In this diary about Obama's lead in Portland, we got into a discussion about many wonderful things (including food) in Oregon.

Unfortunately, one area where Oregon (and Portland, my favoritest city in the world) is lacking is pizza.  As a former and current Chicago denizen (who still thinks of himself as an Oregonian-in-exile), I am proud to share a recipe for stuffed pizza from Barack Obama's home city to our brothers and sisters in the lovely Pacific Northwest, latte-sipping elitists though they may be.  And heck, thanks to the wonders of the intermaweb, any Kossacks can enjoy this, even if you're not in Oregon.  Heck, even Clinton supporters and (*gasp*) McCain voters can partake.  See, we really ARE not as divided as our politics suggest.

And besides, if you plan on sitting at home on a Tuesday night, watching election results roll in, why not make it a party and have some really good pizza?

Dunno about the rest of you, but I'm preparing for tomorrow as if it were a major playoff game in sports.  Got the TV stations ready, got the websites wrapped up, got the stats on a spreadsheet or three, and have my notes on what to watch for.  I've got my sites bookmarked, what are the rest of you going to be watching?

After six weeks, we finally had a primary contest.  Felt like forever, didn't it?  As we all know, Hillary won by almost but not quite double digits (hey, 9.4 has two digits, doesn't it?)  So how did it change the dynamics of the contest?

Answer- not much.  Hillary needed about 59% of all remaining delegates (pledged as well as undeclared supers) before PA.  Based on the breakouts I've seen so far, it appears Hillary won about 84 pledged delegates in PA to Obama's 74.  So now she needs...about 60.5% of all remaining.  Obama needs about 42%.

As they say, more details below:

Seems like the last few months, Hillary has been taking potshots at Obama that imply that he's less viable of Presidential candidate than McCain.  Remember the "Commander-in-Chief" threshhold?  Or Bill Clinton's comment about "two people who love this country", apparently leaving Obama out of that demographic?  

Well, today Hillary finally decided to stop talking up John McCain.  Why, you might ask?

In this article at the Charlotte Observer

because, you know, white males have had such a difficult time historically in gaining the Presidency:

"What I believe Geraldine Ferraro meant is that if you take a freshman senator from Illinois called `Jerry Smith' and he says I'm going to run for president, would he start off with 90 percent of the black vote?" Johnson said. "And the answer is, probably not... ."

Well, except for the fact that he didn't 'start off' with 90% of the black vote.  But why let facts get in the way of a nice screed?  Maybe Mr. Johnson is feeling bitter?

Drip drip drip.  While we've all been distracted with tax returns and Mark Penn and whatnot, the Superdelegates continue to trickle in for Barack Obama.  The pledged delegates remain largely unchanged (now at 1415 to 1254 for Obama), but as I type this, Demconwatch shows Obama has narrowed the gap in the supers down to 221 to 245, only 24 down.  And odds are he'll continue to close that gap in the 2 weeks leading up to PA.

When I first joined dkos, this is the diary I wanted to do.  However, pocketnines has already been doing superb diaries on the subject and it's no secret at dkos that Obama has a commanding position in the delegate count, no matter what the MSM or Hillary's supporters say.  So this is a (hopefully) straightforward look at what is needed from each candidate to win the nomination.

For those of you who just want the answer and will skip the details, here goes: Barack Obama needs 44.0% of all remaining pledged delegates and undeclared superdelegates to reach 2023.5 and win the nomination, while Hillary Clinton needs 58.1%.  Hillary has virtually no chance to catch Obama in pledged delegates, as she would need 64.3% of those remaining to tie Obama in that area.  If we include add-on delegates who have essentially been decided, the numbers are 42.7% for Barack to 59.6% for Hillary.  See all the gory details below...

I wanted my first diary to be an in-depth look at the delegate math, but it appears pocketnines beat me to it.  I may still do that diary, even if it overlaps a bit.

But in the meantime, a song came to mind a few days ago, a riff off the Jackson Browne song "Cocaine" (not to be confused with the Eric Clapton song).  I figured I'd share this on the site, maybe a few people will find it amusing or be humming it during the day.  This may not be "substantive", but heck, we're 5 weeks from Pennsylvania, we've bludgeoned pastorgate to death while dodging sniper fire, and HRC is not dropping out anytime soon.  So without further ado...