The Washington Post has an article suggesting that a significant number of Hoosiers are racists who won’t vote for a black man. I’d like to think that’s not true. I’m a little sad that I can’t be sure. Basically, the article finds a number of anecdotal stories from campaign workers in Muncie and Kokomo where race was cited as a reason for not supporting Obama.

However, there is no real good way to know how many of these folks would vote for an entirely white person who was a Democrat with the same policy views as Obama. My feeling compelled to use a term like “entirely white” highlights how ludicrous this discussion is when you boil it down. Obama’s mother is a white woman from Kansas, his father was a Kenyan – but there are folks who won’t vote for him because he’s black by virtue of our country’s history where a drop of “black blood” makes you black instead of white.

My suspicion is that there certainly is a hardcore subset of people who are just flat out racists who won’t vote for a black person regardless of policy or party — perhaps more in Indiana than some other places. There is a larger group of people who are irrational partisans who won’t vote for a Democrat regardless of policy positions and irrespective of race. But, I think most Hoosiers are not racist or hyper-partisan and will vote for whoever they think will best reflect their views. This perspective is skewed by a lack of time or inclination to study the issues and the candidates’ actual policy positions as well as by a mild, but not irrevocable, bias based on political party and/or cultural/ethnic group. So, if all things between the candidates were exactly equal, I think it’s safe to say that Hoosiers are generally going to vote for a white Republican of northern European descent. But, for most, it’s not going to take a great deal to knock them out of that particular bias.

Obama’s magic number to clinch the Democratic Presidential nomination is 180 per Democratic Convention Watch. Clinton’s is 327. There are 487 available delegates, with about 200 of those to be allocated through the remaining primaries.

The remaining primaries with some poll numbers of unknown reliability are:

West Virginia (28 delegates) – 5/13. Clinton +28.
Kentucky (51 delegates) – 5/20. Clinton +36.
Oregon (52 delegates) – 5/20. Obama +12.
Puerto Rico (55 delegates) – 6/1. ?
South Dakota (15 delegates) – 6/3. ?
Montana (24 delegates) – 6/3. ?

My back of the envelope calculations suggest that Clinton would have to get about 80% of the remaining superdelegates to win the nomination.

——

Oh, and Matt Tully, while jokingly chastising Indiana for its refusal to move on and give up the national spotlight last night shows his own failure to move on. In his case, he fails to move on from the tired story lines of the past few weeks.

The early morning storyline suggested Clinton had claimed Indiana, offsetting a decisive defeat in North Carolina. Although he won North Carolina, Obama’s apparent Indiana stumble again raises questions that have haunted him in recent weeks. Why does he struggle so much with white blue-collar voters? Has the controversy over his former pastor damaged a candidate who once seemed destined for the White House?

In what alternate universe is the crushing defeat suffered by Clinton in North Carolina “offset” by her 20,000 vote victory in Indiana? And, the “struggling with white, blue-collar voters” and “Obama’s ex-pastor hyperventilation” barely moved the meter in Indiana. It was tied going in and tied going out. Meanwhile, Obama won by 10 times that amount in North Carolina. Contrary to Mr. Tully’s passive voiced assertion that last night’s results raises questions; last night’s results, in fact, answered those questions. Now it’s time to look forward and raise questions about how much John McCain’s close association with President Bush and his policies bothers voters: white, blue-collar and otherwise.

Update
Kos has posted the text of a memo from the Obama campaign to remaining superdelegates. Basically it advises them that Clinton’s path to the nomination is increasingly unlikely.

With the Clinton path to the nomination getting even narrower, we expect new and wildly creative scenarios to emerge in the coming days. While those scenarios may be entertaining, they are not legitimate and will not be considered legitimate by this campaign or its millions of supporters, volunteers, and donors.

We believe it is exceedingly unlikely Senator Clinton will overtake our lead in the popular vote and in fact lost ground on that measure last night. However, the popular vote is a deeply flawed and illegitimate metric for deciding the nominee – since each campaign based their strategy on the acquisition of delegates. More importantly, the rules of the nomination are predicated on delegates, not popular vote.

Just as the Presidential election in November will be decided by the electoral college, not popular vote, the Democratic nomination is decided by delegates.

If we believed the popular vote was somehow the key measurement, we would have campaigned much more intensively in our home state of Illinois and in all the other populous states, in the pursuit of larger raw vote totals. But it is not the key measurement. We played by the rules, set by you, the DNC members, and campaigned as hard as we could, in as many places as we could, to acquire delegates. Essentially, the popular vote is not much better as a metric than basing the nominee on which candidate raised more money, has more volunteers, contacted more voters, or is taller.

A friend of mine just e-mailed some thoughts about the national spotlight shining on Lake County, Indiana for a few hours. He talked about Wolf Blitzer trying to pin down some of the Lake County officials for a rational explanation of why it was taking so long for Lake County to turn in its results. I was thinking “God bless Lake County, they just do what they do.” But, he captured it much better with a Chinatown reference, “Forget it Wolf. It’s Lake County.”

Anyway, Clinton comes away with a squeaker of a win which, in my opinion, ends any hopes of a legitimate win for her. Whether she wants to continue campaigning is entirely up to her, but the superdelegates have to know that they’ll have a tough time giving her the nomination and living (politically) to tell the tale. Obama won big in North Carolina and Clinton only squeaked by in Indiana. He expanded his lead in pledged delegates and the popular vote. Clinton will presumably have solid wins in Kentucky and West Virginia, but those have minimal population and minimal delegates to offer. Obama would presumably win in Oregon and quite probably South Dakota and Montana. I have no idea how Puerto Rico might skew. But, even if Clinton swept the table, the math is just awful for her.

I think a narrow loss in Indiana is ultimately better for Obama than would a narrow win thanks to the mysterious workings of the Lake County electoral process. He gets most of the benefits of a win in Indiana without a lot of news coverage associated with him that looks under the rock of Lake County politics.

Update I liked Kos’s comment about the numbers coming out of Gary:

If this was legit, that’s some serious machine action at work. If it’s not legit, that’s some serious machine action at work.

Update Bomb threat at the Terre Haute Obama headquarters.

Indiana State Police swept Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama’s Terre Haute campaign headquarters on Wabash Avenue this afternoon following an alleged call to a WTHI Channel 10 reporter claiming to have placed a bomb there and at six other Indiana locations.

Campaign workers were allowed back inside to continue their voter calling once police determined it was safe.

End update
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Black box voting claims there is some monkey business going on with Indiana’s voter registrations.

Yesterday, we reported that according to Indiana’s own figures, 1.1 million voter registrations had been cancelled, one-quarter of a million of those in just two counties [Lake & Porter]. Another researcher, Steve Rosenfeld, began tracking back through data from the Election Assistance Commission, finding that the cancellation quantities didn’t jive with the numbers you’d expect. According to Rosenfeld, after talking with the office of the Indiana Secretary of State the explanation is that “cancelled” does not mean “cancelled registrations” it means “changes” to registrations.

Blackbox voting suggested that this raises another concern – introduction of typos into the system. In a paper book, that’s not necessarily a big deal. With a computer search, that could be very bad. Rokita’s office indicated an intent to send officials to “hot spots” with a “history of vote fraud,” including Lake County. 11,000 people had voted in Lake County and 3,000 people had voted in Porter County by 1 p.m.

On the other end of the state, in Richmond, the vote centers are packed and computer problems have contributed to long lines. More information on turnout in Wayne County here. As I mentioned, in Lafayette, things seem to be going smoothly though turnout is very high. In Indianapolis, the county clerk is suggesting that voters go sooner rather than later. If you are in line – within 50 feet of the room in which voting takes place – by 6 p.m., you’ll be allowed to vote. But, the time between 5 and 6 when people get off work tends to be a rush. In Marion County, turnout in the 2008 primary election is expected to be comparable to the 2004 general election.

In Southern Indiana, the Louisville Courier Journal reported significant turn out with some difficulties with voter’s names not appearing on registries at the precinct, though telephone calls to the county appear to have resolved the problem. (Also see another story about heavy turnout here.) Also, brisk voting in Vanderburgh County.

In Allen County, they’re expecting turnout somewhere near 50%. Steady voting in South Bend.

Update 2 About 12 nuns were turned away because they lacked IDs.

About 12 Indiana nuns were turned away Tuesday from a polling place by a fellow bride of Christ because they didn’t have state or federal identification bearing a photograph.

Sister Julie McGuire said she was forced to turn away her fellow sisters at Saint Mary’s Convent in South Bend, across the street from the University of Notre Dame, because they had been told earlier that they would need such an ID to vote.

The nuns, all in their 80s or 90s, didn’t get one but came to the precinct anyway.

“One came down this morning, and she was 98, and she said, ‘I don’t want to go do that,'” Sister McGuire said. Some showed up with outdated passports. None of them drives.

They weren’t given provisional ballots because it would be impossible to get them to a motor vehicle branch and back in the 10-day time frame allotted by the law, Sister McGuire said. “You have to remember that some of these ladies don’t walk well. They’re in wheelchairs or on walkers or electric carts.”

Lafayette gets a little love from the Washington Post looking at candidates and the common man.

This is awesome (by Al Giordano):

By now, we all ought to know the drill.

The day begins with the Clinton campaign “leaking” something to the Drudge Report to set expectations for the day. That then gets repeated on political blogs and cable news, where Clinton surrogate Terry McAuliffe elaborates. Today’s “expectation”: That the Clinton campaign expects a “15 point” defeat in North Carolina. Clinton’s yapping puppies in the news media repeat the manufactured expectation all day long, in which the bar is supposedly now that if Clinton comes within 15 points in that state that she has somehow “won” with a 14 point (or 6 point) defeat.

Around 4 p.m. rumors of exit polls begin circulating on the Internet. Around 5:30 p.m. AP and other news organizations leak minor data from the exit polls that explains almost nothing of value. Sometime after 6 p.m. Drudge posts raw numbers from exit polls that – if past is prologue – show Obama doing an average of seven percentage points better than he actually does.

Obama supporters then get prematurely jubilant and after polls close (tonight at 7 p.m. ET in Indiana and 7:30 p.m. ET in North Carolina) the real results start to come in and reveal Clinton then doing “better than expected” (at least better than the new expectations promoted during the day).

The media talking heads then ask aloud why Obama can’t “close the deal” (in Clinton’s own words) and what is numerically a defeat for Clinton (because the results, even in her recent wins, bring her objectively farther from the nomination in the context of the smaller number of delegates then available) gets spun as a Clinton victory.

Clinton takes to the stage, claims “unexpected” victory, gives out her web site address and pleads for elder women on fixed incomes to send more money to the $109 millionaire. The following day they claim that $10 million rolled in, only to be disproved more than a month later when the actual FEC filing is due. Obama’s FEC filing simultaneously reveals that he raised much, much more, from more small donors, and the Clinton campaign plays the victim card over being outspent.

The Chicken Littles among Obama supporters then proceed to agonize across the Internet for days on end, seemingly oblivious to the fact that their candidate has just moved closer to the nomination, and Clinton was pushed farther away from it.

Most undeclared superdelegates duck behind all the media-generated confusion to continue to keep quiet, although a few courageous ones a day come dribbling out, more for Obama than for Clinton, also moving Obama closer to the nomination and Clinton farther away.

Meanwhile, the media then looks to the next state – this time it will be West Virginia, the best state demographically for Clinton, who is 30 points ahead there – and proclaims that it’s “do or die” and begin anew with the spin cycle about white Appalachian voters being the only voters that matter.

Libby Copeland, writing for the Washington Post, has an article about Muncie, Indiana in light of today’s primary. The piece has an anthropologist-among-the-natives vibe to it, but overall isn’t too bad. Apparently Muncie has been used as the epitome of “middle America” in various studies over the last century or so. The heart of the story, in my opinion, is this:

Cantrell, 51, says he’ll be voting Democratic this election. He’s not sure for whom yet, but Democratic for sure. Hillary or that guy, whatever his name is.

“As far as I’m concerned, the Republicans have turned things to [expletive],” he says. “I’m working two jobs now just so I can put gas in my van.”

Cantrell talks about what it was like when his dad came up from the South, like so many others, to work in the parts plants in Muncie. How the city was thriving then. If people think this is Middle America, he says, they’re wrong. Muncie doesn’t represent Middle America anymore.

Probably.

“Well, I hope Middle America is a little better than what’s around here,” he says. “Otherwise, that’s depressing.”

However, the story misses a trick by failing to mention Lazy Muncie which probably does as good a job as anything in capturing the spirit of the town:

It’s the night before the Indiana primaries and, I’ve made it no secret that I’m going to vote for Barack Obama. I see Obama as having a broader vision than Clinton. In simplistic terms, I see him as a more capable strategist even if she is an accomplished tactician. Take Iraq. Tactically, supporting an invasion of Iraq was a good move. It provided short-term, immediate advantage to its proponents even if, as a long term proposition, it was a disaster. I see this gas tax nonsense in similar terms. Pushing it provides Clinton with short term, immediate advantage even if, long term, it’s a bad idea.

On issue after issue, it seems that Clinton looks for the tactically superior position. I think this is the essence of the DLC’s triangulation approach. But there doesn’t appear to be a broad vision behind these positions. Long term, this leads to problems.

I won’t deny that Obama is a politician who sees the need to act in a politically advantageous manner at times. But, overall, he’s done a much better job of articulating a long term vision. Unilateral invasion of Iraq when there was no pressing danger didn’t fit that vision, so he opposed the war, even though, back in 2003, this wasn’t the most tactically advantageous position.

I see Obama as a potentially great leader while I see Clinton as a potentially good administrator. Given the choice, which Indiana has been given for a change, I suggest that we choose a leader.

A running gag I had with “T” last night at the J&J dinner was to, every so often, do my best Homer Simpson angry voice and say, “Ooooh. I hate oil companies *so* much!” when someone was bagging on the evil oil companies. If it had been a drinking game to drink a beer and a shot, Clinton style, every time someone ragged on the oil companies, I’d probably still be in the hospital right now.

Sure, we have an energy problem and, sure, the oil companies are making money hand over fist right now, but it’s like the deal with the scorpion and the turtle. An oil company, like a scorpion, is what it is. You don’t especially blame the scorpion for stinging and you don’t especially blame the oil companies for trying to make big profits selling oil. With scorpions, you don’t blame them, but you do try to avoid them if you can and kill them if you can’t. I recommend a similar approach with oil companies.

Thomas Edsall, writing for the Huffington Post, has an article reporting that the Clinton campaign is considering a “nuclear option” to try to win the Democratic nomination. Basically, it involves trying to force a DNC committee to seat delegates from Michigan — despite party rules that stripped the state of its delegates because the state’s Democrats refused to abide by the party’s primary rules and despite the fact that Obama’s name wasn’t on the ballot because of the party’s ruling to strip the delegates. To succeed in this maneuver, the Clinton campaign would have to get through the first committee, more than 50% of which is comprised of her supporters. Then, her campaign would have to survive an appeal to the credentials committee, dominated by Obama supporters with the balance of power held by DNC chairman Howard Dean.

This is, to put it mildly, a Bad Idea. The winning candidate is going to have to win without Michigan or Florida delegates. Those votes are tainted because the state parties broke the rules and a penalty was imposed. The candidates planned their campaigns with the expectation that the penalty would be enforced. To change the balance of power by waffling on the penalty after the fact for the sole purpose of benefiting a particular candidate is unacceptable. It would rip the party apart and leave us with a McCain Presidency.