McCain has trotted out a warmed over Bush plan for health care. As I understand it, he wants to sprinkle some free market fairy dust on the current mess and hope for the best. I can think of at least two reasons why a market model doesn’t work very well for health care.

First, there is just no transparency. Try to do some comparison shopping as to what a given procedure will cost you. By and large, the various hospitals hold on to their pricing lists tighter than the Coke formula. I suppose this one is fixable if you really want to make hospitals post apples-to-apples pricing lists. The more serious drawback to a market approach to health care financing is that it’s a transaction you can’t really walk away from. And, to make mattes worse, sometimes there is an emergency such that you can’t even go shopping for the best price.

When is the last time McCain had to buy health insurance on the free market? I mean, he could since he left his first wife to marry into a beer fortune. But that option isn’t open to everybody. But, near as I can figure, as the son of an admiral and the grandson of an admiral, and a military man turned Congressman, he’s been covered by the military and then the Congress since forever. No wonder he doesn’t get it.

2008 Democratic Convention Watch has the delegate count as follows:

Obama 1729, Clinton 1595 with a total of 2,024 needed to win. There are 408 pledged delegates that remain outstanding. If Obama gets 1/2 of the remaining pledged delegates, that brings him to a total of 1,933, meaning he needs to get about 91 of the 296 superdelegates that remain uncommitted. So, Obama needs 50% of the remaining pledged delegates and 30% of the remaining superdelegates to win the nomination.

There are a few things in the newspapers this morning on the Presidential campaign. A pro-Clinton group will run negative ads about Obama on the economy. Obama has been able to raise more money from small donors, so he’s still apparently flush with cash. Clinton has tapped out her big donors and seems to be having money troubles. So an outside “527” group will be running the hit piece on her behalf. It says that Obama lacks specifics on the economy. For those who are interested in actually reading, there are plenty of policy details available at Obama’s website. (Drill down to the PDF documents if you want more detail.)

Tom Davies, writing for the Associated Press, suggests that the Democratic nominees are courting “Republican Strongholds”. Basically, they’re campaigning in Hamilton and Elkhart Counties. This is just good campaigning — first, the overall state is going to be tight, so you want to scare up as many votes as you can; second, I believe some of the delegates are awarded based on performance in a particular Congressional District, so you aren’t maximizing your potential delegates if you just turn out huge numbers in the 1st and 7th Congressional Districts.

Lesley Stedman Weidenbener reports that Sen. Clinton will be campaigning in Jeffersonville and Terre Haute on Thursday. Today, she’s in Hobart and Princeton; tomorrow she’s in Lafayette and Kokomo. Obama will be at Assembly Hall in Bloomington on Thursday.

If I’m parsing this article by Rick Yencer of the Muncie Star-Press correctly, 11 of the 19 Democratic party chairmen in Indiana’s 6th Congressional District (Mike Pence’s District) are supporting Hillary Clinton according to one guy.

Sophia Voravong has the details of Hillary Clinton’s visit to Lafayette. Apparently she will speak at Riehle Plaza at about 5:30 p.m. this afternoon. My office is right next to the plaza and traffic around the area affects my ability to get in and out. So, perhaps I’ll be able to belly-ache about a Presidential candidate affecting my comings and goings. And tonight’s the county bar association’s Law Day Dinner. See, more belly-aching. It’s all about me.

Looks like some Ron Paul supporters are getting into the McCain/GOP ointment in Nevada.

After a super-majority of Ron Paul supporters captured control of the Republican state convention Saturday, state party officials abruptly canceled the event without electing delegates to the national convention.

Early in the day, state delegates supporting Paul’s continued pursuit of the Republican nomination voted through a rules change that forced the state party to abandon its preset ballot of potential national convention delegates and open up the race to the rest of the state delegates.

I’m not sure how many Democratic debates there have been. Twenty-one, twenty-two? Clinton wants another one against Obama. The last debate featured questions about lapel pins. What’s on deck for this one? Cola preferences?

Actually, Jonathan Singer at MyDD discusses the latest proposal in some detail. Apparently the Clinton campaign is characterizing the latest proposal as sort of like the Lincoln-Douglas debates. But, Singer describes the Lincoln-Douglas format, and Clinton doesn’t seem to have that in mind. When Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas slugged it out for the Illinois Senate seat, they used a debate format wherein the first candidate would have an hour, the second candidate would speak for an hour and a half, and the first candidate would then have a half-hour rebuttal. They had seven such debates. Clinton is proposing alternating two minute segments for each candidate. More sound bite politics. No thanks.

Who knows, but I think the hour long format would favor Obama since, comparatively speaking, Clinton isn’t as much into the whole “vision thing.”

IPOPA:

Say what you want about Barack Obama, but the guy is tailor-made for Indiana. The Senator can play ball! The video I saw today from his 3-on-3 game in Kokomo showed Obama hitting an outside shot with nice rotation, then doing an up fake on the guy guarding him that allowed him to deliver a crisp left-handed pass to a cutting teammate. On the very next possession by his opponents, Obama used some quick hands and stole the ball.

Indy’s Painfully Objective Political Analysis does a nice deconstruction of a negative direct mail piece from the Clinton campaign against Obama. It features a linguistic slight of hand comparing the apples of Obama’s claims about not taking oil money to the oranges of Clinton’s claims about Obama taking energy money. It also features criticism about Obama’s vote for an energy bill that was also voted for by Clinton’s best-buddy, best-pal Evan Bayh.

Mary Beth Schneider, writing for the Indy Star, has an article with results from an Indy Star/WTHR poll. It has Obama up by 3% which is within the margin of error: 41% to 38% of likely Democratic voters.

Interestingly, Obama did a lot better in the poll when asked about a potential match-up with McCain:

Among Hoosiers who said they would vote in the general election — a statewide sample of voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points — Obama beat McCain 49 percent to 41 percent. Clinton broke even with McCain, with both backed by 46 percent of those polled.

Clinton’s Indiana co-chair dismisses the poll saying “the full impact of Pennsylvania” hasn’t yet been felt. I’m pretty sure that’s nonsense. How many Hoosiers do you know who give a rat’s ass what Pennsylvanians think?

Obama’s stronger among blacks, younger people, people who earn more money, and higher educated people. Older white people with less education, particularly in rural areas tend to prefer Clinton.

Some interesting quotes:

Sharon Jacobs, a 58-year-old retired foundry worker from Auburn, is supporting Clinton.

“To be honest, it’s because I liked Bill Clinton as president. I figure two heads are better than one,” she said.

But she said she’s also worried that “if Obama gets in there, the blacks will kind of try to take over.” The fact that that thought entered her head “scares me,” Jacobs said. She doesn’t want to discriminate, she said, but added: “It’s there.”

Tom Cory, a 33-year-old Greenwood resident involved in video production, said he’s backing Obama, in part because he isn’t a Clinton.

“I don’t believe in revolving monarchies,” he said. “Since the 1980s, we have had a Bush or a Clinton in the White House. That needs to change.”

Besides, he said, “I like Barack Obama. He just seems a little more down-to-earth.”