Today is the culmination of MoveOn.org's national bake sale, a grassroots effort to help put Barack Obama into the White House. The idea is very simple and beautifully non-cynical: a bunch of people organize over the internet, bake cakes, cookies, and other goodies, sell them to a sympathetic public, and then donate the funds to MoveOn's PAC. We Americans have held bake sales at least since the Civil War, and it's right and fitting and proper that this tradition has now become a nation-wide, technology-driven effort.

Here in Williamsburg, there were several such events, and I decided to check out one of them.

It's probably reasonable to expect some pushback on this from the goo-goos, but one thing is clear: Obama, with his 1.5 million donors and counting, an average donation of less than a hundred dollars, and a policy to not accept money from PACs or Washington lobbyists, is well-positioned to develop an alternative to public financing as it's commonly been understood: grassroots financing.

Of course, you could help, too.

No surprises here: Barack Obama wipes the floor with John McCain in the newest Quinnipiac poll.

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, has pulled even among white voters with Arizona Sen. John McCain, the likely Republican contender, and now tops Sen. McCain 50 - 36 percent in New York State, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

Sen. Obama gets 42 percent of white votes, to 43 percent for Sen. McCain. Black voters back the Democrat 87 - 6 percent. Obama leads 59 - 29 percent among voters under age 45 and 45 - 40 among voters over 45; 45 - 40 percent among men and 53 - 32 percent among women.

This compares to a 47 - 39 percent Obama lead over McCain in an April 18 poll by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University, when New York Sen. Hillary Clinton still was in the race. In that survey, white voters backed McCain 48 - 38 percent.

In this latest survey, New York State voters say 48 - 42 percent that Obama should not pick Sen. Clinton as his running mate. Democrats support the idea 53 - 35 percent, while Republicans oppose it 62 - 27 percent and independent voters oppose it 53 - 41 percent.

The issues agenda is equally clear, in what could become a roadmap to the state legislative elections:

One of the illest songs to come out of this campaign.

Not only is NAS remixing Barack Obama's victory speech, he's thrown the immortal Tupac.
Download it here.

By the by, what do you think about the cover of NAS' album?

H/T To dnA over at Too Sense.

Obama met with Clinton last night to discuss party unity and such things. What caught my eye on the CNN report was this bit of news :

Some of Clinton's closest supporters — the nearly two dozen House Democrats from her home state of New York — switched their endorsements to Obama Thursday.

[...]

"We're Democrats. Dammit to hell we fight. When it's over, we come together and go out there to win," said Rangel, the dean of the New York delegation.

The New Yorkers, said Rep. Gregory Meeks, have a duty "to lead this transition" to full party support of Obama.

As John McCain is lying to try and get Jews to vote for him, it might be a good idea to review the facts about Obama and McCain from a Jewish perspective. This comes from the National Jewish Democratic Council:

OBAMA STANDS WITH PROGRESSIVE VALUES ON DOMESTIC ISSUES

• He supports reproductive rights and will uphold Roe v. Wade.
• Obama cosponsored the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2007.
• He will provide affordable access to health insurance for every American.
• He has fought for increased investment in renewable fuels.

OBAMA PERFECT PRO-ISRAEL VOTING RECORD

The pro-Israel community has always used voting records to determine whether a candidate is “pro-Israel.”
• He has voted in favor of foreign aid to Israel every time.
• He has signed onto numerous pro-Israel letters and resolutions.
• When in the State Senate, he cosponsored a bill authorizing the state of Illinois to invest in Israel bonds.

OBAMA BELIEVES ISRAEL’S SECURITY IS PARAMOUNT

Associated Press:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Barack Obama effectively clinched the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday, based on an Associated Press tally of convention delegates, becoming the first black candidate ever to lead his party into a fall campaign for the White House.

Campaigning on an insistent call for change, Obama outlasted former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in a historic race that sparked record turnout in primary after primary, yet exposed deep racial divisions within the party.

The AP tally was based on public commitments from delegates as well as more than a dozen private commitments. It also included a minimum number of delegates Obama was guaranteed even if he lost the final two primaries in South Dakota and Montana later in the day.

The 46-year-old first term senator will face Sen. John McCain of Arizona in the fall campaign to become the 44th president.

Awesomeness: we just nominated a black dude for the Presidency of the United States. Now let's get him elected - onward.

Today is the last day of an interminable primary season. When the sun sets tonight, Democrats will have their nominee, and in a stunning turnaround from six months ago, that nominee will not be Hillary Clinton. So what happened?

In no particular order, this.

If Hillary Clinton hadn't voted for the Iraq War and the subsequent Kyl-Lieberman resolution against Iran, she'd probably be the nominee today.

If Hillary Clinton had fought the Bush administration with the same zeal and fervor she devoted to a contest where she had a personal stake, she would definitely be the nominee today. Her ferocious campaign against Democrats, however, made clear that her all-but silence for the last seven years was not a matter of temperament, but one of calculation. When the country needed a champion - a fighter, as the campaign literature has it - she was quietly nursing her own resources for her own turn in the spotlight. Choices matter.

If Hillary Clinton had been as good a candidate in January and February as she was in May, she would have wrapped this thing up a long time ago. But she wasn't.

If Hillary Clinton had realized that the Democratic Party today is not the same tattered edifice she and Bill left behind in 2000, and adjusted her strategy accordingly, she would have won. As it was, she campaigned against MoveOn, against the netroots, against a fifty-state strategy, in favor of the same blinkered, the-White-House-is-all-that-matters approach that led us to disaster in the nineties.

Per the Daily News, Team Obama expects to be able to declare victory next week with a majority of available delegates.

Obama's aides said Monday the freshman senator is "now just 49 delegates away" from clinching the nomination and making history as the first African-American Democratic nominee for President.

"We're very close now," David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist, told the Daily News. "When the primaries end, I think, we'll be where we need to be. ... We'll be at the number we need to claim the nomination."

What comes next? The Washington Post and New York Times chart out possible courses for Senator Clinton; per Gallup, 61% of Democrats are confident we will win the Presidential election; and Rasmussen today has the race at 47% McCain, 44% Obama.

Almost there.

Today I received the summary of Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats' (CBID) first endorsement meeting of the year. This first meeting covered the Presidential election and uncontested local elections.

CBID endorsed Barack Obama. This doesn't surprise anyone because CBID's territory overlaps two of the districts in NYC that voted for Barack Obama: CD 10 (Ed Towns' district) and CD 11 (Yvette Clarke's district). CBID did not endorse prior to the primary because their membership was split among several candidates, predominantly John Edwards and Barack Obama with some support for Dennis Kucinich and even a little for Hillary Clinton. But now that it has narrowed down to two candidates, they decided to take the plunge.