299 superdelegates on the wall,
299 superdelegates.
If one of those superdelegates should happen to fall,
298 superdelegates on the wall.

My apologies. Whoever created the song "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" shares some of the blame (along with John Yoo) for redefining the word "torture" for the American public. [I should note that some sing a different third line in this charming ditty -- Take one down and pass it around -- but I felt that was a wee bit inappropriate when talking about Democratic superdelegates. Ahem. And it would be even more accurate to change it to "on the fence" rather than "on the wall," now that I think about it. But I digress....]

Anyone who has ever been on a school field trip bus, or even the backseat of the family car on a vacation road trip knows exactly what I mean about this song. The cyclic (and seemingly endless) drip-drip-drip of counting down from ninety-nine to zero is enough to drive anybody crazy. And that's starting from less than 100.

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It was a telling sign that neither Democratic candidate saw fit to visit Punxsutawney before the Pennsylvania primary. Nobody wanted the press to remember Bill Murray's Groundhog Day in any way, shape or form. But even without stump speeches next to Punxsutawney Phil, it's hard not to think of living the same day over and over and over again when looking ahead to the nine contests that remain. Because nothing much is likely to be decided by them.

I wrote yesterday (sorry for the blatant blog plug) a detailed analysis of why I don't think the remaining primaries are going to be all that important, and how I think Barack Obama is going to "close the deal" -- when he passes Hillary Clinton in the superdelegate count. But, unlike the primaries, this is not a scheduled date. It could happen very soon, and then again it could happen after June 3rd, when the last primary takes place. It might not even happen at all -- maybe Hillary will miraculously survive until the convention. But I don't consider that likely.

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The smart bet all along in the Democratic primary race (at least since Super Tuesday) has been that the superdelegates will decide the race. Even with all that has happened since, this central fact hasn't really changed. And it's not likely to change in any of the remaining seven state contests, either. But there's a milestone approaching, and it just may be what Barack Obama needs to "close the deal" (as the current pundit-speak will have it) on the whole race.

Because while all the attention for the past three months has been on each state contest as it happens -- complete with numerical projections galore about the pledged delegates from each primary -- everyone has been largely ignoring the real "numbers story" to be told: the superdelegates.

There has also been a lot of attention paid to various numbers which are utterly meaningless. The Clinton camp has been making the argument that the "national vote count" may be crucial to her argument for winning. The Obama camp has been making the same argument about "number of states won." Neither is going to ultimately mean a thing. Because it's all about the delegates. In other words, we need to focus on the only numbers that are important -- the ones that will give the nomination to one candidate or the other at the Democratic convention.

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House Republicans today massively defected from President Bush's harsh new Medicaid rules, always an interesting event in an election year. Two-thirds of House GOP members voted with all the Democrats to impose a one-year moratorium on implementing the new Medicaid rules which the Bush White House recently re-wrote. The vote was astounding -- 349 to 62 -- which is well beyond the veto-proof margin needed.

Of course, it still has to go through the Senate. But nonetheless it is a milestone of sorts, being an issue that Democrats have enticed most of the Republican Party members to cross the aisle to support. It's easy to see why -- all fifty state governors also oppose the new rules, meaning there is almost-universal support for the Democrats' defiance of the Bush administration's position on the issue.

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[Note: this is my first experience in "liveblogging" -- providing continuous rolling commentary -- so we'll just have to see how it goes. Posts will be made throughout the night, with newer posts at the top. If you're reading this for the first time, start at the bottom and work your way up. And don't forget to refresh your browser (reload the page) every once in a while, in order to see new postings.]

11:35 PM (EDT)
Hillary Clinton -- 1,148,600 votes -- 55%
Barack Obama -- 947,730 votes -- 45%
[precincts reported] -- 93%

This is going to be my final posting on this liveblog. It's been an interesting experience, I have to admit.

It doesn't look like the numbers will change much at this point, at least not until the wee hours of the morning. The last 7% of the votes will trickle in, but it's looking like Hillary may be able to claim exactly what everyone was saying she needed to viably stay in the race for now -- a double-digit win in Pennsylvania. People who predicted a win for her of around 200,000 voters turned out to be amazingly accurate.

The delegate count hasn't changed much in the last half-hour, so while this may be the real story here, we will not know the results of that story until tomorrow. Over half the delegates have not yet been awarded, so there's still room for some movement here one way or the other.

So the race continues. The next contest will be on May 3. On to Guam!!

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Since we've got a primary tomorrow, it's (once again) time to "put up or shut up," and make a prediction for Pennsylvania. Plus, since it's also appropriate, we'll continue the contest to pick the date when the nomination will be locked up, and what the outcome will be, at the end of the column.

It's been a long six weeks since we last played this game, and I'm just relieved that in the intervening time, the media and both campaigns had enough time to accurately identify and portray the relative positions of each candidate on a range of important issues on which they have honest differences; issues that everyday Americans actually care about as being relevant to their lives.

Ha! (Belated) April Fool!

No, instead, we got more of the same. Sigh.

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The twenty-first debate of the Democratic presidential nomination race happened this week. Much fulminating in the blogosphere immediately followed.

I must admit, I was kind of surprised at the ferocity of the response, myself. Because I actually expected exactly what happened during the first hour of the debate -- shallowness and insipid "gotcha" questions. This is, after all, the mainstream media we are talking about. Did anyone really think it was suddenly going to morph into PBS on debate night?

What surprised me is that the second half of the debate got such short shrift in the reaction. The second half of the debate was actually about issues, and some things got said during it which will be repeated over and over again in the future -- long after the controversy over the first half has been forgotten by all but a few.

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Last night's "probably the last one" Democratic debate, hosted by ABC and moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, has been generating a lot of sound and fury in Blogville today. The chest-beating and garment-rending has been loudest from Obama supporters, who feel their candidate was subjected to too many stupid "gotcha" questions, but even Clinton supporters are noticing how shallow and uninformative the first half of the debate was.

So if you're looking for that sort of thing, it's out there everywhere. Here instead, I'd like to address an actual question that was asked last night about actual policy that received actual answers from both candidates. Call me contrarian, I don't mind.

I know this goes against the grain for commentary on this debate, so I'll open with one cheap shot that everyone else seems to have missed -- the rank stupidity and ignorance of one of Charlie Gibson's first questions.

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Back in the dim and distant past of this presidential campaign (i.e., February), I wrote a pre-debate column listing questions I would like to hear both Democratic candidates answer. Today's column is a revision of this original. Many of the questions I have are the same, for which I apologize. I don't normally recycle my own material in this fashion, but unfortunately these questions remain largely unanswered, almost two months after the last debate.

As I previously stated, I (of course) have my own biases as to what to ask and what not to ask, so I invite everyone to pose their own questions in response in the comments.

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The level of bloviation from the mainstream media over trivia is approaching hysterical levels it seems, but if you look carefully there is actually some news from the campaign trail that won't insult your intelligence. All three candidates have made interesting remarks in the past day or so which (if people hear them) might actually help them make up their mind in the voting booth. As opposed to the media's clinging to distractions such as sniper fire and bitterness.

I will leave it to others to microscopically analyze Hillary Clinton's sniper fire story and Barack Obama's recent comments in San Francisco. There certainly seems to be no shortage of folks willing to obsess over such unforced errors on the campaign trail, on both sides. My only comment on the situation is for Democrats to beware, because they are being treated unequally in this mess. During the same time period as Clinton and Obama's recent kerfluffles, John McCain has said some profoundly stupid things. And the media has barely blinked. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama should realize this and direct a little more of their fire at McCain instead of each other. Clinton has already played this card once, so she knows that it works -- challenge the media to drop its fawning attitude toward John McCain and start shining a light on his misstatements as well, or else whoever becomes the Democratic nominee is going to have a much worse time of it this November.

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