The Editors have an awesome new comic up.

According to Mark Halperin, who writes The Page for Time Magazine, Barack Obama now holds the superdelegate lead over Hilary Clinton.

Net gain: Obama 3, Clinton 0*

–American Federation of Government Employees head John Gage announces for Obama. The union endorses as well.

–New Jersey Rep. Donald Payne tells The Star-Ledger he’s switching from Clinton to Obama. “I’ve really been mulling it over for quite a while.”

–Obama also picks up Oregon super Rep. DeFazio.

–Clinton nabs endorsement of Pennsylvania Rep. Chris Carney

ABC News: Obama takes superdelegate lead for the first time.

*Payne switching takes one super away from Clinton.

AP headline: “‘Best Santa ever’ arrested in N.J. on child sex charges”

I rue the day when the AP finally hires a copy editor.

While Hillary insists that her campaign has just taken on a little ice, the damage below the waterline is starting to show:

The tide turned against Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) on Capitol Hill Wednesday, as even some of her supporters said she should consider ending her White House bid.

Some uncommitted Democratic superdelegates refused to meet with the beleaguered candidate when her campaign approached them in the hope of wooing them. Reps. Brad Miller (N.C.) and Lincoln Davis (Tenn.) said they were invited to meet Clinton but declined to attend.

~~~

But uncommitted superdelegates such as Miller say they now expect Obama to win the nomination.

The sense of inevitability led some Clinton backers to question her continued resistance. One of her most respected supporters, former Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota, the 1972 Democratic presidential nominee, announced early Wednesday that he was switching his endorsement to Obama and said the time had come to unite the party.

Shift the deck chairs all you want.

Sadly, No! Appears to be trying to end its BlogBitchSlapFight with Lambert, just in time to put up this awesome post recapping the Wingnut Nostradamus’s prophecy on the fall of Europe, map included.

Plus, Michelle Malkin plays Dr. Phil. Dr. Phil in a meth-fueled rage.

Shorter Hillary Clinton: “I am more appealing to White People, especially uneducated ones.”

And it’s not just the Hillary. Her supporters are actually lurching down this path, too. Talk Left, via Oliver Willis:

In Pennsylvania, Clinton won whites 18-29 (52-48), 30-44 (58-42), 45-59 (63-37), 60+ (68-32). In North Carolina, whites 18-29, just 8% of the vote, went for Obama 57-41. But whites 30-44 went for Clinton (52-45), 45-59 (64-33), 60+ (69-29).

More Oliver:

I’ve crunched the numbers, looked them over again and again, then again with a sprinkling of eye of newt and found the weakness in Barack Obama’s candidacy:

He’s getting too many votes.

In 32 out of the 47 contests more people have voted and caucused for Sen. Obama than for Sen. Clinton. Why is the media not reporting on this? They spend so much time on the slicing and dicing of the electorate highlighting ad nauseam which blocs are voting for and against a candidate when the writing is on the wall.

More people are voting for Sen. Obama and that’s a huge problem in the fall. If we extrapolate this trend, it’s possible that he could, in the general election, have more votes than any other presidential candidate in history! The nomination process will be a mockery of the highest order if Howard Dean and the DNC sit back and allow the person with the most votes and most supporters to walk away with the nomination. This isn’t what we all signed up for.

I wasn’t paying attention too closely, but how, all of a sudden, is Hillary the progressive trying to buck the establishment while, in the eyes of the Clintonistas, Obama is somehow the insider, a corporate machine candidate reincarnation reminiscent of some of the worst excesses of Tameny Hall?

I don’t get it.

The Post’s tradition of abysmal op eds continues with Michael Gerson’s piece today: A Phony ‘War on Science’:

For the most part, these accusations are a political ploy — actually an attempt to shut down political debate. Any practical concern about the content of government sex-education curricula is labeled “anti-science.” Any ethical question about the destruction of human embryos to harvest their cells is dismissed as “theological” and thus illegitimate.

As Kevin Drum points out:

The disingenuousness here is breathtaking. Yes, liberals and conservatives have different views about sex education and stem cells, but those aren’t even close to being the core issues in the liberal critique of the Republican war on science. The core issues, rather, are global warming denialism; creationism and intelligent design; the Gingrich-era shutdown of OTA; the promotion of phony cost-benefit analysis; and politically motivated lying about things like Plan B, breast cancer links to abortion, and condoms and STDs.

Even on its face, Gerson’s critique is less than honest; the debate over stem cells isn’t “about the destruction of human embryos to harvest their cells,” but whether cells contained in embryos which are going to be destroyed in any event should be used to further science and alleviate human suffering, or whether such use should be prevented in order to score political points with the theological base of the Republican Party. In addition to the issues cited by Drum, there is the shining example of Terri Schiavo, where the scientifically valid diagnoses of her treating physicians, confirmed by MRI and other scientific methods over an over again, was rejected by the Right in favor of video diagnoses from Senator Frist and opinions repeatedly rendered by a Fake Nobel Nominee over Fake News.

The hostility of the Right to expertise and professional analysis on virtually any subject when it interferes with political goals — look at Iraq — is stunning taken in its entirety. To pretend, as Gerson does, that it is imaginary is simply another example of the rejection of making analysis and drawing conclusions based on observation, and instead subjugating reason to political ends.

From Taylor Marsh, an HRC campaign memo trying to explain away Obama’s strong showing in Indiana:

The fact that Indiana was an open primary – Republicans and independents can vote in the Democratic contest – also augured well for Senator Obama. He has regularly argued that he should be nominated because he “appeal[s] to Republicans and Independents in a way that none of the other nominees can.”

Except for the fact that multiple GOP hacks like Rush Limbaugh specifically urged Indiana Republicans to cross-over and vote for Hillary in order to ratfuck the Democratic party in general and Obama in particular, this is a completely honest assessment by the Clinton campaign.