11:30 a.m., and back to CNN: Wayne Slater of the Dallas Morning News, which endorsed Obama, says on air that turnout is really good in Houston and Dallas, good but less good in South Texas. The conventional wisdom as ever is that the urban turnout benefits Obama, the So Texas turnout wd benefit Clinton. There was massive early voting in Texas, of course, all of it while the trend lines were going toward Obama if that's meaningful.

11:30+ and live on the ground in, consecutively, Vermont and Rhode Island. On-air reporters say that turnout is very good in Vermont--high interest, very brisk. Turnout in Rhode Island also good, but not huge--steady--as the line is shown behind the reporter speaking, who turns around and says this is what it's like reporting live: you start talking about a sizable turnout and at that moment the line thins out.

11:35 a.m.--Back to MSNBC, and Scarb has been replaced by femmes commenting--women weighing in on 'the women's vote' and simplifying it: Older women are "sticking by their gal," "Hillary," and younger women are going for Obama. This is paralleled to older women's getting angry, it is said, at younger women with law degrees who choose to stay home with their children.

Sigh.

As always, they get it wrong. The divide is not betw older and younger. The key divide is betw people with less information--statistically, older women are less likely to have internet access/experience--and people with more information.

This is the story that E. J. Dionne misses in his lengthy column in today's WashPost. Dionne rightly says that Obama surprised everybody by up-ending the massive Clinton operation. What Dionne does not say: [warning: for this analysis, you have to be acquainted, as apparently the Post's political reporters tend not to be, with the term free media:]

1) Hillary Clinton received probably at least $500 million worth of free media, starting with her successful launch of trial balloons at the beginning of 2003. She has had five+ years of massive donor line-ups, hiring, and endorsement and political machine line-ups to accompany that at least half-a-bil worth of free media.
2) When Obama got into the race, he also started receiving free media. Obama received probably around $100 million worth himself. My take on this is that it was only partly spontaneous delight over someone new and fresh on the part of the corporate media outlets.
3) Thus the buy-in for any other candidate entering the 2008 race was a minimum $100 million. Neither Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, nor Bill Richardson--any one of whom cd probably beat any GOP candidate going away, in 2008--had a shot at raising that kind of money before Iowa and New Hampshire.
4) With all this, the rightwingers on television solidly boosted Clinton's credibility--barely mentioned Bill Clinton and all that, you know.
5) Fortune Magazine boosted Clinton as the most tolerable (pro-corporate) Dem candidate in a cover article.
Etc.

My take on Obama is rather like my take on Patrick Fitzgerald: Each did a better job than he was intended to do.

The race is not over, of course. But the selfishness of the Clintons beggars description. It shd be obvious to any observer that the GOP wants them to run against.



Update, watching the coverage of the primaries today--

10:35 a.m. on MSNBC: polls crawl, now showing Clinton and Obama tied in Ohio. Another prominent crawl displays WashPost/ABC poll, says 67 percent want Clinton to stay in race, even if she loses Ohio and Texas--contradicting her husband, as the Scarb point out, but they conclude that perhaps he shd not have said it. The poll also says that a majority want Clinton to exit the race if she loses both Ohio and Texas, but that possibility is not contemplated by Scarb.

The DOW is down 100+ points.

We still have not gotten any serious questions, or documentation, about claims from the Clinton campaign that it raised $32 million in February.

On CNN, former Clinton official Federico Pena, an Obama supporter, appears in support of his candidate. Mike Huckabee shows up in person, allows himself to be interviewed on the ground in Texas.

The DOW is down 126.

10:55 a.m.--Back to MSNBC, and Scarb's relentless Clinton boosting. Scarb ticks off all the big states won by Clinton, and he includes Florida and Michigan. "Let's face it--the Democrats aren't going to win Texas." Looks like Scarb thinks there is a good chance that Obama will win Texas.

11:00 a.m.--Back to CNN: a large turnout in Texas, where the weather is mostly good (exc for a dusting of snow in Dallas, as one of my cousins informs me). Conversely bad weather in Ohio.

DOW down about 160.