The Dish

Ann Althouse says it’s going to be boooring on cable tonight. So keep checking the Dish.

Ambers surveys the exit polls for the damage that the race is doing to the party. The Obamaites’ hatred of Clinton is reaching record levels. I know how they feel.

Some are Limbaugh-bots; others seem to be Obamacons; more still perhaps want to participate in actually picking the next president. But the GOP cross-over in Indiana appears heavy. I fear the worst, but then I always do.

It appears that voters in North Carolina and Indiana believe that Jeremiah Wright is a salient issue in determining who should be the next president:

Preliminary exit poll results indicate that just under half of Democratic primary voters in Indiana and North Carolina alike call the controversy surrounding the Rev. Jeremiah Wright an important factor in their vote.

The reason Rove and the Clintons use this kind of thing is because it works. Depressing. It’s also depressing that the exit polls show no big surge in the black vote in NC. Still: these exit polls have been wrong before. And the important thing is the delegate count tomorrow morning.

Thomas P.M. Barnett makes a prediction:

The food interdependency that we’re just now seeing will only grow with ag production shifting due to global warming. In a quarter century’s time, we’ll view global food nets as far more economically important, strategically vulnerable, and politically sensitive than energy nets are today.

A Harvard musical.

They look good for the Clintons:

The exit poll estimated blacks made up about a third of voters in the North Carolina Democratic primary, about one in seven in Indiana. More than half of voters in both states were women, which is typical for Democratic primaries. About one in seven voters in Indiana and slightly fewer in North Carolina were under age 30; about a quarter in North Carolina and somewhat fewer in Indiana were over age 65.

A reader writes:

I am in the car with Sam, my six year old son, listening to NPR as they talk about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton…    yadda yadda yadda.  Sam starts saying, "Barack….. Obaaaamaaaa" like Rob Schneider’s SNL "copier" guy character. Sam loves to say "Barack Obama".  I took him to vote in the caucus, and to a rally at the Target  center some months ago.

Anyway, he thinks Obama is the president.  I correct him, and he asks who the president is.  I tell him a gentleman by the name of George Bush is the president. 

Sam ponders this for a moment, and responds, "When does the REAL president start?"

This one not so encouraging:

I went to the polls to vote today in a blue collar suburb in the Chicago media market, and what I saw afterward wasn’t pretty.  My mom and I got done pushing the button for Obama and decided to go to a Main Street diner for breakfast before reporting late to work.  What did I hear?  The following, utterly depressing "Quotes for the Day":  "If he’s the nominee, you know his running mate will be Farrakhan."  "I had no problem with him until I found out he was a Muslim."

 

I’m a pretty easygoing guy, and I often avoid confrontation like the plague, but that last one sent me straight out of my comfort zone. From my booth across the dining room, I piped up and objected, saying that he wasn’t a Muslim, that it was an email smear, and blatantly untrue.  I was prepared to deflect any bullshit defenses hurled my way.  But I never got one.  What I got in response was depressing (but expected) in its illogic:  "Well, I can’t take that chance."

That’s what Clinton and Rove are counting on.