Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

Behold these case studies of clinical denial . . .

Britney Spears, last December: "My sister's not pregnant."

John McCain, in January: "Any recession is psychological."

Hillary Clinton, Tuesday night: "I win, he wins. I win, he wins. It's so close!"

Some of Hillary's spinners embarrassed themselves even more, talking in public about how they were "delighted" and "happy" with the latest primary results that, at least by the measurements of empirical reality, put her candidacy on life support.

. . . The way things now stand, Obama could well clinch first place among, all pledged delegates nationwide, with his expected win in Oregon 13 days from now. At this point, it strains credulity to believe that Democratic donors will be stoked to finance Hillary's onward trudge. It strains credulity to believe that Democratic party apparatchiks will agree to give Clinton an artificial boost by awarding her pledged delegates in Michigan, where Obama had removed his name from the ballot of a meaningless primary. Most importantly, it strains credulity to believe that the fence-sitting superdelegates are going to deny the nomination to the candidate who, barring a documented revelation that he is an alien from a hostile planet, is now demonstrably poised to finish out the primary season with the most pledgees and popular votes.

-- DICK POLMAN

Shellshocked House Republicans have gotten warnings from leaders past and present: Your party's message isn’t good enough to prevent disaster in November, and neither is the NRCC's money.

The double shot of bad news had one veteran Republican House member worrying aloud that the party's electoral woes — brought into sharp focus by Woody Jenkins' loss to Don Cazayoux in Louisiana on Saturday — have the House Republican Conference splitting apart in "everybody for himself" mode.

"There is an attitude that, 'I better watch out for myself, because nobody else is going to do it,' " the member said. "There are all these different factions out there, everyone is sniping at each other, and we have no real plan. We have a lot of people fighting to be the captain of the lifeboat instead of everybody pulling together."

-- JOHN BRESNAHAN

One of the most heartening results of the Obama blow-out in North Carolina and the Clinton nail-biting popular vote win but delegate wash in Indiana is the impact of the gasoline tax holiday proposal. If you listen to the Obama campaign, they are claiming that their opposition to the holiday gave late breaking undecided voters a hook to vote for Obama. I don't have their numbers to back this assertion up but given that he did better than most of the immediate pre-election polls, this is a plausible interpretation.

More importantly, the holiday proposal was not the political winner that the Clinton campaign thought it was. It did not move votes for her. This proposal was aimed at her bloc of late breakers and low information voters and it did not work.

We had a clear and sharp divide between good sounding but completely ineffective policy proposals and good policy. We have been conditioned to believe that good sounding policies trump good policies but it is very heartening to see the opposite here. Good policy was at least able to break even with good sounding policy last night. As a wonk, that warms the cockles of my heart.

-- FESTER

John McCain doesn't seem to realize that there hasn't been a country called "Czechoslovakia" for about fifteen years. One wag joked to me that we should cut him some slack since "When he was studying geography, the place was called Bohemia."

-- MATTHEW YGLESIAS

As for the Clintons, it took a lot of money and a lot of psychic energy to defeat them. There is no way that Obama can betray that effort by inviting them back into the tent. That would make his campaign all about him, rather than all about us. This was a fight for the ideological soul of the party. But the ideology wasn't so much about health or education policy. It was about how the party is organized, who it really represents, and whether or not it will continue to be beholden to the old lobbyists, interests groups, and consultants, or whether it will become the truly people-powered party that is a necessary predicate for bringing real progressive change.

We have our victory, even if it isn't quite what we imagined it would be. Now it's our job to go out and win the November elections all up and down the ticket and change what is possible in Washington.

-- BOOMAN

First, eventually there will be a nominee (whether May or June or August) and a final night of the convention where everyone will raise hands together and declare undying loyalty. Most of those Clinton supporters, especially ones committed enough to vote in a primary, will vote Democratic in November. And there are a lot more registered Democrats than there used to be.

Second, Obama is a fast learner. . . . Like a vacuum cleaner, he is sucking up the Clintonian message to blue collar voters and absorbing the rhetoric which has successfully lured a coalition of working class whites, seniors and women. Don't expect any more Snobgate slip-ups.

In short, the fun for conservatives is at an end.

-- JENNIFER RUBIN

Cartoon by Ward Sutton / Hat tip to The Political Cat