Could tonight's CNN debate be the end of the Democratic campaign?  Probably not.  But there are some possibilities it could be the beginning of the end.  Obama cannot screw up in a way that he can't fix within a week, or he may give Clinton the comeback her allies have been waiting a month for.  Clinton cannot screw up in a way that her foes have been waiting a lifetime for.

So, what might end the largely stalemated race?  Could it happen tonight, with Wolf Blitzer and the Best Political Team not based in New York City?

February 18th and 19th will be long remembered dates.  Heck, 2008 will be analogous to 1989, I think, based on the last 24 hours and the 24 hours to come.

1. Slovenia, who is one of my favorite countries other than this one, has given the green light to Kosovo becoming its own nation.  They did so as the leader of the EU, the first Eastern Bloc nation to head the body in the rotating presidency.  We quickly followed suit once the EU welcomed Kosovo into existence, and the Serbs went bananas.  They've withdrawn their envoys to Washington DC and the Hague, and individual Serbs are making small parries at the Kosovo border.  So far, the Kosovo police are repelling these attacks, but the Slovenes may be forced into action.  Whether they merely use their own tiny force, marshal support among other Balkan nations, or activate an EU/NATO force, it will decide the course of history.  They may just use their own army, which, when it was the Slovene police, defeated the Yugoslav National Army and gained their own independence in 10 days without any casualties.  Slovenes are much like Israelis in that sense: they're fairly smart, on average, but you don't want to tick them off.  There is some evidence that Spartacus was Slovene.

I agree with Kos that the delegates should be seated in some way that does not use the bizarre "non-election" results.  However, just splitting them 50-50 doesn't seem right either.

Here's what I propose ...

Use the delegate counts in the neighboring states to decide proportional allotment of delegates.

This could be done in one of two ways ... see below.

I think we can safely say that Bill Richardson has decided to sit this one out.  He would have leaked that he was meeting up with Barack today, or he would have endorsed Hillary yesterday when she was in the area.

John Edwards is also sitting this out, maybe to "step aside" and maybe because he hopes either of them will give him something.  Despite some reaching out by both Obama and Clinton early on, neither campaign was willing to negotiate with him in the last known reports.  That could change, but I don't see him endorsing before a winner is more definite.

Al Gore.  A Saturday endorsement will get Superbowl buried.  So, it isn't Al Gore before Feb 5.

For the love of God, don't fight tonight.

Don't take the bait.

Don't raise hit pieces in the MSM.

Act as if John were still on the stage with you.

Articulate what you will do, be it in broad terms or specifics.  Refuse to answer questions about the other one that are meant to elicit a mean answer.

Be complementary and congratulatory.

Because you're both running against Romney or McCain starting tonight.

People are trying to explain Hillary's surge, and there have been a lot of crazy theories.  Such as ... Diebold fixed things.  Except that the exit polls (except for MSNBC) showed a tight race.  Or that Obama was mean.  Except that he wasn't.

But the best one is that people lied to pollsters.  10% of people apparently.  They don't admit to voting against a black man.

This makes no sense whatsoever ...

1. Barack's people showed 37% support.  Most of the polls showed about 37% support.  He got 37%.  Nobody lied about voting FOR Barack.

More below fold ...

My wife and I have been debating who to support for a while now.  She had liked each of the Democrats for a time.  I backed Dodd early, and have slowly slipped over to Obama.

After Saturday in Nashua with Obama, we're both sold.

But we're also both perplexed by the attitude that Obama and Edwards are mutually exclusive.  They seemed to help each other out in the debates on Saturday.  Their agendas are not conflicting.  Really, unlike Clinton and Edwards or Obama and Clinton, the difference is style and not substance.  Edwards has a different way of organizing support for causes.  But they are largely the same causes and goals.

So why not a joint ticket?  Why can't the blogosphere campaign both candidates to pick each other, should one win?  Why not petition Obama to strongly consider Edwards and vice-versa?

Obama vs. Clinton, in all its permutations, is the least of our problems.  That's not to say there aren't policy differences, or legitimate gripes about campaign tactics, or other candidates in the Democratic race right now.  Heck, I support Dodd.

Here's the long and short of it.

In terms of the 2008 elections, from President on down, our problems are three-fold.

1. Neither Obama or Clinton is the weakest candidate imaginable, but neither is very strong.  And actually, if I may speak heresy, the key to the Presidential race is that most of the Republicans are seriously damaged.

2. Mike Huckabee, despite our opinions and despite Murdoch's best efforts, is not going to be as damaged a candidate as Rudy, McCain or Romney.

3. If Congress doesn't move its rear end on stopping the war OR repairing the Constitution OR passing additional good laws and advertising them as such, then we may lose control of one or both houses.

ADDENDUM: I need contact info for TMBG.  They've got to perform this.

This is sung to the tune of "James K. Polk" by They Might Be Giants.  I will be sending it to them and to the Live Earth site.

Apologies to those who don't support Draft Gore.

Polk was also from Tennessee, and was known as Young Hickory.  This was a reference to prior Democratic President Andrew Jackson, also of Tennessee, who was known as Old Hickory.  In this song, Al Gore becomes "Youngest Hickory," to continue the tradition.

"In Twenty-Ought-And-Eight the Democrats were split,
The Three Major Players for Presidential Candidate,
Were Hillary Clinton, A Former First Lady, And a Neoliberal,
Barack Obama, A Moderate,
John Edwards, A Grand Labor Advocate,
From Nashville came a dark horse riding up,
He was Albert A. Gore, Napoleon of the Stump."

I was just watching the Star Wars special on the History Channel.  And it had Newt Gingrich missing most of the whole point of the story, and Nancy Pelosi touching on only a few superficial themes ... and a lot of interesting literary analysis of why Lucas tapped into the mythic tradition and how he did so.

But when discussing the politics of the prequel trilogy, the History Channel finally came forward and obliquely stated what no other TV show has yet done.
They linked Palpatine and Vader to Bush.

I want to throw out an idea that was inspired by last night's Fox Poll results, as well as those of the MSNBC poll after the last debate.

Maybe Ron Paul has a lot more GOP support than we think.

Now I realize that you all voted in those polls, so they seem a little skewed ... but maybe they aren't.  Follow my argument ...

Mitt Romney also tends to do well in these polls, and it isn't because he's making Daily Kos members rig the polls.  It's because the extremely interested individuals in the GOP base (those paying the most attention to debates and such) back him.  These are the people also willing to shell out big cash to him (and pay the texting fee to Fox to vote in last night's poll).

I think Paul attracts a similar group, who just don't have the cash on hand of the average Romney supporter.  True conservatarians and Paleo-Cons.  And these days, those groups are looking for someone.

So, as you know, Eric Schulman and I have been churning out results from a parody algorithm since 2003 (Dr Schulman for even longer).  It served to explain every election from 1789 to 2000, and correctly predicted that Kerry-Edwards would lose to or have the election stolen by Bush-Cheney.

We wanted to get out ahead of the pack, and make things profitable for all of you, so we have finally entered our predictions for 2008.  At the end, we point out that our algorithm is running in the exact inverse to InTrade prices on "primary candidate futures," so that you could make a killing if we're correct.

Check it out at:
http://members.verizon.net/...

Of course, this fails to recognize that our algorithm only predicts general election outcomes ... and that it's a parody.

This will be a short diary.  I am wondering if other health care workers are seeing a noticeable uptick in muscle hematomas, bowel obstructions, ileus, or acute renal failure without good etiological explanations.  We've had a slight uptick in these among our older patients in my neck of the woods, which could be a statistically insignificant anomaly.

However, if others are seeing the same kinds of unexplained phenomena slightly more often, particularly in their sicker/older patients, it MIGHT mean that the FDA is wrong about the melamine in the food supply having no effects.  Melamine affects bowel flora and kidney function, and some pet owners have reported coagulopathy in their pets (possibly from uremia).  

Of course, an uptick in these phenomena might also mean 100 other things, or it might still be meaningless.  But I am curious if it's being seen by others.

Yes, it's time for Ptolemy's magic algorithm again.
Featured at http://members.verizon.net/... , the magical algorithm has been able to select the winners of Presidential contests in 2000 and 2004 and explains every election since Washington's first.

It doesn't predict who is ELECTED, it predicts who wins (hence the victories for Bush II).

So far, it's boded well for us, but more people have filed with the FEC, so let's take another look.

In addition, I have gone to great lengths below the fold to explain why Nader does not even come under the algorithm's rubrics.  I hope this satisfies the commenters who have pointed out this "discrepancy" in the past.

Algorithm details and results below...

As many of you know, I have a formula for Presidential elections.  It's empiric, meaning that it has no deductive logic other than having been calculated from all Presidential elections from 1788 to 2000.  A computer calculated weighted values for different aspects of candidate resumes, and came up with the weighting that explained as many elections as possible.  Then my collaborator and I came up with modifying factors to explain the apparent outliers.  And then the formula worked in the general election in 2004.

It doesn't predict vote totals or states, just who wins.

And a lot of people say "But what about (insert election X here)?"  Often Election X is 1960.  1960 is accounted for, and is consistent with the formula.  Both tickets were fairly weak, according to the formula.

The formula is here (every election is listed within the results section): http://members.verizon.net/...

Cattle Call Head to Head, GOP vs Dem, below the fold.

Several years ago, I worked with another scientist (Eric Schulman) on an "empiric" formula to predict presidential elections.  It was a joke, published in the Annals of Improbable Research Online.

However, it ended up being correct in the 2004 elections (and it was a retrospective "I told you so" for backers of Howard Dean or Wesley Clark.

http://members.verizon.net/...

The formula, and its implications for the current Presidential Cattle Call (and by extension, the downstream Congressional Races) below the fold ....

Warning: Obama fans will not be happy, but neither will most people

I bring you, on the day the Constitution has been dealt a grievous injury, a few warnings we have thus far ignored.

1) This President has jokingly admitted he has wished for dictatorial powers.  He means it.

2) He has called himself the Decider.  This is not far off from the Latin meaning of Dictator, one who states unequivocally or one who speaks for all.

3) Some passages from the Gospel according to Lucas that have yet to be paid attention to are below the fold.

I went to vote in the primary just now.  It was a little after noon.  We use scan machines in my district.  And my scan machine was broken.

So, I figured, "No biggie ... they'll just hand count."

I filled out my ballot (I'm willing to admit to voting for Kennedy over "blank," and Deval Patrick - yeah, people power!) and went to the "checkout."

The cop there (volunteering as a poll worker) asked me to put the ballot in through the side slot of the machine rather than the scan slot.  I hesitated.

More below the fold ...