Barack Obama’s comments and his inability to distance himself from his mistakes (the comments included), make Hillary Clinton more likely to win.  It is still going to be an uphill battle for her, but at this point it’s still possible.

A decisive win in PA and follow up wins later, could bring her a lead in the popular vote - which would be the best case scenario (if you’re a McCain person, or just want the opportunity to see what a really interesting convention looks like).  For one, it is a really hard for Barack Obama to argue against the winner of the popular vote because of the Democratic parties previous position.  If votes, not delegates, are to decide things (as Democrats argued in 2000), Hillary should win (in this scenario).  However, how do you give up (if you are Obama) if you are clearly winning in what counts, the delegates.

Even if Hillary doesn’t end up with a lead in the popular votes, big wins could still spell doom for Obama.  Theoretically, there are enough superdelegates to put Hillary in the lead over Obama.  And honestly, Hillary has a good argument against Obama.  Barack has quite a few states that are frankly more likely to go Republican in November.  His small state approach is nearly the same as the one Republicans use in November.  What use is to have a candidate that doesn’t appeal to your base?  It might work, but it might not.

Furthermore, all of this is good for Republicans because John McCain is the best possible candidate to be running as a Republican in all of this.  McCain has higher approval ratings among Democrats than any other of the [defeated] Republican candidates.  If the Democratic party choses a nominee in a fight as a convention - which is nearly certain to happen unless somebody backs out, they can’t avoid alienating some of that other candidates base.  A good campaign on McCain’s party could convince these people to go to him.

In weather, a perfect storm is a series of weather events that separately would be less powerful than their combined effects.  This sounds awfully similar to what is occurring here.

Listening to the Democrats speak these days might leave one with the impression that health care is a God given right that every American, not to mention every citizen, should be entitled to. Now I understand the arguments - and I agree that every American should have health care available to them if they want it. But I disagree with the Democratic assessment that we are entitled to it.

Health care has always been - and will always be a privilege. Rights, like freedom of speech or worship, are things that in a perfect state of nature exist without human construction (in other words they aren’t social constructs - well speech and to an extent worship are, but not the freedom of). The means of taking these rights away is the real social construct because it requires unnatural behavior. But health care isn’t present in this state of nature. It’s something we’ve invented to prolong our lives - and to increase our own happiness.

We can privilege every American with it (and hopefully not by making our system in to a complete socialized mess) but it remains a privilege.

I’ve said before that I think that Barack Obama would be a very tough man to beat, but recent revelations have convinced me otherwise.  As a former Clinton political consultant put it, Obama’s weakness is weakness.

Does Reverend Wright hurt Obama in the general election?  I believe it will because too many Americans actually believe in what the Civil Rights movement taught us (clearly Reverend Wright doesn’t believe).  However does Revered Wright have to hurt Obama?  No.  I believe if Barack would step up and take a definite stance against his racism and anti-Americanism, he could emerge from this whole thing intact and gain even more political power in the process.

I believe (and hope) we are getting a better look at the man who will most likely be the next Democratic Party nominee.  Obama is smart and a really good speaker - but ultimately he is weighed down by his own mistakes that he won’t even take the steps to fix.