Joan,

Regarding your point about Clinton's speech and how she's using less 'I'-language and more 'you,' 'we,' and 'us' -- I just didn't see it. Even in the three snippets you provided, there were three 'I's, one 'me', and one 'my' against three 'you's and one 'let's.' When you compare that to Obama's speech, in which he barely refers to himself at all, and you see a big contrast between a campaign built around one person (including her dreams, ambitions, qualifications, experience, successes, setbacks, and--lately--emotions), and a campaign that, at least in the way it presents itself, is built around a movement and the efforts and dreams of large groups of people.

All of this is not to detract from Clinton's win in New Hampshire, but I disagree with your assertion that her victory speech was any significant departure from ones she's given in the past, or that it was really "worth waiting for." In my opinion, the "inspiration gap" between Clinton and Obama is real, and it's not shrinking.

and it seems plausible, but how does it account for the fact that exit polls showed Clinton with only a narrow lead over Obama among voters who decided who to vote for on the last day? If a wave of undecided sympathetic women tilted for Hillary, wouldn't that show up in the exit polls?

When you list the "Available Delegates" in the second column of the "Results by State" table, are all of those delegates pledged according to the results of the caucus or primary? If not, how are they allocated?

It would be very helpful if you could at least provide some indication of which states have already pledged all of their available delegates. It's possible for readers to do the math on their own, but it would be great to have a quick visual indication, like the footnote marker you use for caucus states. Beyond that, it would be even better if you could indicate how the remaining delegates will be pledged: as in, are we just waiting for all of the votes to be counted before we know the real delegate total, or will some delegates be pledged by other means at future dates?

It's great to have a tool like this to clear up all of the confusion surrounding the convoluted delegate allocation process, but you're not all the way there yet!

Count me as one who doesn't believe that Hamilton's story is the most heartwarming thing that baseball has seen in a while.

Granted, redemption stories are great and he deserves praise for overcoming what must have been a very debilitating addiction and his incredible talent and against-all-odds success in baseball are amazing.

But - shouldn't the fact that he created his own problems in the first place count for anything? I mean, recovering from drug addiction is great, but do you know what's even better? Not using hard drugs in the first place. Once you go overboard in glorifying Hamilton's story, part of me wonders if you start diluting the message that using hard drugs is just a really really bad idea.

Maybe I'm being too cynical and harping too much on a minor issue, but I can't help wondering if Hamilton's past drug use would carry more of a stigma if he weren't such a good, wholesome, Christian, white boy.

This is absolutely not what I come to Salon.com to read. This conversation consisted of little more than rehashing of all of the conventional wisdom that has proven to be so wrong throughout this campaign season. It's right there in the very premise: "conventional wisdom" says that Obama should be crushing McCain, but he's not ... so how does conventional wisdom try to explain all of this?

None of the participants got anywhere beneath the surface veneer of public perceptions of each of the candidates: McCain = War Hero, Obama = Elitist Celebrity. Where's the discussion of the fact that polls show that Obama's stance on main issues is in line with the vast majority of Americans? Why no reference to any of the work that Nate Silver has done exposing the fallacy of the "white working-class voter" theme? And why no recognition of the role that the media themselves play in perpetuating these superficial caricatures of each candidate?

It's possible to do actual analysis of campaign trends and dynamics. But you're not going to get anywhere near that by asking political journalists and campaign operatives what their gut feelings tell them.

I agree that it's tiresome to bash Salon's columnists, who generally do an outstanding job, but this post is in need of some quality control. You end with:

"In his weekly National Journal column, Charlie Cook of the Cook Political Report walks us through what, based on current projections, we could expect. Short answer: still an Obama presidency."

But Cook's column says no such thing. His column actually concludes that 20 delegations would likely vote for Obama, 16 delegations would likely vote for McCain, and 14 delegations are "best described as toss-ups." For Obama to win the six delegation votes he'd need, he'd have to depend on some combination of Republican delegates voting for him (as in Delaware) and Democratic delegates voting against their state's election results (as in Arizona, Alaska, and the Dakotas). While that's certainly possible, it's by no means guaranteed.

Bottom line: you owe it to your readers to provide accurate synopses when you reference other articles.