Hillary Clinton should drop out tonight!!!!

Hillary Clinton should drop out tonight!!!!

As far as I am concerned, the writing is now on the wall and Hillary Clinton should do what is best for the Democratic Party and the United States of America and drop out the presidential race immediately and ideally tonight. Obama has easily won North Carolina in the "game changer" state according to Clinton. Indiana is close as of this writing with likely Obama polls not reporting in the area close to Chicago. Obama will build tonight on the delegate, popular vote and state count. Undeclared super delegates should immediately back Obama as the nominee. This race should now be over and it is time for the Democrats to unite and the media to focus on the McCain vs. Obama match up likely to come this November. YES WE CAN!!!!!!!!
-Darryl

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Update: Proof it is almost over

Time to drop out, Clinton told

DENNIS GALE and DAVID ESPO AND LIZ SIDOTI

Associated Press

May 7, 2008 at 11:15 AM EDT

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — Former senator George McGovern, who backed Hillary Rodham Clinton, is urging her to drop out of the Democratic presidential race.

Mr. McGovern said Wednesday he has decided to endorse Barack Obama.

After watching the returns from the North Carolina and Indiana primaries Tuesday night, Mr. McGovern says it's virtually impossible for Ms. Clinton to win the nomination.

Mr. McGovern says he is calling former president Clinton to tell him of the decision and adds that he remains close friends with the Clintons.

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Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama speaks to supporters at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, N.C., on Tuesday. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Ms. Clinton lent her presidential campaign $6.4 million over the past month, her campaign said Wednesday, underscoring the financial advantage held by her rival, Mr. Obama.

The money more than doubled Sen. Clinton's personal investment in her bid for the Democratic nomination. She gave her campaign $5 million earlier this year.

A campaign aide said Sen. Clinton gave her campaign another $5 million on April 11, more than a week before the Pennsylvania primary. She then again dipped into her personal wealth for $1 million last week and $425,000 on Monday, one day before the North Carolina and Indiana primaries.

Sen. Clinton's campaign reported raising $10 million online after her Pennsylvania victory on April 22. Evidently, the money was not enough and her fundraising was unable to keep up with her expenses heading into Tuesday's contests.

Moreover, Sen. Obama has routinely outspent her in primary after primary and has shown little difficulty tapping his vast network of donors. He spent more than $7 million on advertising head of Tuesday's primaries in North Carolina and Indiana to her nearly $4 million.

According to the latest campaign finance reports filed with the Federal Election Commission, Sen. Obama began the month of April with $42 million in the bank for the primary to Sen. Clinton's $9.3 million.

But Sen. Clinton had debts of $10.3 million at the start of the month, much of it money owed to her main polling, phone banking and advertising consultants.

Mr. Obama swept to victory in the North Carolina primary Tuesday night and lengthened his lead in the delegate race. Ms. Clinton narrowly won Indiana as she struggled to stop her rival's march toward the party's presidential nomination.

Ms. Clinton told her supporters in Indianapolis that she won the state and will continue in the race for the Democratic nomination.

In what was perhaps a nod to her uphill struggle to overcome Mr. Obama's lead in delegates, Ms. Clinton pledged anew that she'll swing behind the Democratic nominee “no matter what happens.”

“Tonight we stand less than 200 delegates away from winning the Democratic nomination for president of the United States,” Mr. Obama told a raucous rally in Raleigh, N.C. – and left no doubt he intended to claim the prize.

He said it appeared Ms. Clinton had won Indiana's primary, although thousands of votes had yet to be counted in key counties.

Returns from 93 per cent of North Carolina precincts showed Mr. Obama was winning 57 per cent of the vote to 43 per cent for Ms. Clinton, a triumph that mirrored his earlier wins in Southern states with large black populations.

Mr. Obama won at least 40 delegates and Ms. Clinton at least 31 in North Carolina, with 116 still to be awarded in the two states.

That made Indiana a virtual must-win Midwestern state for the former first lady, hoping to counter Mr. Obama's persistent delegate advantage with a strong run through the late primaries.

There, returns from 87 per cent of the precincts showed Ms. Clinton with 52 per cent of the vote to 48 per cent for Mr. Obama.

The economy was the top issue by far in both states, according to interviews with voters as they left their polling places.

Voters in both states fell along racial patterns long since established in a marathon race between the nation's strongest-ever black presidential candidate and its most formidable female challenger for the White House.

Mr. Obama was gaining more than 90 per cent of the black vote in Indiana, while Ms. Clinton was winning an estimated 61 per cent of the white vote there.

In North Carolina, Ms.Clinton won 60 per cent of the white vote, while Mr. Obama claimed support from roughly 90 per cent of the blacks who cast ballots.

Mr. Obama's delegate haul edged him closer to his prize – 1785.5 to 1,639 for Ms. Clinton in The Associated Press count, out of 2,025 needed to win the nomination.

He has long led Ms. Clinton among delegates won in the primaries and caucuses, and has increasingly narrowed his deficit among superdelegates who will attend the convention by virtue of their stats as party leaders. The AP tally showed Ms. Clinton with 269.5 superdelegates, and Mr. Obama with 255.

The impact of a long-running controversy over Mr. Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was difficult to measure.

In North Carolina, six in 10 voters who said Mr. Wright's incendiary comments affected their votes sided with Ms. Clinton. A somewhat larger percentage of voters who said the pastor's remarks did not matter supported Mr. Obama.

The effect of Ms. Clinton's call for a summertime suspension of the federal gasoline tax – which dominated the final days of the two primaries – was impossible to judge.

The questionnaire used to learn about voter motivation did not include any questions about the gasoline tax.

In Indiana, about one in five voters said they were independents, an additional one in 10 said Republican.

Only Democrats and unaffiliated voters were permitted to vote in North Carolina.

Voting in Indiana was carried out under a state law, recently upheld by the Supreme Court, that requires voters to produce a valid photo ID. About a dozen nuns in their 80s and 90s at St. Mary's Convent in South Bend were denied ballots because they lacked the necessary identification.

Mr. Obama began the day with 1,745.5 delegates, to 1,608 for Ms. Clinton, out of 2,025 needed for the nomination.

Both races were dominated in the final days by Ms. Clinton's call for a summertime suspension of the federal gasoline tax, an issue that she created after scoring a victory in the Pennsylvania primary two weeks ago.

Mr. Obama ridiculed the proposal as a stunt that would cost jobs, not the break for consumers she claimed. The two rivals dug in, devoting personal campaign time and television commercials to the issue.

Indiana had 72 delegates at stake, and Ms. Clinton projected confidence about the results by arranging a primary-night appearance in Indianapolis.

North Carolina had 115 delegates at stake, and Mr. Obama countered with a rally in Raleigh.

Mr. Obama leads Ms. Clinton in delegates won in primaries and caucuses. Despite his defeat two weeks ago, he has steadily whittled away at her advantage in superdelegates in the past two weeks and trails 269.5 to 255.

Ms. Clinton saved her candidacy with her win in Pennsylvania, and she campaigned aggressively in Indiana in hopes of denying Mr. Obama a victory next door to his home state of Illinois. Indiana is home to large numbers of blue-collar workers who have been attracted to the former first lady, and she sought to use her call for a federal gas tax holiday to draw them and other economically pinched voters closer.

Inevitably, the issue quickly took on larger dimensions.

Mr. Obama said it symbolized a candidacy consisting of “phony ideas, calculated to win elections instead of actually solving problems.”

Ms. Clinton retorted, “Instead of attacking the problem, he's attacking my solutions,” and ran an ad in the campaign's final hours that said she “gets it.”

To a large extent, the gasoline tax eclipsed the controversy surrounding Mr. Obama's former pastor. After saying several weeks earlier he could not disown the Rev. Jeremiah Wright for his fiery sermons, Mr. Obama did precisely that when the minister embarked on a media tour.

At a news conference in North Carolina last week, Mr. Obama equated Mr. Wright's comments with “giving comfort to those who prey on hate.”

The balance of the primary schedule includes West Virginia, with 28 delegates on May 13; Oregon with 52 and Kentucky with 51 a week later; Puerto Rico with 55 delegates on June 1, and Montana with 16 and South Dakota with 15 on June 3.

Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the Republican nomination already in hand, campaigned in North Carolina and assailed Mr. Obama for his vote against confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts.

“Senator Obama in particular likes to talk up his background as a lecturer on law, and also as someone who can work across the aisle to get things done,” Mr. McCain said. “But ... he went right along with the partisan crowd, and was among the 22 senators to vote against this highly qualified nominee.”

Ms. Clinton also voted against Chief Justice Roberts, but Mr. McCain, as is often the case, focused his remarks on Mr. Obama.

Mr. Obama's campaign responded that the Republican would pick judges who represent a threat to abortion rights and to Mr. McCain's own legislation to limit the role of money in political campaigns.

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Pundits Declare the Race Over

By JIM RUTENBERG

Published: May 8, 2008

Very early this morning, after many voters had already gone to sleep, the conventional wisdom of the elite political pundit class that resides on television shifted hard, and possibly irretrievably, against Senator Hillary Clinton’s continued viability as a presidential candidate.

The moment came shortly after midnight Eastern time, captured in a devastatingly declarative statement from Tim Russert of NBC News: “We now know who the Democratic nominee’s going to be, and no one’s going to dispute it,” he said on MSNBC. “Those closest to her will give her a hard-headed analysis, and if they lay it all out, they’ll say: ‘What is the rationale? What do we say to the undeclared super delegates tomorrow? Why do we tell them you’re staying in the race?’ And tonight, there’s no good answer for that.”

It was not exactly Walter Cronkite declaring that the Vietnam War would end in stalemate. But the impact was apparent almost immediately, starting with The Drudge Report, the online news billboard that is the home page to many political reporters in Washington and news producers in New York. It had as its lead story a link to a YouTube clip of Mr. Russert’s comments, accompanied by a photograph of a beaming Mr. Obama with his wife, Michelle, and the headline, “The Nominee.”

The thought echoed throughout the world of instant political analysis, steamrolling the Clinton campaign’s attempts to promote the idea that her victory in Indiana was nonetheless an upset in the face of Mr. Obama’s heavy spending and his campaign’s predictions that he would win there, or that she could still come back if delegates in Florida and Michigan are seated.

“I think there’s an increasing presumption tonight that Obama’s going to be the nominee,” Chris Wallace, the Fox News host, said to Karl Rove, President Bush’s longtime political guru, who is now a Fox News analyst. The statement preceded a discussion about what a general election race would look like between Mr. Obama and the presumptive Republican nominee, Senator John McCain.

A posting on the DailyKos Web site included a mock memo to Mrs. Clinton titled, “To-Do List Before Dropping Out.”

Speaking on CNN, David Gergen, a former adviser to several presidents, including Mrs. Clinton’s husband, said, “I think the Clinton people know the game is almost up.”

Stating it more bluntly, Bob Franken, the political analyst, told the MSNBC host Dan Abrams shortly after 2 a.m. Eastern time, “Let’s put it right on the table: It’s over. It’s over.”

And it picked up again on the major morning news programs in a devastating cascade of sound bites for Mrs. Clinton and her campaign.

Bob Schieffer on the CBS News program “Early Show”: “Basically, Maggie, this race is over.”

George Stephanopoulos on the ABC program “Good Morning America”: “This nomination fight is over.”

Matt Lauer on the NBC News program “Today”: “Good morning, is it over?”

The commentary was punctuated by some brutal morning newspaper headlines: “Toast!” blared The New York Post; “Hil Needs a Miracle” declared The New York Daily News.

Of course, the political news media have not exactly showered themselves in glory this year. They have frequently made predictions that have been upended by actual votes from actual people.

But their opinions matter as much as ever in this late phase of the primary race, when Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama are battling to sway the opinions of the uncommitted superdelegates — the party leaders and elected officials with automatic convention seats, whose support Mrs. Clinton will need if she is to snatch the nomination from Mr. Obama.

The superdelegates are a largely elite group that presumably will track the conventional wisdom of Washington’s class of political insiders as they weigh their decisions. And the big donors and fund-raisers whose help Mrs. Clinton will need to continue her campaign are similarly tapped into the news media echo-sphere.

Mrs. Clinton’s campaign indicated early this morning that it would try to prove the commentariat wrong once again. “Pundits have gleefully counted Senator Clinton out before, and each time they have been wrong, because they don’t decide this race — voters do,” Howard Wolfson, Mrs. Clinton’s communications director, wrote in an e-mail message. “And as the results in Indiana demonstrated, voters are rewarding Senator Clinton with victories, even in states Senator Obama predicted victory in.”

Mr. Wolfson’s statement came in quick response to a request for comment that was sent to him by e-mail after 2 a.m. Eastern time — an indication of the campaign’s eagerness to undo the new conventional wisdom before it hardens.

The Clinton campaign initially had some reason for optimism.

Many of the gloomier assessments of her chances came late Tuesday night and early this morning, when it appeared that she would not win Indiana as easily as exit polls and early vote tallies indicated earlier in the night. By then, early newspaper deadlines had passed and many voters were probably either asleep or off watching Jay Leno or David Letterman.

If East Coast viewers of “NCIS” saw no news the rest of the night, they certainly went to bed believing that Mrs. Clinton’s campaign was still there to fight another day. CBS, which broadcasts the show, declared that she had won the Indiana primary at 8:09 p.m. Eastern time, and Jeff Greenfield, the CBS analyst, reported, “We go on to June 3, Hillary Clinton got the win she needs to press her case.”

Even as Mrs. Clinton’s real-vote lead over Mr. Obama in the state dwindled to just 16,000 as later returns came in, the CBS News Web site held on to its headline, “Clinton Wins Ind., Obama Takes N.C.”

The headline was vindicated when several other news organizations declared that Mrs. Clinton had indeed won in Indiana, five hours after CBS made its projection. And it is that view of Tuesday’s results that most voters awoke to on Wednesday: A split decision for Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama, no matter how narrow.

The question is, will the analysts be talking that way throughout the day — and if not, where does it leave Mrs. Clinton?

As of this morning, the climb for her seemed steeper.

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Obama can cheer, as Clinton is running out of time

JOHN IBBITSON

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

May 7, 2008 at 4:41 AM EDT

INDIANAPOLIS — There was no real way for Hillary Clinton to win yesterday; there is less hope today.

She absolutely had to close the gap; instead, Barack Obama widened it. He scored a double-digit victory in North Carolina, which has 115 delegates. In Indiana, which has 72, the margin was razor-thin - so razor-thin that formal victory, once the very last, disputed ballot is counted, may be meaningless.

It was a disappointing night for Ms. Clinton. She has almost run out of states, has almost run out of controversies, and has almost certainly run out of time.

There is now virtually no hope that the New York senator can reverse the Illinois senator's lead in pledged delegates, popular vote, or states. She has no good argument to offer the uncommitted superdelegates that they should flock to her standard. That standard now anchors a last stand, as she vowed last night to fight on.

Once again, this race has fractured along lines of race, gender, class and religion. About half the voters in Indiana said the conflagration over Rev. Jeremiah Wright's incendiary comments influenced their vote, and most of them voted for Ms. Clinton. About two-thirds of working-class voters went her way in both states.

But North Carolina's large black population went nine-out-of-10 for Mr. Obama, who also scored a win among middle- and upper-middle class voters. White women in that state, however, went for Ms. Clinton over Mr. Obama two-to-one.

These fissures threaten to undermine the cohesiveness of the Democratic coalition. Ms. Clinton has signalled that she intends to fight all the way to the Democratic National Convention in August. She likely won't.

The powerful voices of the Democratic Party leadership - former vice-president Al Gore hinted yesterday that he would endorse, and he is thought to favour Mr. Obama - will finally speak over the coming weeks. It is hard to imagine them declaring for anyone other than Mr. Obama, who leads this race by any metric.

The leadership in the House and Senate and in other power centres around the country will almost certainly herd the 230 or so remaining undeclared superdelegates (senior party and elected officials who vote at the convention) in Mr. Obama's direction. Barring the unforeseen - and mind you, this primary season has been all about the unforeseen - writers may soon start referring to Mr. Obama as the presumptive nominee.

For Ms. Clinton, this must be incredibly frustrating, for she has pulled off a remarkable comeback during the past two months. In the rustbelt primaries that stretched from Ohio in March to Pennsylvania in late April, Ms. Clinton successfully reinvented herself as a political populist, the scourge of what she calls "elite opinion"- those who champion untrammelled globalization and carbon taxes.

She won these primaries, in part, by vowing to rewrite or scrap trade agreements, particularly the North American free-trade agreement, and by proposing to suspend the federal gas tax to counteract rising fuel prices.

That her husband's administration epitomized the era of globalization, and that the Clintons are themselves the personification of the liberal political elite, didn't seem to matter. Working-class white voters played along with the ruse.

Mr. Obama tried the same game, but failed. He too vowed to protect jobs by toughening trade restrictions, although he won't go along with the herd in calling for relief from the federal gas tax.

He campaigned in rolled-up shirt sleeves, dropping every "g" in his powerful, populist speeches. (The 2008 presidential election may be remembered as the event that signalled the final demise of "going to" and "want to" in political speeches; they appear to have been permanently replaced by "gonna" and "wanna.") But Midwestern voters long ago took the full measure of Ms. Clinton, while Mr. Obama, the mixed-race Harvard lawyer and social activist, was too exotic a commodity. They went with the Democrat they knew.

Mr. Obama did demonstrate, however, that his coalition of blacks, the young and the affluent remain passionately committed to his cause. And that was enough for a big victory in North Carolina, where demographics worked for him rather than against him.

In the remaining primaries, Ms. Clinton is favoured to win West Virginia (May 13, 28 delegates) Kentucky (May 20, 51 delegates) and Puerto Rico (June 1, 55 delegates); while Mr. Obama should be able to take Oregon (May 20, 52 delegates) and South Dakota (June 3, 15 delegates). Montana (June 3) is apparently contested, but with only 16 delegates, who cares?

Ms. Clinton has two choices now: to watch the inevitable play out, choosing the appropriate time to concede defeat; or to fight to seat the Florida and Michigan delegations, even though the Democratic National Committee has disqualified those states for holding their primaries too early.

She could, if she wanted to, force a floor flight at the convention; she would probably lose it. (She would have both the DNC and Obama forces ranged against her.) Win or lose, she would leave the party shattered.

Ms. Clinton is an honourable woman. She will use every means at her disposal to bring as many superdelegates as possible over to her side during the coming weeks. But if and when it becomes clear to her that the numbers simply aren't there, can't possibly ever be there, she will do the honourable thing, accept that last night was yet another defeat, and step aside.