According to David Plouffe, Barack Obama’s campaign manager, by sweeping today’s caucuses and primaries, Senator Obama more than doubled his pledged delegate lead over Senator Hillary Clinton.Before today, Obama led Clinton by 27 pledged delegates (pledged delegates are those won through caucus and primary election wins, as opposed to superdelegates which are basically endorsements by officials. These superdelegates are not necessarily fixed and can change their alliances).”In the four contests today, we estimate we won 103 delegates to Clinton’s 58 delegates for a net gain of 45 delegates,” wrote Plouffe on the Obama website.”The pledged delegate total through February 9 now stands at 1,012 for Obama and 940 for Clinton.”

Keep up with St. Louis politics at www.pubdef.net

Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of President Bill Clinton and Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, will be at Kayak’s coffee shop, on the corner of Skinker and Forest Park Parkway, across the street from Washington University, today (Monday) at 3:00 PM.

Chelsea will be discussing the issues of the 2008 Presidential campaign and speaking on behalf of her mother.

Senator Barack Obama defeated The Clinton Machine 2-1 in the South Carolina Democratic Primary last night.

With 99% of the precincts reporting, Obama received 295,091 (55%) votes to Hillary Clinton’s 141,128 (27%) and South Carolina native John Edwards‘ 93,552 (18%) votes.

Obama has won more delegates (not including so-called “super delegates”, Obama has won 63 delegates, Clinton 48, and Edwards 26) and more votes (in all the primaries and caucuses so far) of any other Democratic candidate.

This contest is not about white vs. black, rich vs. poor, or women vs. men, said Obama in his eloquent victory speech last night. This contest is simply about the future vs. the past.

President Bill Clinton was in Missouri last night in the town of Independence. The beginning of his speech sounds a lot like a re-election speech, rather than an endorsement or surrogate speech.

The funniest line is when Clinton asserts he was in Missouri “in my current capacity, post-politics…”

Really? Bill Clinton is out of politics? And he declared this on a Saturday night… at a campaign rally… in Independence, Missouri.

Uh-huh.

In today’s edition, The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan says it as well as it can be stated…

We begin, as one always must now, again, with Bill Clinton. The past week he has traveled South Carolina, leaving discord in his wake. Barack Obama, that “fairytale,” is low, sneaky. “He put out a hit job on me.” The press is cruelly carrying Mr. Obama’s counter-jabs. “You live for it.”

In Dillon, S.C., according to the Associated Press, on Thursday Mr. Clinton “predicted that many voters will be guided mainly by gender and race loyalties” and suggested his wife may lose Saturday’s primary because black voters will side with Mr. Obama. Who is raising race as an issue? Bill Clinton knows. It’s the press, and Mr. Obama. “Shame on you,” Mr. Clinton said to a CNN reporter. The same day the Web site believed to be the backdoor of the Clinton war room unveiled a new name for the senator from Illinois: “Sticky Fingers Obama.”

Bill Clinton, with his trembly, red-faced rage, makes John McCain look young. His divisive and destructive daily comportment—this is a former president of the United States—is a civic embarrassment. It is also an education, and there is something heartening in this.

There are many serious and thoughtful liberals and Democrats who support Mr. Obama and John Edwards, and who are seeing Mr. Clinton in a new way and saying so. Here is William Greider in The Nation, the venerable left-liberal magazine. The Clintons are “high minded” on the surface but “smarmily duplicitous underneath, meanwhile jabbing hard at the groin area. They are a slippery pair and come as a package. The nation is at fair risk of getting them back in the White House for four years.”

That, again, is from one of the premier liberal journals in the United States. It is exactly what conservatives have been saying for a decade. This may mark a certain coming together of the thoughtful on both sides. The Clintons, uniters at last.

Mr. Obama takes the pummeling and preaches the high road. It’s all windup with him, like a great pitcher more comfortable preparing to throw than throwing. Something in him resists aggression. He tends to be indirect in his language, feinting, only suggestive. I used to think he was being careful not to tear the party apart, and endanger his own future.

But the Clintons are tearing the party apart. It will not be the same after this. It will not be the same after its most famous leader, and probable ultimate victor, treated a proud and accomplished black man who is a U.S. senator as if he were nothing, a mere impediment to their plans. And to do it in a way that signals, to his supporters, How dare you have the temerity, the ingratitude, after all we’ve done for you?

Watch for the GOP to attempt swoop in after the November elections and make profit of the wreckage.

Senator Claire McCaskill told reporters yesterday that President Bill Clinton was playing “fast and loose” with the facts when attacking Senator Barack Obama on his wife’s behalf.

“Because of the larger megaphone he has as a former president,” said McCaskill, an Obama supporter, “he needs to be very careful with the truth. … He has tried to manipulate the facts in a way that is patently unfair.”

WATCH CLINTON’S FULL SPEECH ONLY AT PUBDEF.TV

U.S. Senator and Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton took a break from her campaigning in Iowa to rally the troops and raise some quick campaign cash here in St. Louis Sunday.

Clinton was introduced at The Pageant by former St. Louis Congressman and House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, who wasted no time making the case, as he sees it, for why the country needs a change in the White House.

“This president we have now is the worst in president in the history of the country,” said Gephardt.

Gephardt also took a subtle shot at Senator Barack Obama, who has a slight lead on Clinton in the latest Iowa polls. “What we need most now is somebody that doesn’t need on-the-job training,” said the former south St. Louis representative.

In her speech, Clinton proposed opening the same health plan offered to members of Congress to all Americans. She also promised to bring the troops home from Iraq “as quickly and as responsibly as we possibly can” and to end Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” education plan, which Clinton called an unfunded mandate.

Clinton delivered her speech in front of bleachers full of supporters, including Reverends B.T. Rice and Earl Nance. As far as we could tell, the only current elected officials in attendance were State Reps Rachel Storch and Ester Haywood.

Mayor Francis Slay, who has endorsed Clinton, did not attend the event. Protesters threatened to picket the event if he showed up. However, his chief of staff, Jeff Rainford, was in the audience.

State Representative Rachel Storch was one of the speakers at yesterday’s Hillary Clinton rally…

Reverend B.T. Rice…

The Clinton campaign may have dodged an embarrassing protest by a group opposed to one her biggest local supporters, Mayor Francis Slay, but the New York senator’s support for the Iraq War is bringing out another group of protesters — and they’ll be wearing pink!

The women’s anti-war group, CodePink, is targeting Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton not just for her votes in favor of the war in Iraq, but also for not ruling out a possible preemptive strike on Iran.

“As Clinton travels throughout the country, CodePink, a national women’s peace organization, has focused on educating the public about Clinton’s war profiteering,” states the group’s press release.

“Hillary Clinton has received more money from employees of the top five U.S. arms manufactures than any other Presidential candidate, including leading Republicans,” the release goes on to say.

“She has voted to authorize Bush’s war on Iraq and she voted against legislation to ban the sale of cluster bombs for use in civilian areas. Clinton has also supported controversial legislation that would not rule out attacking Iran,” charges CodePink.

Clinton’s event at The Pageant is Sunday at 6:00 PM. Learn more at www.HillaryClinton.com/StLouis.

Related Links:

www.codepinkalert.org
www.listenhillary.org