically meaningless, some good news on the swing-state front: Sen. Obama currently leads in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida. (What, you mean Mark Penn’s swing-state argument was bogus? Who knew?)

    This would seem to hinder McCain’s likely strategy of using Florida as a safe electoral base from which to make incursions into possible Obama territory in Michigan, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, and elsewhere — Now, the mythical maverick will have to play serious defense in the Sunshine State. (Again, June polls say next-to-nothing about the state of play in November, but I’m glad we’re 4-10 points up rather than 10-15 down. Plus, these numbers are in keeping with my general feeling — knock on wood — that Election Day will be a trouncing.)

    Update: More fuel for the fire. A new Newsweek poll has Obama up fifteen on McCain, 51%-36%. “The latest numbers on voter dissatisfaction suggest that Obama may enjoy more than one bounce. The new poll finds that only 14 percent of Americans say they are satisfied with the direction of the country…Obama is [also] running much stronger at this point in the race than his two most recent Democratic predecessors, Sen. John Kerry and Vice President Al Gore…In a July 2004 NEWSWEEK Poll, Kerry led Bush by only 6 points (51 percent to 45 percent). In June 2000, Gore was in a dead heat with Bush (45 percent to 45 percent)

    Update 2: It’s not an outlier. LA Times/Bloomberg also has Obama up 15 (48%-33%) in a four-way race with Nader and Barr. Against McCain only, our man’s up 12.

    The Battle Plan.

    “Clearly, and I’m being cautious, I think it’s going to be a close race. If Obama wins the 255 votes in the states where he’s favored, then to get to 270 he needs to choose from the following menu: 1) Win Ohio, which takes him to 275; 2) win in the West — Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado, for 274; 3) win the three N’s (Nevada, New Mexico, New Hampshire) for 269, plus one other state; or 4) win two of the three N’s and either Colorado or Virginia.” With the general election begun in earnest, Democratic pollster Paul Maslin surveys the electoral vote terrain for Salon.

    Alter gets it.

    “Hillary Clinton won big victories Tuesday night in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island. But she’s now even further behind in the race for the Democratic nomination. How could that be? Math. It’s relentless.” Seemingly a rarity among pundits at the moment, Newsweek‘s Jonathan Alter does the post-Tuesday math, and makes the case I outlined yesterday: the race for the Democratic nomination is over, and Barack Obama has won. “I’ve asked several prominent uncommitted superdelegates if there’s any chance they would reverse the will of Democratic voters. They all say no…The Clintonites can spin to their heart’s content about how big March 4 was for them. How close the race is. How they’ve got the Big Mo now. Tell it to Slate’s Delegate Calculator. Again.

    Blame Canada.

    “‘He said someone from Clinton’s campaign is telling the Embassy to take it with a grain of salt,’ said one participant in the conversation. The source added, ‘someone called us and told us not to worry.’” As I’m sure y’all know, one of the late-term factors redounding against Obama in Ohio was Goolsbeegate, where it seemed one of Obama’s top economic advisers had suggested to the Canadian government that the Senator’s rhetoric on NAFTA was just political hot air. Senators McCain and Clinton, of course, ran with it. (This has caused a political uproar in Canada, as the leak seemed an attempt by the right-leaning Canadian government to help out McCain.) Well, now it turns out that, not only is there less to the Goolsbee story than first appears (Canadian officials sought him out before Super Tuesday, not the reverse, as reported), but that it was Sen. Clinton’s campaign actually making overtures to the Canadians on the subject of NAFTA.

    Charming. Somehow, with Ohio come and gone, I doubt this side of the story will have much in the way of legs. But, if you needed any further indication at this late date that Sen. Clinton can be a tremendous hypocrite at times, just look to our friends to the North.

    Reality Check: It’s Over.

    Sigh. Since the spin levels today coming out of the Clinton camp are reaching Iraq war proportions, let’s take a moment to review. As I said on Monday and several times before, Sen. Clinton had a very tough task before her last night. Unfortunately for her candidacy, she failed to accomplish it. The Clinton campaign did not “turn a corner” last night, unless you mean they’ve now rounded the corner to oblivion. Let’s assess Sen. Clinton’s post-March 4th position by her own standard, before we collectively sign on to the notion that the Clinton “surge” is suddenly working: (Via David Plouffe on Monday.)

    “This election will come down to delegates…After March 4th, over 3000 delegates will be committed, and we project that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will be virtually tied with 611 delegates still to be chosen in Pennsylvania and other remaining states…As history shows, the Democratic nomination goes to the candidate who wins the most delegates – not the candidate who wins the most states.” — Mark Penn, February 13, 2008. (Well, he’s right about the delegates. But it’s March 5th, and they’re not tied. And Sen. Obama has won the most delegates and the most states.)

    We think that at the end of the day on March 4 we will be within 25 delegates.” — Clinton aide Guy Cecil, February 13, 2008. (They’re not. They’re down at least four times that.)

    I Think We Will Be Ahead In The Delegate Race After Texas And Ohio.” — Howard Wolfson, February 11, 2008. (They’re not. They’re down big.)

    None of these happened. While the numbers are still being crunched, it looks like Sen. Clinton picked up between 4 and 10 pledged delegates last night (depending on how the Texas caucus ultimately comes out.) She was down approximately 150 pledged delegates, and there are not enough contests left for her to feasibly make up that difference. Ohio and Texas were her last, best hope to turn things around, and — in spite of all the sorry Republicanisms of the past week — she failed to do so. As such, the race is now effectively over. Finished. Kaput. In the fridge. Our nominee is Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.

    True, some news outlets are tipping their hat to the mathematical reality today: Fournier at AP, Dickerson at Slate, the Wash Post and the New York Times. But, since all too many (ostensibly Clinton-hating) media outlets seem to be playing the idiot and rolling with her “comeback” spin today, I’ll try to explain it using a sports metaphor. Obama is up 34-7 in the fourth quarter. Clinton just scored a touchdown. The score is now 34-14, but now there’s only 2 minutes left and Obama has the ball. For all intent and purposes, he can just take a knee and run out the clock. (Not that I suggest he do so. Since the other team is playing dirty, we might as well run up the score.) Or, since we’ve been talking knockout punches of late, Obama failed to land one last night, true. But he’s way up on points and will clearly win the decision. Clinton needed to score her own knockout last night. Unfortunately, for her, she didn’t connect.

    Now, some might argue, “What’s the rush?” Why not just let the Clinton campaign continue to send dispatches from their make-believe world until the convention in September? Well, that might’ve been acceptable if Sen. Clinton had chosen to go the amiable, Huckabee route. But, she hasn’t. Rather, she’s been trying to make Obama bleed, and has now — as if her credibility wasn’t already at rock-bottomdonned the fearmongering and national security wardrobe of the Bush-Cheney GOP. In effect, she is now basically acting as a McCain surrogate. Since we can only expect her to continue this behavior for as long as we indulge her delusional fantasy that she can be the nominee, despite all evidence to the contrary, it is time for the Democratic party to collectively put its foot down.

    So, to sum up, the race is over. And, since Sen. Clinton will not withdraw gracefully, or do anything that might put the good of the party before her own desperate ambitions, it is now up to the supers to force her out. Every day they wait is another day our chances in the general election are threatened, merely for the sake of assuaging the vanity of an also-ran who is “drawing dead” and has conducted a truly terrible campaign.

    Whatsmore, despite her grasping this morning, Sen. Clinton will not be on either end of the Democratic ticket this year. In fact, now that she’s in the process of destroying any likelihood of her being Senate Majority Leader, the closest she’ll get to the White House anytime soon is if President Obama is charitable enough to let her on a Health Care Task Force of some kind. (Although, a word of warning, Mr. President-to-be: She ran the last attempt at health care reform right into the ground.)

    All O’s X’s live in Texas. | Ohio Assemble!

    Election Day: If you live in Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island, or Vermont, please consider voting (and caucusing) for Barack Obama today. Even notwithstanding all of the Clinton campaign’s bad behavior of late, it’s time to focus on Sen. McCain and the Bush-Cheney Republicans.

    24, 24 hours to go…

    “All that matters tomorrow – and we might not know the answer until later in the week – is which campaign advanced in delegates and which campaign did not, and by how much. That Clinton spokesman Wolfson is saying here that the Texas Caucuses don’t matter is your clearest indication that he thinks they’re going to get shellacked at ‘em. He’s already spinning them into ‘doesn’t-matterland’ before they’re even held. That’s because it is precisely the caucus results that will advance Obama to a greater lead among pledged delegates nationwide than he has today.” As the election season builds to a fever pitch in Ohio and Texas, Clinton sends out more attack ads, and the Clinton campaign begins trying to move the goalposts all over again to stay in the race after tomorrow night, Rural VotesAl Giordano puts things in perspective.

    In the meantime, the polls — minus Zogby, who had Obama up 13 in California, and is thus someone I’m not putting much stock in at the moment — seem to suggest Clinton is pulling away in Ohio (although not by enough to really make a dent in the delegate situation.) Texas polls are more favorable to Obama, although at least one has Clinton pulling ahead there too. But, to be clear, despite these leads (which also don’t reflect the respective ground games), neither state shows anything like the margins Clinton needs to stay mathematically viable. Her campaign may continue wheezing and sputtering for several weeks yet, but — if these numbers hold up, even with Clinton wins — the race for all intent and purposes ends tomorrow…and not a moment too soon.

    Morning in America. | Enquiring Minds.

    “On questions of substance and leadership style, Mr. Obama is the better choice. In sharp contrast to Mrs. Clinton’s antics mocking his optimism, Mr. Obama has shown that it is possible to have both hope and intellectual heft. Her campaign has confused proximity to power with work experience, selectively taking credit for her husband’s accomplishments.” The Dallas Morning News endorses Obama, as does the Cincinnati Enquirer: [I]t is Obama’s ability to reach beyond the partisan divide and gather in support that prompts The Enquirer to give him our endorsement for the Democratic nomination.” As far as Ohio and Texas go, Sen. Obama has previously earned the endorsements of the Houston Chronicle, Cleveland Plain Dealer, San Antonio Express-News, El Paso Times, and Austin American-Statesman.