HRC has won CA, NY, TX, OH and other states that tally 263 electoral votes in all. Obie has won in states that total 193. And most of those are hard core red reep states, that will not go his way in the fall. They will go to McCain, because the white conservatives in those states will outnumber the blacks that went for Obie in the primaries. THAT is your basic math!

standing ovation. Good God. Till now I thought I was the ONLY one around who still believed in the associative law of arithmetic.

re California and New York haven't elected a Republican in decades. Are you claiming they'll go for McCain if Obama takes the Democratic nod, just because Hillary won the primary? On what basis do you make this claim?

NY: Quite possibly yes.

CA: Definitely a swing state still. Most voters are independent, McCain fares well with indepedents and hispanics, who will decide the electoral fate of California by any reason. Hillary fares very well with hispanics but not Obama. Case in point even in Illinois Obama only got 50% of the hispanic vote and on the national avg he only gets about 15%. Hispanics are hard to poll and they generally don't particpate in leftie talk boards. Do you really want to take it on faith that despite some compelling evidence to the contrary that they will switch their allegiance to Obama. The same is true of NJ incidentally, another state Obama lost with a very large hispanic composition.

Now can any Dem win an election without California and New Jersey. I sure as hell don't see how, but if you do show me the math.

NY: Well, if you hadn't noticed Mrs. Clinton is extremely popular in NY, that's ALL of NY, not just NYC and composes a lot of independents and Republicans that well could vote McCain instead. NYC, excluding Long Island is the only solidly Dem area of NY, and if you remember that's the place that had Mayor Guiliani and now Mayor Bloomberg (R) and (R). There is no guarantee that NY is going to go Dem. It didn't for McGovern, Mondale, etc.

So considering that we're witnessing a campaign of unprecedented vitriol, and IMO an intraparty racical division that may never heal, do you really want to just take it on faith that Obama can count on winning these important states that he lost handily in the primary?

I wouldn't.

But I do know something about the industry because I've had friends and clients in it.

I knew many too and they were generally fckd up, virus-ridden souls equipped with an inability to trust men (if they didn't outright hate them). I don't feel like I have to prove my "liberal" credentials by insisting that's a good thing and when I hear people say it is, that there's tons of "happy hookers" and that "nobody gets hurt" by it, I have to conclude they are on a different planet breathing air of a different atomic composition than those of us down here on earth.

But really what in the hell does any of that have to do with the former rising star of the Democratic party being caught with his pants down around his hypocrisy at the most inopportune time imaginable?

Maybe it was a classic honeytrap.

Quite possibly it was for all I know. In fact I'd be surprised given the size and pocketbooks of the enemies he'd made if it wasn't.

He obviously knew he had dangerous enemies who would go to any lengths to nail him. What happened to Bill Clinton when he decided to redeploy fiscal sanity by raising taxes on the Gilded Class should have taught ALL of us what they do if you ask 'em to give up a nickel.

Which is all the MORE reason it's insane he acted so recklessly. Call me a tough-lover, but when you factor in the political damage he's done to the party, I just don't give a rats nest what happens to him now. I just want him GONE and the sooner the better.

I do. His glaring hypocrisy and the field day the GOP is having with it is giving it to the Democratic party a lot harder than he could ever give it to some dimestore internet hooker, and that's just unforgivable.

it's not about hairsplitting the technical legalities of the punishment. It's about the reckless act and hypocrisy the man engaged in which has tragically turned himself into a laughing stock and at the same time embarassed the entire party. Hell only knows what this is going to cost us. Governor Bloomberg probably.

Don't be silly. It just isn't trivial when a bona fida DA hero, famous for prosecuting the bad guys, is caught deliberately breaking the law and patronizing the very same industry he'd previously prosecuted multiple times and publicly denounced.

It just stinks of hypocrisy,sleaze and is embarassing and damaging to the entire party. Make no mistake the real victim IS the Democratic party. Hell only knows what the fallout of this will be. At a minimum, Governor Bloomberg.

It's enough to make you agree with Madame Fauntley's suggestion that we neuter them before they're inaugerated.