There's a lonely stretch of grassland in Montana, with gently rolling hills next to a small river, where 132 years ago this June, a battle was fought. More on this in a moment.

One of the victors of this battle was a Native American named Crazy Horse. In the Black Hills of South Dakota, not far from Mount Rushmore, another mountain is being carved in his likeness, in the largest sculpture mankind has ever attempted. When finished, it will dwarf Mount Rushmore in size.

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Tomorrow, the Democratic primary race will finally be over. Or, I should say, the primaries themselves will be over. At long last, everyone will have voted, unless (Democratic) life is discovered on Mars in the next few days.

Ahem.

The possibility of Martian primaries aside, though, it looks like Wednesday morning is going to be decisive for Barack Obama, no matter who wins the remaining two primaries the night before in Montana and South Dakota. And even though it has seemed like and endless campaign so far (mostly because it has been), we will wake up Wednesday only halfway through the election. Counting days, this Wednesday is the exact midpoint between the frozen vote in Iowa and the November election. That's a stunning thought. We're only half done.

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As the primary election season sinks slowly in the West (South Dakota and Montana, to be exact), we turn our eyes (finally!) to the general election campaign against John McCain.

Before we move forward, though, allow me to make my penultimate primary pick for Sunday's vote in Puerto Rico: Hillary Clinton wins by fifteen points.

Up until now, we've been playing the politically wonky game of predicting the division of delegates, pledged and super alike. But just because primary season's over doesn't mean there aren't other political insider games to play for the next few months. The biggest of these, for now, is to guess the Vice Presidential pick for McCain and Obama. But once that's over with, everyone's going to start looking at the electoral map in earnest.

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Barack Obama has started talking about his first 100 days in office. This may be wildly premature, but in Obama's defense, he was directly asked the question and actually responded instead of brushing it off. From a Reuters news blog:

During a fund-raiser in Denver, Obama -- a former constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago Law School -- was asked what he hoped to accomplish during his first 100 days in office.

"I would call my attorney general in and review every single executive order issued by George Bush and overturn those laws or executive decisions that I feel violate the constitution," said Obama.

Other goals for his first 100 days: work out a plan to withdraw troops from Iraq; make progress on alternative energy plans and launch legislation to reform the health care system.

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Actors are a superstitious lot. Among the many good-luck and bad-luck rules they follow is one known to the general public, due to its near-universality: actors are never supposed to say the name of the play "Macbeth." They refer to it as "the Scottish play," or the "play about the Scotsman," or some other roundabout terminology which avoids mentioning Macbeth's name.

One would think that politicians everywhere would likewise avoid mentioning the word "assassination" -- ever -- on the campaign trail. Especially if it's not even germane to the point you are supposedly making. One would think. One, apparently, would be wrong.

But, rather than leap into the fray over Senator Clinton's recent remarks on Robert F. Kennedy's assassination (and what month it happened in), I would like to revisit a remark she made earlier on the campaign trail which referenced his brother, President John F. Kennedy. Because I still think it was the turning point for her entire campaign. At the time I raised the possibility that it would be seen as her "Dean Scream" moment, and intervening events have done nothing but reinforce that analysis for me.

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There is an American flag flying in front of my house today. I am not right-wing, I am not pro-war, I am not making a political statement of any kind by flying Old Glory. I was brought up to respect and honor the flag, but not to treat it as a sacred object. "Sacred" is in the realm of religion. The flag is not a religious item, therefore "sacred" is a word which just cannot apply. But while I do honor the flag, and the soldiers who fought under it for our country, I am appalled that it has become a politicized object, as if it belonged to only one political party. It does not. It belongs to all of us. It belongs to soldiers and pacifists. It belongs to those for whom America can do no wrong, and it belongs to those who only see the bad in what America does in the world. It belongs to an 18-year old leftist, voting in his first election ever, and it belongs to a cranky old right-winger who has voted since the Great Depression. It belongs to Democrats, and yes, to Republicans.

Never forget that -- the flag belongs to all of us, and many display it for many reasons, so don't just automatically make an assumption about anyone who chooses to fly it in front of their house, or for that matter, someone who doesn't always wear a flag pin on his lapel. Patriotism is an intensely personal thing, and it manifests itself differently in different people.

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President George W. Bush, asked in a press conference why Republicans in the House and Senate are increasingly defying him, proven by the fact that dozens of them joined with the Democrats this week in order to overturn his recent veto, replied:

"Quack! Furthermore -- quack, QUACK!!"

Well, no, actually, I made that up. The Leader of the Free World did not, in fact, quack like a duck. It was the product of a (gleeful) overly active imagination on my part. I apologize for such frivolity.

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General David Petraeus, testifying before Congress today (in the hopes that they will approve his promotion), may just have thrown a serious monkey wrench into the Republicans' election strategy, by killing one of their best hopes for an "October Surprise."

I wrote about this scenario two months ago in an article titled "Democrats Beware: 'October Surprise' Announced In Advance." The plan was to have Iraq hold its provincial elections this October, one month before our own. Images of Iraqis waving purple fingers and happily voting were to be the order of the day.

However, during a hearing before Congress today, General David Petraeus just shot down that plan. He said the elections would likely be delayed, and would not meet the October deadline.

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Last Thanksgiving, I took a vacation from the blog and (while I was gone) I ran a series of speech transcripts from all eight of the Democratic candidates for president. It was an interesting process, since I had to contact all the campaigns to get their permission to do so, and to get them to select which speech to use. I did it as a public service, something that newspapers used to do back when they were interested in their civic duties as members of a free press (say, the early 1960s, at a guess).

After the series ran, I was contacted by Professor Kenneth Janda, who asked if he could use the speeches as data for his project examining the language of such political stump speeches [PDF of a Chicago Tribune article on the subject]. I told him "sure, go right ahead," since I already had permission from the campaigns to use the speeches publicly.

Since we are about at the halfway point in the 2008 elections -- with the last dust settling from the nomination race and the general election campaign gearing up -- I thought it would be a good time to talk to Janda again. I am not professionally trained in political science (I just pretend to be, on the internet), so I thought it would be interesting to hear from someone who is.

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With a title like that, you might be expecting Marc Antony-like irony ("Brutus is an honorable man"), but I'm actually serious. I like 527s, and wholeheartedly support the concept. Sure, it could use a little more openness, but the basic idea is sound. Three examples from the campaign trail today show why.

But before we get to that, let's start with some definitions. A 527, for those of you who don't already know, is an organization (it's more properly called a "527 group") that raises money and then spends it to further their own political agenda. It is called a 527 because of the section of the IRS rules it exists under. If you want to make a political point -- any political point -- you can form a 527, raise money from donors, and then spend that money on a print, radio, or television advertisement campaign. You find some deep-pocket donor, get him or her to pony up a few million bucks (or raise it from small donors online), and then you air ads on television saying whatever you want. Well, that's not 100% true, as there are limits to what you can say. You can't, for instance, come out and say "vote for Obama," because that puts you in a whole different section of the IRS tax code. But other than advocating for one particular candidate, you can pretty much say whatever you want.

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