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Hmmm.

WASHINGTON Ñ In the past two months, Senator Barack Obama has built a commanding coalition among Democratic voters, with especially strong support among men, and is now viewed by most Democrats as the candidate best able to beat Senator John McCain in the general election, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.

Notice it doesn't say that polls show Obama can beat McCain -- just that "most Democrats" think he can.

And why shouldn't they? That's what the Times, and the rest of the media, have been selling for months.

For a little reality, a reader has to skip down 6 paragraphs:

These national polls are not predictive of the Democratic candidatesÕ standings in individual states, notably Ohio and Texas, which hold the next primaries, on March 4. Most recent polls there show a neck-and-neck race in Texas and Mrs. Clinton with a lead in Ohio...

Oh yes, Poor Readers, the media has really got the push going, trying to hustle the ball over the goal line for Obama before the 4th. With a week to go, they're printing page 1 stories that report not on actual race polls or results, but on what they've managed to convince people.

If they succeed, it's win-win for them, and the rest of the corpora-kleptocracy: McCain vs. Obama.

And it will be among the greatest and most unlikely defeats for Democrats, and democracy, ever.

201k has lost a lot of weight in the last several months, which has prompted the question, "How did you do it?" from many people -- which is nice.

But when we tell them that we did it by eliminating most carbohydrates, a surprising number of people respond by telling us that low-carb diets don't work. Which is funny, if you think about it.

Almost always, the critique goes like this:

"The trouble with the low-carb thing is that you lose weight while you're doing it, but once you stop, and go back to eating carbs, you gain the weight back."

Yeah, uh, thanks. That's some lousy diet, huh?

Apparently what we really need is a diet that works when you aren't on it.

Wow, weird things are afoot in Virginia.

Virginia has voted Republican in every election since 1952 except one (1964). It went twice for George W. Bush: in 2000, of a total 2,654,780 votes, 1,437,490 were for Bush and 1,217,290 were for Gore. In 2004, out of a total 3,171,701 votes, 1,716,959 were for Bush and 1,454,742 were for Kerry.

In the 2000 Virginia Republican primary, the most recent primary in which there was no unopposed incumbent, 664,093 votes were cast, mostly for either Bush or John McCain.

And yet, in the 2008 primary on February 2nd, there suddenly appeared to be an astounding number of Democratic voters in Virginia.

Of the 1,467,368 primary votes cast this year, Democrats garnered 979,712, with the lion's share going to Barack Obama, who had 623,141. Meanwhile, Republican candidates received 487,656, with McCain edging Huckabee 244,135 to 198,247.

Twice as many Democratic voters as Republican in Virginia?

Obamaniacs -- both the cynics in the press and the true-believers fainting at the sight of him -- will no doubt claim this demonstrates the wide appeal their candidate has across the spectrum. The fainters may even believe that.

Those whose political agendas revolve around neither self-interested disingenuousness nor self-interested delusion will rightly find in the Virginia sand more than a small trace of monkey business.

No one truly interested in a Democratic victory in November should allow themselves to be kidded into believing that the very, very, Republican voters of Virginia are suddenly goo-goo for the Democratic candidate they think will beat the Republican. But they may in fact be very goo-goo to influence the Democratic nomination away from the candidate who won California, New York, New Jersey, Florida, Michigan, Tennessee, New Mexico, Arizona...

The forces aligned against Hillary Clinton -- and they are considerable: the Republican Party, the media, proponents of Social Security "reform," opponents of a national health care plan, and the Obama campaign -- must by now realize that, all propaganda to the contrary, they have only two options for beating her at this point.

With California, New York, New Jersey, and Florida in her column -- all of which show her advantage not only over Barack Obama but also over John McCain: 2,290,660 votes to 1,878,746 to 1,080,774 in California, 1,003,623 to 697,914 to 310,814 in New York, 602,576 to 492,186 to 310,427 in New Jersey, and 857,208 to 569,041 to 693,508 in Florida, (where both McCain and Romney drew more votes than Obama) -- Hillary's opponents must either bully her offstage before March 4, when Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania go to the polls, or somehow convince Hispanic voters to switch allegiance to Obama, which no evidence yet suggests is possible.

The effort to bully the notoriously difficult-to-bully Hillary Clinton has been underway since Super Tuesday, when voices first began to rise in new-found outrage over the Democratic superdelegates, most of whom were thought to favor Clinton. Interestingly, no one objected to the Republican superdelegates, but that's another story.

The "we can't let these party oligarchs decide this race over the voters" argument -- put forth with a straight face by faces with surprisingly little interest in re-enfranchising the disqualified voters of Florida and Michigan, who chose Clinton -- spent two weeks pounding their refrain into the public consciousness before moving it to the next level: suggesting that Clinton -- the winner of all of the big swing states -- should "step aside" for the good of the party.

This puzzling proposal has been buttressed on the one side with the fallacious argument that Obama has a better chance than Clinton of beating McCain -- a line of reasoning possible only by referring to meaningless, not to mention vague, national polls, and not the state-by-state numbers that actually decide presidential elections -- and on the other by the equally unsupported urban myth that "everyone hates Hillary Clinton," an argument easily dismissed with one glance her superior numbers (to McCain as well as Obama) in all the above-mentioned states, as well as Tennessee and Oklahoma, two states supposedly smack in the middle of Anti-Hillaryland.

Indeed, Hillary Clinton came amazingly close to getting as many votes as John McCain in his home state of Arizona.

Had Obama done that the media would have crowned him King of Earth -- which they may yet do anyway.

But the inescapable math leaves the anti-Hillary forces with two options: a) launch desperate and destined-to-fail efforts to sully her reputation with Hispanic-Americans, in the hope of taking Texas, and b) pursuade as many superdelegates as possible to endorse Obama.

Here's their problem: if Clinton can't be bullied offstage before March 4, and if she takes Texas and Ohio, not only will she narrow the gap in delegates, not only will she be able to make the overwhelming argument that the winner of Texas, California, Ohio, Florida, New York and New Jersey must of course be the party's nominee, but her opponents will find themselves having to reverse their anti-superdelegate argument -- as those votes will start to look increasingly like Obama's only possible road to the nomination.

In other words, those currently pounding the table in righteous outrage over the superdelegate system may be its most ardent fans on March 5th.

So to those anti-superdelegate voices we say: Can we get that in writing?

Boy, that Barack Obama sure is pushing politics in a new direction.

Obama's political action committee has doled out more than $694,000 to superdelegates since 2005, the study found, and of the 81 who had announced their support for Obama, 34 had received donations totaling $228,000.

Clinton's political action committee has distributed about $195,000 to superdelegates, and only 13 of the 109 who had announced for her have received money, totaling about $95,000.

Has anyone noticed that talking to Obama supporters is like talking to children?

Here's some of the things we've heard recently:

Republican politicians and pundits overwhelmingly praise Obama because they, too, are sick of the status quo.

Republican politicians and pundits are afraid to run against Obama; the one they really want to run against is Hillary Clinton.

John McCain is a moderate -- see, Rush Limbaugh doesn't like him!

Barack Obama is very, very liberal -- Rush Limbaugh says so!

It doesn't matter that Hillary beat Obama in Florida, California, Michigan, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Arkansas, New Jersey, Oklahoma, and New York.

Don't worry about Texas, Florida, and California; given a choice, Hispanic and Luso-American voters will choose Obama over McCain, all evidence to the contrary, and even though McCain has cultivated a reasonable (for a Republican) stance on immigration. After all, African-American voters would vote for Hillary over McCain, so Hispanics will vote for Obama -- right? Yes we can!

Health care really isn't a pressing issue.

The health care plans of Obama and Hillary are virtually identical.

The differences between the health care plans of Obama and Hillary are immaterial, because neither plan will become law as currently proposed -- after all, what can a President accomplish with both a House and Senate of his or her party?

Look, you can't have mandated health care, because it would be too expensive, and besides, how would you enforce it?

Ok, we mandate things like car insurance and Social Security, but hey, Social Security faces a "looming crisis" and needs to be fixed in the very near future anyway.

And so on.

It seems unlikely that Hillary Clinton can overcome all four of the forces aligned against her: the corporate propagandists in the media, the Obama money machine, the misogynist undercurrent in our society, and the breathtaking naivete of younger Democratic voters. Even if the momentum doesn't swing enough to stop her from taking Texas and Ohio on March 4, those forces will only redouble their efforts to assassinate her character, and her campaign -- even if it means changing the rules of the party to disenfranchise the superdelegates while maintaining the rules that disenfranchise the voters of Florida and Michigan.

That leaves McCain vs. Obama, which gives Texas, Florida, and maybe even California to McCain. And that's that.

Even if by some miracle Obama pulls out a win against McCain (don't bet on it) the powers that have opposed health care in this country for decades will have stopped it again -- improbably this time, and in the face of overwhelming support for it. Obama v. McCain is win-win for them.

Then Social Security "reform" will be back on the table -- again, however improbably, unnecessary, and unpopular.

You have to hand it to the money: it really knows how to win.

As predicted, they're ramping it up over at the New York Obama-Times.

Frank Obama-Rich:

2/10/08 - Hillary Clinton is "a synthetic product leeched of most human qualities," and her campaign -- despite being in "a draw in popular votes and delegates" and having won California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Tennessee, etc., -- is an "imploding Potemkin village" held together only by the "fungible profits from Bill ClintonÕs murky post-presidency business deals."

That African-Americans overwhelmingly support Barack Obama is unnoteworthy, but Clinton's accurate observation that Hispanics are voting overwhelmingly for her is "a lie, and a bigoted lie at that" which "brand[s] Hispanics...as monolithic racists," and serves as a warning of the "racial friction the Clinton campaign will gin up" to preserve Hispanic support in Texas.

Mr. Rich's motive for drawing these helpful illuminations of Hillary Clinton and her campaign?

To stop "a Clinton combine so ruthless" and prevent "[a] race-tinged brawl at the convention" which would be "suicide for the party no matter which victor ends up holding the rancid spoils."

See, he just wants peace and harmony in the Democratic party. What a guy.

Reality-based readers will be gratified to read that this Rich article elicited the response it deserved.

But meanwhile, back at the office...

William Obama-Kristol:

2/11/08 - Obama will win Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia. Clinton is expected to win Ohio and Texas, giving her California, New York, Texas, Ohio, Florida, New Jersey, Tennessee...

(Hello? Anyone remember the "Who Can Beat John McCain?" question?)

...but maybe she won't, if we in the press can damage her enough before March 4th. If we don't, all the super delegates committed to her should switch to Obama. If they don't, Nancy Pelosi and Al Gore should step forward to stop her nomination, and "earn the gratitude of their party" and "enjoy contemplating a derivative effect of their good deed Ñ the fall of the house of Clinton."

And, no doubt, the gratitude of William Kristol, and the rest of the neocon wing-nuts at The Weekly Standard.

But wait -- there's more.

Roger Obama-Cohen:

2/11/08 - Older American Jews -- who, like Hispanic-Americans, have thrown the bulk of their support to Hillary Clinton -- should support Obama instead.

And finally, as always, bringing up the rear (and telling the truth)...

Paul Krugman:

2/11/08 - Um...kind of seems like the ones making all the hateful statements are the people supporting Obama. Has everyone at this paper gone nuts?

..on "Meet The Press":

The Democratic Super Delegates -- who currently favor Hillary Clinton -- shouldn't be allowed to swing this primary. To heck with the rules -- the voters should be allowed to decide.

But voters in Florida and Michigan -- who voted for Clinton but were disqualified for holding their primaries early -- should not be re-admitted to the process, because hey, it would be way too expensive and complicated. And besides, the rules are the rules - get over it.

Hilarious.

And by the way -- Bill Clinton may not have actually said anything offensive, but this is all a matter of perspective, and what matters is whether some people perceive he said something offensive.

Hilarious.

And so very, very sad.

We have a lot of fun at the expense of the New York Obama-Times, but there's no getting around the fact that their once-and-again best columnist Gail Collins is back in form.

She was always our favorite, back before the Times joined the neo-con con-man brigade and took east-coast liberalism, and the country, on a tragic Saturday night drunken-drive.

Paul Krugman deserves the Medal of Freedom for being the only major media columnist to tell the truth, week after week -- but for sheer entertainment value, Gail Collins is still top of the heap.

It must drive Maureen Obama-Dowd bats*** crazy to be so clearly outclassed every single week.

At least, we hope it does.

Flash! Obama Wins Connecticut and Delaware!

Obviously, the college-educated voters in these states prefer Obama to Hillary Clinton, whose support is mainly from obese, high-school dropouts.

It has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that Obama is the only Democratic candidate whose health care plan does not mandate participation.

Nothing whatsoever.

It's a college thing.

Really.

Please look the other way.

Day 134 of "We Obama, You Obama" from the New York Obama-Times, today from punch-me-faced prep David Obama-Brooks:

2/8/08 - Barack Obama voters are college educated, secure, hopeful, and shop at Whole Foods. Hillary Clinton voters are high school drop-outs, shop at Safeway, divorce at twice the rate of Obama voters, have kids out of wedlock, are obese, are much more likely to smoke and die younger, and have fewer friends and lower aspirations.

So there you go.

All of this, curious, reality-based, readers may want to know, is derived from a few select figures that suggest that Obama did well with college graduates in certain states. The truth is far more complicated, of course.

A quick look at the returns of our fair Commonwealth shows that while Obama did do well in some hoity-toity towns like Belmont, Brookline, Lexington, and Dover, Hillary won her share of them as well, taking Hingham, Winchester, Barnstable, Marblehead, and Swampscott. Obama won Duxbury -- but by four votes: 1441 to 1437. In Newton, Obama's margin was 17 votes: 12,101 to 12,084.

Apparently 17 obese, divorced, friendless Newtonians are moving up, from Safeway to Whole Foods.

Yes, We Can!

Far more telling is how well Hillary did in the not-quite-so-hoity-toity-but-plenty-comfortable towns; places like Arlington, Needham, Milton, Scituate, etc. The answer is: she did very, very, well.

Obviously Arlington and Milton voters don't realize what uneducated, obese, losers they are. Damn social climbers.

Of course, Obama ran away with the race in Cambridge, where voters torn between Barack, Dennis Kuchinich, and Estes Kefauver apparently decided that a woman president of Harvard was quite enough, thank you -- and please pass the absinthe spoon.

Worth noting, however, is how well Obama did in Boston, where he beat Clinton by almost 10,000 votes. David Obama-Brooks presumably believes those are post-graduate degree votes. Kids moving from Arlington Catholic to Boston College must also be moving from Foodmaster to Whole Foods.

Do their parents realize this?

Let's see where they shop after that first credit card bill arrives home.

Anyway, the real story -- the one the Obama-Times doesn't want to talk about -- is how overwhelmingly Hispanics, Latinos, Portuguese, and Luso Americans seemed to have voted for Clinton. That, more than anything, is the story of how Massachusetts voted -- and possibly how California voted, and how Texas will vote.

Fall River: 12,544 for Clinton to 3,120 for Obama.
New Bedford: 11,241 for Clinton to 4,377 for Obama.
Lynn: 8,770 for Clinton to 3,766 for Obama.

Meanwhile, David Obama-Brooks can look to Missouri, where Obama, who won only five counties, took the entire state by less than 10,000 votes -- 49.2% - 48% -- and only by taking 63% of the 187,234 doctoral-degree-candidate votes in St. Louis.

So there you go.

In any event, Mr. Obama-Brooks himself nailed the key to this primary:

The next states on the primary calendar have tons of college-educated Obamaphile voters. Maryland is 5th among the 50 states, Virginia is 6th. But later on, we get the Hillary-friendly states. Ohio is 40th in college education. Pennsylvania is 32nd.

That, Poor Readers, means that Hillary Clinton, having taken Florida, New York, New Jersey, and California, is poised to do very well indeed in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

And that, if the question is, "Who can beat John McCain?" is game, set, and match.

Lately it's been hard to distinguish between the Obama campaign and the NY Times' opinion page. We wonder if Obama will have to declare as earnings the money the Times is saving him in marketing costs.

As a service to you, our readers, we've come up with this easy-to-read digest of the last few weeks -- at least -- of NY Time opinion pieces on the Democratic primary candidates, to give you the gist of the excellent work they're doing for Obama.

David Brooks:

2/5/08 - Hillary Clinton has "a dark side" -- like the time she failed to realize that not mandating health coverage (like Obama wants to do!) is better.

2/1/08 - Obama "outshines McCain right now as the hopeful warrior. Obama is the one insistently calling on audiences to serve a cause greater than self-interest. HeÕs the one transcending partisanship and telling young people that politics can be the means to a meaningful, purpose-driven life."

1/29/08 - "Last week there was the widespread revulsion at the ClintonsÕ toxic attempts to ghettoize Barack Obama....the distortion of facts, the demonizing of foes, the secret admiration for brass-knuckle brawling and the ever-present assumption that itÕs necessary to pollute the public sphere to win. All the suppressed suspicions of Clintonian narcissism came back to the fore." But never fear -- Ted Kennedy has ridden in to point out that Obama is JFK.

1/18/08 - "Maybe Barack Obama evokes the elevated feeling another voter felt watching John F. Kennedy."

1/15/08 Hillary Clinton is caught in an "identity trap," trying to attack Obama with identity politics while wanting to be "emblematic of her gender..."

Roger Cohen:

2/7/08 - Obama really won Tuesday, even though Hillary won all the big states, and more delegates.

1/31/08 "...one reason the American doomsayers are wrong...is Obamania, now in overdrive with the Kennedy endorsement. Camelot is the worldÕs imagined America, a place of gallantry and idealism. And here comes Barack Obama, with his beautiful wife Michelle, to summon all that AmericaÕs beckoning shore once symbolized of rags-to-riches opportunity and unlikely reconciliation across historyÕs wounds."

Maureen Dowd:

2/6/08 - The Clintons, propelled by paranoia, are "darkness," while Obama, "the closest thing to J. F. K. since J. F. K.," is lightness.

2/3/08 - Hillary, "Queen Bee of the Clinton hive," is an agitated bitch who's afraid of Obama, and will marginalize any VP.

1/30/8 - Obama didn't really snub Hillary at the State of the Union address -- the problem is that the Clintons "dissemble and smear when confronted with an impediment to their ambitions," and that Hillary is a bitch who's been rude to Obama in the past. The poor dear just didn't want to get burned by the mean old witch again.

1/23/08 - Bill Clinton is a seamy hatchet man who would "put a dagger through the heart of hope" to see his wife elected. Hillary didn't "win" New Hampshire and Nevada, she "clawed out wins."

1/9/08 - When Hillary got choked up it was either fake or "Nixonian self-pity."

1/6/08 - The Clinton campaign, attractive only to old people, is not above bribery and threats, while Obama, with his J.F.K. smooth-jazz modernity, is "a balmy promise, an effortlessly leaping lion hungry for something different, propelled by a visceral desire among Americans to feel American again."

1/2/08 - "Has Hillary truly changed, and grown from her mistakes? Has she learned to be less stubborn and imperious and secretive and vindictive and entitled? Or has she merely learned to mask her off-putting and self-sabotaging qualities better?"

Bob Herbert:

2/5/08 - The race between Obama and Clinton is really between tired, old, racists and fresh, young idealists.

1/26/08 - Bill Clinton, who sounds like he's "gone off his medication," has injected "ugliness" into the campaign. People that defend and support the Clintons are "reprehensible."

1/22/08 - Obama' message is one of "unity and healing" while the Clintons "have worked hard at turning that posture into a negative...[and] the result has been a churning of the issue of race to no constructive effect..."

Nicholas Kristof:

2/7/08 - Barack Obama is more electable than Hillary Clinton. Really. Trust me.

William Kristol:

1/28/08 - Bill Clinton is a loose cannon who's been playing the race card, and doing so clumsily. Hillary's campaign will fail because of him.

Frank Rich:

1994-2008 - The Clintons suck and Obama is JFK.

Paul Krugman:

11/2007 - 2/2008 - Am I the only person who's actually read Obama's policies? They're way to the right of Clinton's or Edwards'. What the hell is wrong with you people? Is this whole place on the Obama payroll?"

The media's anti-Clinton jihad is starting to get funny.

It goes like this: any state Obama wins is "a big win." Any state Hillary wins "she managed to hold on to."

After Clinton won the biggest east-coast prizes of the night - New York, Massachusetts, and New Jersey -- the story became "wait till California, wait till California." But from the moment the polls in California closed and it became clear that Clinton had won decisively there, California stopped being so important (on MSNBC the story immediately changed to "...this means the campaign will go on...") and suddenly Missouri was "the bell-weather state, the all-American state, the real test" -- because Missouri had suddenly teetered back to Obama, which he won by the razor-thin margin of 49.2% to 48%, by carrying St. Louis and Kansas City (and almost nowhere else in the state.)

Interestingly, Missouri had hardly been mentioned all night -- back before St. Louis came in, when Clinton was ahead.

It was truly hilarious to watch the contortions.

For those in the reality-based world, here's what happened last night: Hillary Clinton won California, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Arizona, among many others. She won the southern states of Arkansas and Tennessee, the "red state" of Oklahoma, virtually tied in Missouri and New Mexico, and was very competitive in Connecticut, Alabama, and Utah.

And she'd already beat the pants off Obama in Florida.

In other words, she's won New York, California, and Florida, and was more than competitive in every geographic corner of the country.

That's the story of what really happened. It's not the story the media wants, or have been telling, so look for them to ratchet-up the attacks on the Clinton campaign -- as if they could possibly ratchet them up higher than they've already been.

We can't wait to see what they'll say next. But judging from the emails we're getting from otherwise rational people, we know a lot of people will believe them. The question is, can the media sway enough votes before this thing is over?

It's early, but if we're reading this correctly, the Hispanic vote was hugely important in this election.