The time for Superdelegates to make this shift is right after a pivotal election, not just before. They could have done it after Super Tuesday because momentum was with Obama. The could have done it after Ohio and Texas with the "mathematically inevitable argument." They could do it after Penn, IN, and NC with the mathematical argument or the "Hilary has momentum, Obama self destructed" argument depending on how these contests turn out.

But to have a large number of SD come out now, 5 days before a hard fought primary when no voters have voted in 5 weeks, would smack of shutting down the voters.

As I read it, the point of mentioning these shows was not to say McCain can stay up late but that he's "young enough at heart" to appear on these shows.

That's my read, anyhow. And frankly, he does come off quite good when he's on the Daily Show (don't watch the other two).

The quote refers to a "her recent determination to use a positive message." That was about a week, right, where she backed of her kitchen-sink, scorched-earth, 3-a.m. strategy.

Looking at the graph of African American population vs. Democratic edge, it's not at all clear that a quadratic equation (the big red curve) is the right function to fit the data.

But the data is much to scattered to make a strong conclusion of that. The green line in that plot is also interesting. That appears to be the linear fit and shows three interesting things:

1) there is a slight overall Democratic edge of about 5%

2) As Brad says, since it's basically flat (no slope), if that's the correct function, the % of blacks in a state and whether it leans democratic or not is pretty much uncorrelated.

3) If the red curve is correct, the Democratic advantage is highest when the % of African Americans in a states hits about 15%.

You need to do other statistical tests to see if using a curve vs. a straight line is warranted. There's no indication in that plot that that's been done.

The 2nd to last paragraph reads as if that is a quote from Osama bin Laden. It is not, it is a quote from the article in the link.

Sorry, but you're wrong. It is not 97.whatever percent.

Assuming that the errors are Gaussian and they've corrected or accounted for all systematic effects (the real kicker in these polls), lets run through some examples.

Candidate A leads B by 2% and the margin of error is 2%. This means there is a 68% chance that A leads B by anywhere from 0-4%. There is a 16% chance that A leads B by more than 4%. There is a 16% chance that B leads A by some amount.

There is a 95% chance that the real results are somewhere in the range of A trailing B by 2% to A leading B by 6% (original lead +/- twice the margin of error).

I'd love to see a real examination of how often election results fall into the window suggested by polls. Not as often as they should based purely on the statistics, I bet. Which means that pollsters are constantly under estimating systematic effects.

Accounting for only statistical differences, you need to ask

1000 people to get 4.5% error

2000 people to get 3.1% error

4000 people to get 2.2% error

assuming two evenly matched candidates.

Didn't Edwards raffle off trips to NoLa?

And didn't Kuchinich raffle off "dates" in 2004 when he was momentarily single?

That's because Obama promised to run a different kind of campaign and she didn't. So he has to be the choir boy while she is free to crawl into the gutter.

The key phrase was in Hillary's "Shame on you" scolding: "It is time you ran a campaign consistent with your messages in public, that’s what I expect from you."

Earlier (prior to Super Tuesday) I heard some pundit or another mention that PR is winner take all. Is that true? (Something like 60 delegates?)

Not being intimately familiar with the org chart of the Obama campaign, can someone provide some context here about who these people are and what their roles are?

"Obama sent the photo to Drudge"

No, no, you've got it all wrong. Rove sent the picture to Drudge saying it was from Clinton so Clinton will lose the nomination so that McCain will beat Obama. Because Rove thinks Obama will be easier to beat than Clinton.

Oh yeah, time to put my tin foil hat back on.

I'm sure he didn't personally sit down at the typewriter to write the letter either.

I guess it depends on what the definition of "asked" is.

In the third to last paragraph, when you finally break away from the romantic gossip, you reference a commission McCain sent letters to.

Which %&$(# commission?

Moderate anonymous. Ok, I can't really see the point of anonymous in the Warroom, but it has it's place in other parts of Salon -- "Since you asked," for instance.

Instead, moderate it so that anyone posting anonymously goes into a queue where someone looks over their posting before it's allowed up. I suspect with this extra hoop, very few people will actually choose to post that way and the quality of the comment will tend to be high (as it should be before it is allowed through).