Reasoned, balanced, cautious and logical--all the things that the Wilentz article was not. Thank you for writing this, Mr. DeLong and thank you Salon for posting it.

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.

It's hard to say who's definitely more electable, but it's easy to say that Wilentz' article was crap, from the title (which even Salon had to change after a few hundred negative comments) pretty much to its last sentence. I will vote for whoever the Democratic nominee is in November, because there really is no other viable option, but in my view Clinton looks worse with each passing day, while Obama at least maintains a reasonable portion of my respect.

Can you keep this as your lead story as long as you kept that ridiculous Wilentz piece?

"Sean Wilentz is a Yankees fan. I am a Red Sox fan. Perhaps Sean Wilentz could write that the American League championship should go to the team with the most hits instead of the most wins, which would have made the Yankees rather than the Red Sox the real champions last year."

Um, no. The correct way to analogize Wilentz's argument to baseball would be this: If games in the regular season were determined by the team with the most hits, but games in the post-season were determined by the team with the most runs.

I'm an Obama supporter, but any critique that requires a misrepresentation of the opposing argument is unappealing.

And while it's statistically difficult to pin down right now, the fact is that while blacks have consistently voted in far smaller percentages than they were eligible to, it's far more likely that they would increase their percentage vote relative to the rest of the population more if Obama were the nominee.

It's far harder to see any particular population voting more because of Hillary; older, white women, her strongest demographic, have historically voted in a higher proportion than they make up of the population.

- when she wins in the end.

And I'm totally on-board with that. She'll rough up Obama a bit as a warm up to devouring McCain.

For me that day can't come soon enough.

"Madam President" Start practicing, guys.

I recognize that it is impossible for Obama fans to believe that anybody could feel that their chosen one was not qualified to be President, and that therefore the only reason that people might vote against Obama was "white reluctance to vote for an African American candidate", but it's nonsense. I'm sure that there are some white people who simply won't vote for a black man for President, but they are overwhelmingly outnumbered by the black people and racially sensitive white progressives who vote for Obama because of his skin color. The majority of white people who aren't voting for Obama are either turned off by his personality cult following or are all too aware of his complete lack of qualifications for the job of President.

You can stop race-baiting now. Obama has all but won the nomination. I suggest that you stop calling all of the people who didn't vote for him racists and start trying to convince them that he is qualified to be President, or, at the very least, that McCain is so overwhelmingly unqualified that Obama looks good in comparison.

"Salon.com will publish something that's gratuitously "contrarian" , that is, that's sensationalist and attention getting for it's own sake, by just taking some absurd position for shock value".

As if to bring the point home, Camille Paglia appeared just afterwards in all her vapid grandeur.

I think I'll just set up a link directly to Glenn Greenwald.

rebuttal, but more importantly, in the same website. Writers for Salon and most other sites tend to write articles without fear of criticism from their own den. This will sharpen critiques in the future and improve quality if continued. Greenwald is the gold standard and has(to my knowledge) avoided conflict with his fellow writers that share the site. It has been left to the comment sections to refute arguments, many times without follow-up by the writers themselves(exceptions exist). Not everyone wants to sift through 200 letters for decent arguments, nor are many of us adequate at producing them. This is why we clamor for professionals(you get paid to inform us,right?) to provide insight without insult to our intelligence. Thank you again and I hope Wilentz will craft another piece to answer this.

Kucinich should be winning, but war is the only thing the MSM wants to sell. The three of them are detestable, not electable. The election goes the way the MSM wants it to and that is to ensure more money going to the war machine.

You people are just trying to stir up some interest and passion in your fraudulent election.

Although Obama is certainly well known at this point, the fact is that due to this long primary he has not yet presented himself to those who don't vote in the primary and has not presented his case against John McCain. Hillary is a known commodity and in the unlikely case that she was nominated, there is little she can do to change voters' perception of her. So, the point is, she will not be able to win over voters between now and November. Obama, on the other hand, could change some minds, even of conservatives, if he presents himself right.