Emptying The Primary Day Out Basket

Some odds and ends left over from the North Carolina and Indiana primaries:

DEFINING 'PROGRESS' DOWN

Hillary Clinton chief strategist Geoff Garin tried to make the case that her 14-point loss in the Tar Heel State actually represented "progress" because she did better among white voters than she had in Virginia.

"When we began in North Carolina," Garin said, "our internal polling and much of the public polling [showed] we were running exactly even with white voters."

Garin called winning 24 percent more of the white vote than Obama "significant." I would call such explicit race-based analysis a very slippery slope.

CLOSING THE GAP

Hillary Clinton's net gain from the contests in Pennsylvania, Guam, North Carolina was 3,365 votes and zero delegates, according to Real Clear Politics.

Of the 5.1 million votes, Clinton received 2,558,526 and Obama received 2,555,161. Of the 349 pledged delegates, Clinton and Obama each took 171 with seven yet to be determined.

So much for closing that gap, Hillary.

FEEL THE MITTMENTUM!

Didja know that Mitt Romney (remember him?) got 19 percent of the vote in the Republican side of the Indiana primary? My buddy Will Bunch at Attytood reports that:

"I can practically feel the Mittmentum some 900 miles away! That means if you put every Hoosier who cast a ballot for the former Massachusetts governor and put them on a bus and brought them to Philly's vast Wachovia Center for a hockey game, you would fill almost every seat.

"That would be a massive throng, clamoring for a slick-backed candidate who left the GOP presidential race three months after his presence inspired about as much excitement as a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman while he was still around, who now appears frequently on my TV to tell me how great is."

Will also notes that while presumptive GOP nominee John McCain won North Carolina vote with 74 percent, some 4 percent voted for a guy by the name of No Preference. Sounds like a winner to me.