On my way home from rehearsal the other night, I was listening to Rachel Maddow’s radio show. She was making an impassioned case that Hillary Clinton, contrary to the prevailing wisdom of the mainstream media’s talking heads, was not planning to go quietly into the night. Not even close:

After the primary calendar has ended, Clinton’s campaign can only justify or explain her staying in the race if she makes the case that the Democratic Party still has not chosen a nominee conclusively. Clinton needs an argument that the game should go into extra innings. Overtime. Bonus round. Detention. Whatever. Clinton has now found that argument — she says she will not stop campaigning until the issue of the Florida and Michigan delegates is settled to her satisfaction.

The Florida/Michigan issue get settled, of course, by the Democrats’ Rules and Bylaws Committee… unless of course that committee’s decision gets appealed to the Credentials Committee… unless of course that decision, too, gets appealed… to the floor of the convention.

Do you see where this is going? If there is an open, unresolved procedural issue involving the Florida and Michigan delegations, Senator Clinton will be able to cite that as her justification for staying in the race until the convention even though she is not ahead in the nomination contest at the end of the primary calendar.

If she can ensure that the Florida and Michigan issue stays unresolved until the convention (and by appealing it every step of the way, I don’t see how that can be avoided), then Clinton stays in the race until the convention. Staying in until the convention buys her three more months of campaign time, three more months to make her case to the party and the country, three more months for some potential political unfortunateness to befall Senator Obama.

(Maddow has written up her thoughts for a piece at Huffington Post.)

Maddow’s concern boils down to this: If the nomination fight lasts until the convention in August, she doesn’t believe that the Democratic nominee for president can beat John McCain in November. Despite this, Clinton wants to be President. Clinton obviously knows that if she concedes the nomination to Obama, she has no chance to become President. On the other hand, if she takes it to the convention she has a chance to become the nominee. And if she becomes the nominee she has a slim chance of beating McCain in November.

And “if what you really want is to be President of the United States — a slim chance of becoming President (a fight at the convention) is better than no chance of becoming President (because you dropped out).”

I don’t necessarily agree with Maddow’s contention that a convention fight spells certain doom for the Democrats in November — although the historical precedents of 1968, 1972, and 1980 hardly bode well. But it’s certainly not an optimal situation. I’ve long felt that Hillary Clinton’s vision of Democratic strategy has been profoundly wrong in comparison to Howard Dean’s 50 State Strategy (it’s one of the reasons I don’t support her), and now she seems willing to risk immolating her entire party if the concession prize is a slim chance that she gets to be President.

Fortunately, Rachel Maddow also proposes a solution:

If the Democrats are to avoid a divided convention, the Florida and Michigan dispute will have to be taken off the table — settled in a way that avoids the risk of a rules dispute that stretches the nominating contest out through the convention. I can think of only one way to do that, but there may be others.

Here’s my way: based on my read of NBC’s delegate math, I think if the Clinton campaign won 100% of what they wanted on the Florida and Michigan dispute, Obama could still clinch the nomination — even according to the most pro-Clinton math — if 90 of the remaining 210-or-so undeclared superdelegates declared for Obama.

To sum this up:

(1) Barack Obama has reached one finish line by winning a majority of the pledged delegates.

(2) But if Barack Obama is going to wrap up this nomination race cleanly, then he needs to get 90 of the remaining 210 undeclared superdelegates to declare for him by May 31st.

So what can you do to help?

Well, most of you reading this have already cast your vote in the primaries. You’ve exercised your most primal form of political power, and you’ve helped Barack Obama cross that first finish line. (And if your state hasn’t held its primary, yet, you should make sure that you do vote. And get as many of your friends to vote as possible.)

And, of course, if you haven’t already donated to Obama’s campaign, then you should donate today. Money is another one of those primal forms of political power, and even the price of a cup of coffee can make a difference.

But, more immediately, it’s time to help Obama cross that second finish line by exercising your most important right in a democracy: Speech.

You can find a list of currently undeclared superdelegates at Democratic Convention Watch. I urge you to take a look at that list. If there’s a representative, senator, governor, or DNC party member on that list from your state, then you can make a difference by sending them a letter or writing an e-mail or making a phone call. Tell them that you support the winner of the primaries and the leader in pledged delegates, Barack Obama. Stress to them the importance of bringing an undisputed conclusion to this primary fight as soon as possible, so that the entire party can turn its focus to the general election in November. Ask them to publicly endorse.

To make it even easier, I’ve compiled contact information and organized it by state. (However, I probably won’t be able to keep this list updated in a timely fashion, so remember to check the page at Democratic Convention Watch.)

UNDECLARED SUPERDELEGATES

DONATE TO BARACK OBAMA’S CAMPAIGN

During the 2000 presidential primaries I was evenly divided in my support for John McCain and Al Gore. If it had ended up being McCain vs. Gore in November, I was honestly unsure during that primary season which of them I would be voting for. If John McCain had been the Republican nominee and Al Gore had still selected Joe Leiberman for his running mate, I would have voted for John McCain in November.

(Why? While anti-Leiberman sentiments are easy to come by these days, my leeriness at the time was predicated entirely around Leiberman’s pro-censorship positions. These were positions shared by Al Gore’s wife Tipper. This meant that Al Gore had surrounded himself with voices preaching pro-censorship positions. Civil rights violations are, frankly, a nearly unforgivable political sin for me — and, in a democracy, freedom of speech is almost certainly the most important civil right. Al Gore never actually crossed that line personally, but he was flirting with it dangerously in his selection of VP. That was the tipping point for me.)

As it turned out, of course, George W. Bush ended up being the Republican nominee. Bush wore his ignorance and incompetence on his sleeve and came pre-packaged with a long history of dismal failure. I knew he would be a complete disaster for this country and voting for Al Gore became a no-brainer. The Stakes were far too high.

In any case, eight years ago I was ready to embrace a John McCain presidency. I didn’t agree completely with his politics, but I respected his principles, his intelligence, and his integrity.

But eight years has made a huge difference: Today I am vehemently opposed to a John McCain presidency. Why?

Well, here’s one reason:

At some point during or after losing the Republican primary in 2000, John McCain made the decision that he would do whatever was necessary in order to secure his party’s nomination in 2008. He became a political panderer and utterly sacrificed his personal integrity on the altar of personal ambition.

But more importantly, John McCain lost his moral compass during the past eight years. Frankly, John McCain lost my vote (and my respect) when he condoned torture. Repeatedly. John McCain — a former POW — should know better. And he should be ashamed to compromise his own ethical code in order to achieve his political aspirations.

(For the record, McCain loses a little more of my respect every time he tries to defend his pro-torture vote in February 2008 by pointing to the position he took vis-a-vis torture in 2005… which is when he first flip-flopped on the issue. Saying, “I didn’t flip-flop on torture because I flip-flopped on torture in 2005,” is, frankly, insulting to every intelligent and informed person.)

All of this was more than enough to turn me against the idea of a John McCain presidency. But recently even more disturbing news is beginning to break: John McCain’s campaign has a corruption problem. Lots of corruption problems. He’s also shown a remarkable willingness to break and/or bend the very campaign finance laws he personally championed.

Apparently I shouldn’t have been so quick to give him a second chance after his involvement as one of the Keating Five.

Why is this important? Because the Republican party has a serious problem with corruption and cronyism. At a national level it’s not hard to draw a line from Nixon (a name which has practically become a byword for corruption) to Reagan (the White House featuring the most criminal convictions in history) to Bush. But the congressional Republicans have been plagued by their own scandals (Jack Abramoff, Tom Delay, Duke Cunningham); as have Republican governors (Coingate, George Ryan, Ernie Fletcher, John G. Rowland). In short, their corruption is rampant at every level of government: National, state, and local. Heck, the Republicans even steal from themselves.

So when John McCain not only establishes that he’s willing to compromise his own ethical integrity in order to achieve political power but also appears to engage in widespread, systematic corruption… well, that makes it impossible for me to support him for any political office. Nor can I have any faith in his ability to lead this country out of the troubled times that George W. Bush has left us stranded in.

Sometimes I forget that, just because I know something, it doesn’t mean that everybody else knows it, too. So here’s a meme that needs to be more widely known:

The race for the Democratic nomination is already over.

The fat lady may not have actually sung (past tense), but she’s definitely singing. Actually, she’s already hit the final note and is just kind of holding onto it at this point.

If you want the full explanation for this, you should check out this piece from the Politico. But the short version goes something like this: If Clinton wins every remaining primary race by a margin of 60-40 (which is essentially impossible), she would still end up trailing Obama in both pledged delegates and the popular vote. So even in her best-case electoral strategy, she’s completely dependent on the Democratic superdelegates to perform a coup — disenfranchising the primary voters and nominating her over Obama.

How likely is that? Not very.

Many superdelegates have already declared their allegiance, of course. Others will declare over the next few weeks (like former presidential candidate Bill Richardson did yesterday). But the superdelegates who have not yet declared are probably content to let these remaining primaries play out because:

(1) The primaries generally appear to be invigorating the party base and pulling new people into the party.

(2) They don’t want to give an appearance of performing a “coup”. The math says that Obama has this nomination locked up, but that’s not the public perception (largely because the MSM is not widely reporting that story).

So, allowing the primaries to proceed is likely to increase Democratic turnout in November. OTOH, rendering the remaining primaries moot (even if they almost certainly are moot) has the real possibility of creating a backlash that would suppress turnout in the November.

Also:

(3) While it’s certainly true that Hillary Clinton’s campaign is ripping into Obama, talking about how this is “hurting him” in the general election seems a little misplaced. It’s not like the Republican hate-machine is going to go any easier on the guy.

If Obama can’t weather these attacks now, there’s no way he’ll be able to weather them 2, 4, or 6 months from now. While I consider the Wright stuff to be a tempest-in-a-teapot with all the meaningful content of attacking Jimmy Carter because his brother Billy was an idiot, I’d still rather see it happening now rather than being stored up by the Rovian machine and trotted out in the middle of October.

(The exception to this is the fact that the Clintons have been practically announcing that they would prefer to see John McCain as president if Obama gets the nomination. Whenever I see another one of these glowing McCain endorsements from Hillary and Bill I have to seriously wonder if they’ve lost their freakin’ minds.)

At the end of the day, though, the candidate who wins the pledged delegate race is almost certainly going to be the nominee. And if that candidate also has the popular vote behind them, then it’s a dead-lock certainty they’ll be the nominee.

And nothing short of Hillary Clinton turning out to be a man who’s spent the last three decades in a secret gay marriage with Bill or Obama secretly being a member of the KKK who has spent his entire life wearing black-face is going to change that.

Yesterday I talked about how important it is for Barack Obama to become the next President of the United States. Today I’m beginning of the process of stepping up my own personal efforts to help make that happen, and as part of that I’m asking you to visit my personal fundraising page for Senator Obama’s campaign. Even as little as $10 — pocket change, really — will help play a part in supporting what may be the most important campaign in a generation.

There is a security gap in this country — a gap between the rhetoric of those who claim to be tough on national security, and the reality of growing insecurity caused by their decisions. A gap between Washington experience, and the wisdom of Washington’s judgments. A gap between the rhetoric of those who tout their support for our troops, and the overburdened state of our military.

Barack Obama
March 19th, 2008

So can you take a few seconds out of your day to help Senator Obama?

Everyone — and I mean everyone — needs to take the time to listen to the speech that Barack Obama delivered yesterday:

You can also find a high-res version (in several parts) starting here.

I repeat only what many others have said when I describe it as the finest piece of political oratory, political thought, and political fortitude this nation has seen in at least a quarter century. (It’s important to note that this speech is entirely the product of Obama’s exceptional mind: It was not the product of speechwriters, but a product of his own pen — a trait which is true of many, if not most, of his speeches.)

When this political cycle began, way back in the waning months of 2006, my first choice for the Democratic nomination and the presidency was John Edwards. I had many reasons for that, but even when John Edwards was my horse, Barack Obama was a very close second. When Edwards left the race, it was with very little regret that I came an Obama supporter.

But this speech — coupled with Obama’s extraordinary Audacity of Hope — has transformed me over the course of the past week from being merely a supporter to a completely dedicated zealot. It is my fervent belief that electing Barack Obama is of the utmost importance.

America is standing at a treacherous crossroads. The last eight years have left us gasping as a nation. I have believed for many years now, that the 2008 election would decide whether or not America was going to reverse its decline and right its course.

But Barack Obama gives me hope that this election will be more than just an opportunity to avert disaster. Barack Obama gives me hope that this election can be about making America a better place and a stronger place than it has ever been.

McCain would be a disaster. Clinton would be acceptable.

But Obama?

President Obama would be exceptional.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept the politics that breeds division and conflict and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle, as we did in the O.J. trial. Or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina. Or as fodder for the nightly news. You can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card. Or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his politics.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in our next election we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one.

And nothing will change.

Barack Obama
March 18th, 2008