Crossposted at Strategy '08

Frustrated that his dare to Barack Obama has backfired badly on him and has caused Barack to ride a wave a great press, the McCain campaign has been striking back at the media.  The McCain campaign has released a pair of web videos (yes, apparently someone on his staff has learned how use the youtubes) mocking what they see as a media bias towards Senator Obama.  The McCain campaign seems to be goading the media, hoping that they will finally focus more on him than they have Senator Obama.  Well Senator McCain, it appears you may be getting your wish, although not quite in the way you would have hoped.

Tonight the Politico went live with a hard hitting piece that draws attention to all of McCain’s recent "gaffes".  And by "gaffes" they are really referring to major screwups that Senator McCain has made that shows he lacks even a basic level of foriegn policy understanding.  This piece has been picked up by other news outlets, including CBSnews and Yahoo news, where it was earlier one of the top viewed stories.

More after the jump.

John McCain's habit of "forgetting" things has reached a new height, and the MSN is finally starting to take notice.  I was over on CNN.com this morning (something I am starting to do less and less), and the headline to the ticket was "Oops! McCain misfires on Obama attack".  Earlier this week, John McCain, trying to show that he was tough on terror, the "Straight Talking Maverick (tm)" tore into Obama for not being present in the Senate to vote on the Kyl-Lieberman amendment.

The only problem?  McCain also missed that vote.

More below the fold.

I just recieved a new email from the Obama campaign, and it reminds me of what drew me into this campaign. The Obama camapaign is soliciting our input in forming the Democratic party platform.

Every four years, the Democratic Party assembles a platform that outlines the party's position on a number of issues.

Traditionally, the drafting of the platform is not open to ordinary people.

This year, that's going to change.

For two weeks in July, people all across America will hold Platform Meetings in their own communities to discuss the issues and share their input. The outcome of these meetings will be reviewed by the Drafting Committee as it creates the final Platform.

Join me for the full email over the fold.

There hasn't been a superdelegate thread for a while a number of new updates have occurred tonight, so I thought I would start a new thread.

Today Obama received a steady stream of Super Delegate endorsements throughout the day.  He received the endorsement of 7 Superdelegates in total today.  However, three of those SDs are from MI/FL, who only receive half a vote each.  This gives Obama a total of 5.5 SD votes today. He also received the endorsement of 2 FL Edwards pledged delegates, which brings his total delegate endorsement number to +6.5.  This brings Obama's magic number down from 46 to 39.5.

Obama received the endorsement of:

Connecticut State Party Chair Nancy DiNardo
Virginia DNC member Jerome Wiley Segovia
Michigan DNC member Brenda Lawrence*
Michigan DNC member Lu Battaglieri*
Florida DNC member Janee Murphy*
Washington DNC member David McDonald
SC Representative (and House Majority Whip) Jim Clyburn
*Gets 1/2 a vote due to R&B sanctions.

For her part, Clinton received the endorsements of 2 Superdelegates today:

Louisiana Party Chair Chris Whittington
New York DNC member Irene Stein.

My fellow Obama supporters.  Tonight is a night of celebration.  We have won a decisive victory in North Carolina, and although we are just shy, Indiana went about as good as we could have possibly hoped. Tonight, the message is clear.  Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States.

Even the mainstream media and the pundits are finally acknowledging this fact.  There will be pressure in the coming days from both the media and those inside Senator Clinton's inner circle for her to suspend her campaign in the coming days.  It may be tomorrow, it may be a week from now, or it may be after June 3rd.  But one thing is clear.  This campaign is winding down, and we have won.

So I have a simple request for my fellow Obama supporters, below the fold.

Today is the last day of the April fundraising month.  Shortly after today, Obama's April fundraising figures will be released, and pundits will look at these figures to judge Obama's momentum in the race.  Hillary Clinton has claimed a 10 million dollar day after the Pennsylvania primaries, which if true, will give her a much better fundraising month than last month.

I know that not everyone has been happy with the way things have been going recently. Barack has taken a couple of hits, particularly with Wright reemerging, but the campaign is still going strong.  We are still winning the superdelegate endorsement battle, and we have world class ground games set up in Indiana and North Carolina.  Lets give Barack Obama another piece of good news by helping him deliver great April fundraising numbers.

Roland Martin, a regular CNN contributor (and the one that I personally find the the most tolerable of the whole CNN bunch), finally calls out the ridiculousness of accusing different presidential candidates of being elitist.  He especially calls out the Republican party's hypocrisy on the issue.  Their argument that Democrats are elitist, while they are just men of the people is tired and false.

We have all been making this argument on this site for a while now, but someone in the media finally appears to be paying attention.  I will have a lot more on Roland's commentary, which goes on the skewer both the Republican party and the mainstream media for their phony charges of elitism, right after the jump.

Air America today announced that they are suspending Randi Rhodes for repeatedly calling Hillary Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro "fucking whores" during a stand up routine.  This has already been reported on this blog several times, and each time the it was diaried, the diarist was defending Randi Rhodes, and blasting Air America.

While many commenters did post responses criticizing Randi for making her remarks, a lot of them defended her, and some went as far as agreeing with remarks. It has disheartened me to see so many Democrats do this.  Randi's remarks were inexcusable, and Air America had every right to suspend her.

More after the jump...

Yesterday, Kos and other bloggers reported on a letter that was sent from a group of Clinton backers to Nancy Pelosi "urging" her to reconsider her comments on the role of super delegates in the party.  This letter was a thinly veiled threat to cut off their funding to the DCCC should Pelosi continue to go against the Clinton party line on the Super Delegates.

These donors are the richest of the rich.  They epitomize the "elites" and the "old guard" of the Democratic party.  As we face a struggle for the soul of the party, a struggle over the influence of big money vs. the everyday American, these 20 individuals represent the major backbone of the side we are fighting against.  

Their actions yesterday left a lot of us to wonder, "just who the hell are these guys?".  This diary is an attempt to shed light on who some of these donors are, and the threat that they pose to the Democratic Party.

I didn't see this diaried here yet, so I thought I would share with everyone a heartbreaking editorial on the Iraq war written Lieutenant Sean Walsh on the real cost in the Iraq war.

I am going to keep my editorial comments to a minimum, since his words speak volumes more than mine every could.

I'm not sure how much traffic this diary will get at 4:00 AM EST, but I felt like in order to get to sleep, I needed to post about this.

As anyone who reads this site knows, the path to citizenship for an immigrant in this country is not easy.  Even if everything is done to the letter of the law, American citizenship is still extremely hard to get.  

Over 20,000 soldiers currently serving in the United States army are not United States citizens.  For 109 of those soldiers, their path to citizenship cost them their lives.

This is directed to my good old buddies in the MSN.  Today, the American people finally got the first glance into the life of Hillary Clinton during her eight years of first lady. The national archives released over 11,000 pages of documents relating to Hillary Clinton's schedule during the Clinton Administration.  This schedule provides unprecedented insight into exactly how involved Hillary Clinton was in the Clinton administration policies. The schedule finally shows if Hillary can actually back up the "experience" claims that she has made the cornerstone of her campaign.  If you were half-way competent, you would be examining her remarks during the campaign, and seeing if they matched up to her record.  But instead, after all of your research, this is the story your dumb asses come up with:

"Clinton in White House during Monica Lewinsky encounters"

More on this after the jump.

Attention everyone:  In case you did not know, and since no one else is talking about it, I suspect you haven't, but Barack Obama's campaign is completely falling apart!!!!  Did you see the polls today???  A Gallup poll has him losing to Clinton by 2%!!! Yes, a whole half of the margin of error!!! In a random sample, about 20 people prefer Clinton over Obama.  How can we possibly make up that margin the rest of the campaign?  

And look at the general election..... We are trailing by 2 points to McCain as well!!!! The general election is only 6 months away! How can we possibly make up that margin in that short a period of time?? Let's just all throw in the towel and anoint John McCain as the next president.

This is in response to the so-called "pro-Hillary"  bloggers that staged their strike/walkout yesterday.  I keep hearing from a small and vocal minority on this site that this site rejects anything pro-Hillary, and is only a place for "Obamabots" or "Obamamaniacs".  The problem with the arguments from these bloggers is that they almost never publish anything pro-Hillary.  They almost always publish diaries that are anti-Obama.  Not only are they anti-Obama, but they are usually based on smears that have already been thoroughly debunked by the hard working diarists on this site.  

Don't just take my word for it, see some examples after jump.

Yesterday, as most of you know, the Senate narrowly voted to let the majority of the Bush tax cuts, particularly those aimed at the wealthy, expire in a close vote in the Senate, 52-47.  All three remaining presidential candidates took time off from the presidential campaign to cast votes on the tax cuts.  Senator Obama and Senator Clinton both voted against the tax cuts, but our favorite McMaverick, John McCain, voted to reauthorize all of the Bush tax cuts.  As many of you remember, back when McCain was not a completely carbon copy of President Bush, he voted against the tax cuts.  Now that he's running for president, he hypocritically votes for them.  This type of hypocrisy is standard practice for McCain, and he needs to be called on it.  Luckily for the Democrats, Barack Obama has stood up and called him on it.

More after the jump....

It looks like Michigan is close to having a new primary election to allocate it's delegates to the Democratic National convention.  Unlike Florida, this plan is being drawn up in consultation of both of the campaigns, and actually seems like it has a chance of being agreed upon.  An agreement could be reached as soon as tomorrow.

Chuck Todd over at MSNBC writes an editorial that highlights what most Obama supporters seem to believe and most Clinton supporters can't seem to grasp:  That the best thing that could happen to John McCain tomorrow is a Hillary Clinton victory.  Not because Todd believes that Hillary Clinton would be the weaker Democratic candidate, but because if Hillary loses, this turns from a primary race to a general election race.  And John McCain is nowhere near ready to compete in a general election race.  

Much has been made of the Superdelegate situation in the main stream media.  Story after story talks about how superdelegates will decide the Democratic nomination, and how they might overrule the voters.  This theory has been adopted heavily in this community, where many bloggers have written diaries (some recommended), contemplating what would happen if the superdelegates overrode the will of the people.  New numbers from the AP should start to put these fears to rest.