States that Gore and or Kerry carried which loom as problems for Obama and areas of opportunity for McCain:  Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Additional states McCain may win which loom not as large:  New Hampshire.

States Bush carried in 2004 which a betting man and/or woman would figure Obama will win:  Iowa and New Mexico.  (Not coincidentally the two states Gore carried and which Bush carried by less than one percent.)

States Kerry won which Obama figures to win more easily:  Wisconsin (won by Bush by less than one percentage point), Minnesota, Oregon.

States which figured not at all in Gore’s electoral calculus, somewhat in Kerry’s, and figure prominently in Obama’s:  Colorado and Virginia… and Nevada

Obama’s hope for the semi-outlier Virginia: That Mark Warner has coat-tails which can bring along a presidential candidate.

States certainly figured in Gore and Kerry’s electoral calculations which Obama will be placing as secondary of importance (ie: not essential):  Florida.

“Swing” states with Senate races liable to switch from Republican to Democrat:  Virginia, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Minnesota, Oregon, Colorado.

States that Dukakis carried which Obama wouldn’t win if his life depended on it:  West Virginia.
States that Dukakis carried which Hillary Clinton wouldn’t win if her life depended on it:  West Virginia.

Vice presidential selections you will know Obama stared at the map in guiding his selection:  Bill Richardson, Ted Strickland, Ed Rendell, Jim Webb.

Vice presidential selections you know McCain stared at the map in guiding his selection:  Florida governor Charlie Crist, Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty.

Puzzle of the moment:  Why is the unlikely combination of a “Obama / Clinton” ticket considered a “Dream ticket” for the Democrats where the somewhat more likely combination of a “McCain / Romney” ticket not so much.

Good thing for Obama:  Where there was no Democratic Party in Ohio for Kerry to lean on, the Republican Party in Ohio has since exploded.

4 states that I guarantee will be voting for McCain:  Wyoming, Idaho, Oklahoma, Georgia.

4 states that I guarantee will be voting for Obama:  Vermont, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Illinois.

I have been scratching my head a little bit about Chelsea Clinton.  She seems to be part Clinton surrogote (like Bill Clinton), part someone just kind of untethered doing her own thing for her own reasons (Kind of like Jeremiah Wright).

Now, Bill Clinton has taken to traveling mainly to “Bubba Country”.  It was an odd tactical move and part of Hillary Clinton’s tactical choice of transforming into Annie Oakley (and now that she is in Oregon she is Calamity Jane).

Chelsea Clinton has been prowling the gay bars.  In Pennsylvania, she did so with (um… noted gay icon?) Ed Rendell..  In Oregon she, naturally, pops over to various Portland gay bars — reportedly at a Lesbian Bar this weekend.

I have a hard time imagining she is popping into a gay bar in West Virginia, where Hillary Clinton hopes to get the, ahem, “hard working white people” to climb her to a 50 point victory, and where Obama hopes to hold Clinton to a mere 30 point victory without anyone seeing him sweat for that 20 point margin.  I would think it would hamper the effort out there in Hicksville, but what do I know?  I would think better of the Hillary Clinton campaign if, indeed, Chelsea Clinton did pop into one in West Virginia… and/ or Kentucky.

Politics always quilts together contradictory coalitions, I suppose.  But after a pause I just wonder if the campaign is using Chelsea as an ambassador to GLBTs or if Chelsea is using the campaign as an excuse to crawl the nation’s gay bars?  (Something akin to her amazing campaign weekend where she book-ended a campaign stop in Minnesota in the middle of winter with two campaign stops in Hawaii.  Minnesota a little more important than Hawaii in terms of picking up delegates, but who’s counting?)

Oh No!  Rush Limbaugh has spoken, and says that he wants Barack Obama to be the Democratic nominee.  Why, with that, I doube-back and say WE MUST NOMINATE HILLARY CLINTON.

Oh, wait.  Maybe this is a trick.  Maybe by encouraging the nomination of Obama, he figures we will all think past him and go ahead and vote in Hillary Clinton, who will then be crushed by the great John McCain machine.  Dear Lord!

Now I’m completely in a bind.  How do we, oh the Great Progressive Conspiracy, defeat “Operation Chaos” when the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy is sending us these mind tricks?

In other news, “Operation Chaos” has been a success.  Because, as we all know, the end game of riots in the streets of Denver looks oh so likely to happen.  And just as Limbaugh orchestrated Clinton’s Pennsylvania victory, he also orchestrated Obama’s North Carolina victory.  Operation Chaos, I barely knew ye.

Tony Zirkle, one for the road as I depart from any thought of him and leave his 15 minutes of fame in the dust.  Perhaps he will have another 15 minutes of fame in two years, but no matter.:  In the 2008 primary, I probably had more negative attacks directed my way than any other congressional candidate in the nation.  I invited it and deserved it.  I knew that I’d take a major hit this year, especially when the democrat (sic) presidential race nearly monopolized the press.

I didn’t have a chance to explain why my positions, which surely appeared to be novel to much of the public, were correct and best for this nation. Additionally, the Republican non-leadership would not allow debates and dis-invited me to speak before voters. I couldn’t get even one of my economic proposals substantially published to the public in the local media. I was shooting for 20%, and it looks like I’ll get close to that.

And his campaign he deems a success.  The idea of speaking before a giant photograph of Adolf Hitler in a celebration of his birthday?  Brilliant campaign ploy!  But, alas, a bit disingenuous in terms of saying “don’t know what that group is all about.”  (Shouldn’t Bill White have had a problem with that line?)

I engaged in an experiment to see if the Great Porn Dragon could withstand my onslaught of humor. He can, or perhaps, I’m just not as funny as I think I am.

He has hemmoraged votes.  Down to 16 percent of the vote.  Does this make a mass movement squelched by the Republican Party machinery?  I don’t know; I don’t think so.

Meanwhile, the interesting little experiment of blogging.  Looking around, I see that two people took an especially strong interest in leaving comments to blogs relating to this controvery.  Tony Zirkle, for one.  And, Bill White.  I get Bill White, (and news reports stating he lists a website at “nazi.org” seem to fail to mention that that leads to… The Libertarian National Socialist Green Party, which makes some things hard to take seriously); this guy gets Tony Zirkle.  How one happens to one place and

But now I can turn my attention to waiting for the next election campaign of Gordon Allen Pross.  Not a Nazi, but entertaining nonetheless.  (25 percent of the vote in a 1998 general US House election!)

We just passed the thirtieth anniversary of the first unsolicited mass commercial Internet message, ie, spam message.  I did not mention it here or provide a link to it because I did so a year ago on the twenty-ninth anniversary, and there is nothing to say about it so much as “There it is.”  A museum piece.

Today I go to my email inbox, and see a message from a “Greg Chan” with the subject line “I’m In My bedroom wearing nothing.  I want u: at www.”.  A little curious to see if the name matches the nature of the spam, which is to ask am I being sent a url to an address that will get me naked male pictures, or — as I suspect, did the name generator popped out “Greg Chan”?  The url does have a name in it.  Kathy.  The latter.  The spam generators don’t make sense to me… Greg is not sending me naked pictures from his bedroom; Kathy is… theoretically. 

And… delete.

The charade continues, though I gather a few more people are now viewing it as the charade it is.  Fine and dandy it is, and perhaps not as party smashing as various pundits believe it to be.  Or maybe it is still providing John McCain that hole he can use to ride a truck through.

Wait.  That Home Spun style Aphormism doesn’t even make any sense.  I am not worthy of Hillary Clinton.

Give them both credit for taking their wins and making the most of them in the arguments.  Barack Obama referenced North Carolina as a “swing state”.  And, it is.  Kind of.  North Carolina lags behind Virginia as southern states where demographic trends are tugging it into the Democratic direction.  If Obama wins by 7 or 8 percentage points, significant as that was Bill Clinton’s 92 and 96 margins of victory, North Carolina will probably be in his column.

Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, set up her narrative for her almost certain victories in the next primary states of West Virginia and Kentucky.  They have been allowed to fall out of the Democratic side, and she intends to WIN THEM… in the fall.  These are two states that voted for Bill Clinton.  And which are trending that other direction.  Sorry, but it will take a bigger blow-out for these two states to win, and frankly Hillary Clinton’s big poll advantage in these states argure poorly for any Democrats’ chances.

I see this new editorial line out there that Clinton “found her compelling message” — fighter and all that — basically after she lost her real chance at the nomination.  It is a filling in for Obama’s least natural constituency message-wise and racial-wise, and nature abhors a vacuum I suppose.  But her tailoring of a message to the “white working class”, in addition to leading to some cringe-inducing home spun tedium of pandering, also shows how contrived these things can be.  I think I made part of this point with John Edwards, but he at least seemed to be building off some themes he deveolped ini 2004 and carried forward through his post-election pre-campaign career.

Somewhere in hearing Clinton calling on the juant in Burma to accept humanitarian aid (will the Burma Juanta heed Clinton’s calls?), I had a gut feeling of her closing call.  Michigan and Florida.  And so we got to see or hear (I was listening to NPR) the crowd chant “Count the Vote!  Count the Vote!  Count the Vote!”, and Clinton smirks in with a “Little weird to pick a nominee based on 48 states.”  Which, it is, but as some were trying to order an order-less process, two states jumped the gun and provided two phony elections.

But, you know, Clinton closed the lead in North Carolina… funny, as that is not anything her campaign will take seriously about Pennsylvania’s less than desirable results for Obama.

After a spell, it occurs to me that the line about “a refreshing policy discussion suddenly broke into the Democratic presidential campaign” is a sign of how empty this trends to.  The gas tax holiday issue, I suppose, might have broken into the first 45 minutes of that infamous Stephanopolis debate.  And, notwithstanding the merits or detrimets of the policy proposal (and, yes, I am with Obama)… good gawd this is a pittance of an issue.  “Let them eat Cake”, indeed.