Burbank Democratic Club

What’s next? Despite Mrs. Clinton’s valedictory tone at Thursday’s debate, there remains the fear in some quarters that whether through sleights of hand involving superdelegates or bogus delegates from Michigan or Florida, the Clintons might yet game or even steal the nomination. I’m starting to wonder. An operation that has waged political war as incompetently as the Bush administration waged war in Iraq is unlikely to suddenly become smart enough to pull off that duplicitous a “victory.” Besides, after spending $1,200 on Dunkin’ Donuts in January alone, this campaign simply may not have the cash on hand to mount a surge.

Mr. Obama said. “It’s not a choice between speeches and solutions; it’s a choice between a politics that offers more of the same divisions and distractions that didn’t work in South Carolina and didn’t work in Wisconsin and will not work in Texas, or a new politics of common sense, of common purpose, of shared sacrifice and shared prosperity.”

It's gotten to be a common occurrence. When Congress has a scheduled recess, the Democratic leadership keeps the Senate (and sometimes the House) in pro forma session in order to prevent any administration recess tomfoolery.

• Pelosi, fearing that Bush would try to capitalize on the House’s
  absence to call Congress back into a special session, scheduled two pro
  forma sessions on Tuesday and Thursday. The Senate will do the same at
  the same time. Since neither chamber goes out for more than three days,
  Bush cannot take the dramatic step of calling the Congress back for the
  first special session since Harry Truman did it in 1948.

But there were signs that other Democrats were prepared to endorse the Senate approach and avoid further debate on a national security issue that many say plays to the political strengths of the White House and Republicans.

Reluctant to be portrayed as depriving the government of a key tool in the war on terrorism, 21 members of a bloc of moderate House Democrats signed a letter endorsing the Senate approach. Senior Democratic aides said those defections suggested there might be enough support in the House to pass the Senate bill.

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Democratic state senators emerged from a closed door meeting today saying there is consensus to elect Sacramento Sen. Darrell Steinberg the next leader of the upper house.

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An analysis by the Campaign Finance Institute, which tracks trends in political money, found that Obama raised about a third of his money in 2007 from donors who gave $200 or less. Only one-third of his money came from donors who have given the legal maximum of $2,300, compared to Clinton who raised about half of her money from "maxed out" donors and only 14 percent from donors of $200 or less.

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