Starting Gate: April Fools

Who's more foolish on this first day of April, those Barack Obama supporters who think that they can somehow pressure Hillary Clinton to drop out of the presidential race before the next round of voting or her supporters who still think they see a realistic pathway to the nomination?

Clinton and her supporters have spent as much time over the last several days loudly telling anyone who will listen that she's not about to get out of this race. And why should she? Statistically speaking, she's barely trailing Obama in the delegate race and in the popular vote. If she could find a way to run up the score in the remaining contests her arguments about Florida and Michigan might hold a little more sway among those superdelegates who will almost certainly have the final say.

But the odds facing Clinton grow longer almost by the day. Clinton maintains a large lead in Pennsylvania but trails badly in North Carolina. In Indiana, another key contest, there has been no polling but the contest there is expected to be a tight one. She is being heavily outspent on the airwaves in all three states while Obama's fundraising juggernaut rolls on. More disturbing perhaps, is the drip, drip, drip of superdelegates who have lined up behind Obama in recent weeks. Should that trend continue, Obama may have the nomination all but wrapped up before the primary season ends in June.

With just three weeks until the Pennsylvania primary and five weeks until North Carolina and Indiana, the insistence among some for a quick resolution to this already marathon campaign rings a bit hollow. Clinton may need to thread the needle perfectly and have a lot of help from outside events if she is to win the nomination she's campaigned for over the past year. But there's still a possibility, and anyone who thinks that anything is impossible in this campaign might be the biggest fool of all.

Bio Tour, Day Two: John McCain's week-long biography tour makes its second stop today, this time in Alexandria, Virginia, where the candidate will make an appearance at his alma mater, Episcopal High School. McCain will shift a bit away from the military and national security trappings that have been such a major part of his life and the candidate is expected to discuss more domestic issues today, such as education. The campaign has a new Web ad to go along with today's event which can be viewed here

William Ravenel, McCain's high school English teacher and one of his role models will play a major role in his message today. As will McCain's own penchant for misbehavior as a youth. "As a young man, I would respond aggressively and sometimes irresponsibly to anyone whom I perceived to have questioned my sense of honor and self-respect," McCain will say in remarks today according to prepared text. "Those responses often got me in a fair amount of trouble earlier in life. In all candor, as an adult I've been known to forget occasionally the discretion expected of a person of my years and station when I believe I've been accorded a lack of respect I did not deserve. Self-improvement should be a work in progress all our lives, and I confess to needing it as much as anyone. But I believe if my detractors had known me at Episcopal they might marvel at the self-restraint and mellowness I developed as an adult. Or perhaps they wouldn't quite see it that way."

Still Trying In Michigan: With prospects of a re-vote in either Michigan or Florida pretty much zero, attention has turned toward various plans on getting delegates from the two states seated in some fashion. That may not happen until the convention but Rep. Bart Stupak from Michigan yesterday floated a new plan to get his state's delegates back into the game.

Under his proposal, some delegates would be apportioned based on the results on January's primary (where Obama was not even on the ballot). The formula would give Clinton 55 delegates and Obama 36 (giving him the delegates based on the "uncommitted" vote). The other 73 delegates in the state would then be given out based on the proportion of the total popular vote at the end of the primary process. Both campaigns responded noncommittally to the idea.

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