The Dish

Uh-oh. Two more primaries and a quarter of Republicans are still voting for someone else. In North Carolina, "no preference" got 3 percent of the vote. Alan Keyes got 4 percent. In Indiana, Romney got 5 percent. Hugh Hewitt’s unfair designation of McCain as a "lousy senator" is obviously a view shared by many in the GOP base.

She’s clinical. And asking for money right up front. Hey, Mrs Moneybags. Use some of your own tens of millions.

Pat Buchanan who has become a de facto spokesman for the Clinton campaign (I know, I know) just threw in the towel on MSNBC.

Could he win the state? I doubt it, but it should be very close:

Mayor Rudy Clay came to his headquarters in Gary Tuesday night with a list of voting results showing overwhelming margins for Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton. Many of the districts had Obama with triple digit totals and Clinton with totals in the single digits or teens. One district had a result of 126-4.

The late results are being blamed on a massive turnout:

As of 8:40 p.m. CDT, about half of 11,370 absentee and early voting ballots had been counted, said Michelle Fajman, the county’s elections supervisor. By contrast, in the 2000 presidential primary, 2,822 early and absentee votes were cast in Lake County. In the 2004 primary, 4,053 early and absentee votes were cast.

“This has far and away surpassed any primary we’ve ever had. We don’t see these kinds of numbers until a general election,” Fajman said.

Chait does the math:

One exit poll question asks Indiana voters who they would support in a Clinton-McCain contest. 17% of them say McCain. Of those voters, 41% say they would vote for McCain over Clinton. In other words, these voters, 7% of the Indiana electorate, voted for Clinton in the primary but have no intention of supporting her in the fall.

Now, this isn’t a precise measure of the "Limbaugh effect" — no doubt there are some Republicans who backed Obama in the primary out of anti-Clinton sentiment, but plan to vote for McCain in November. But it is a good place to start when making a ballpark estimate. And it’s a sizeable number — 7% may wind up being as big as her margin of victory.

It would be so perfect if Rush Limbaugh was the Clintons’ margin of victory in Indiana. They deserve each other. To quote Orwell again:

"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."

Oink, oink.

I don’t understand why this facet of the race is not focused on as much as Obama’s struggles with rural, lower-income whites. No Democrat can win the White House without black votes – and a lot of them. And yet, Clinton has gone backwards fast in this segment for the past three months. Remember last fall when she had a massive 20 or even 30 point lead among African-Americans? Remember when the Clinton brand was almost synonymous with major black support? And while Obama has done solidly – and increasingly well – among white voters, Clinton’s black support has cratered. Judging from my email in-tray, black voters are actually incensed and deeply disillusioned by the tactics of both Clintons. Bill has gone from being viewed as the first black president to being persona non grata and playing up his white Bubba act in rural counties.

This is a fatal weakness in a Democratic candidate. And Hillary Clinton is now a fatally wounded politician.

K-Lo:

What were any Catholic sisters doing voting for either Clinton or Obama?

Memo to Lopez: being a Catholic does not mean membership in the Republican party. Sometimes, you get a glimpse of just how partisan these people are: partisan enough to co-opt Catholicism itself for their own political agendas. I’m not surprised any more. But this political co-optation of faith is sickening – and typical.

In Indiana, 45 percent of Democrats said Clinton was not honest or trustworthy (Obama got 33 percent to that question); in North Carolina, 50 percent said she was not honest or trustworthy (with Obama at 27 percent). She is a fatally weak candidate. In our current moment, we cannot afford a president who is not trusted by a half of her own party, let alone the country as a whole.

"I love this country too much to see it be divided and distracted at this moment in history."

Thanks to the "imperfect" candidate for reminding us that the great impulse behind the Obama campaign is a deep, abiding love of America, of the decency that this president has betrayed and the promise that is always just ahead. Wow was he on fire tonight. He will not have his patriotism impugned by the McCarthyites of the far right. Nor should he. He regained that patriotic message tonight. And I’m not in any way ashamed to say it moved me to my core.

Know hope. And thank you, North Carolina and Indiana.

Obama’s quote of the night:

I didn’t expect when I ran for president that I would avoid this kind of politics; I ran because it is time to end it … We will end it by telling the truth. Forcefully, repeatedly, confidently …

He found his voice again tonight. And it was an American voice, a unifying voice, and an historic voice.