A number of curious things within the Hillary Clinton campaign — she will hold her post-primary rally in her home state of New York, her advisor Harold Ickes supposedly had a goodbye conference call with superdelegates, and Clinton field staff have been told to stand down and are now sending out resumes — point to the senator withdrawing from the race after Montana and South Dakota's primary tonight. Then again, other signs point to that not happening. Mainly this: "Aides stressed she had no plans to withdraw from the race Tuesday night." Despite the word from aides, it is expected and predicted by friends and foes alike that Clinton's speech tonight will be of the farewell variety. [AP]

During the two days when I relish getting a break from topics such as these, my inbox was flooded with news alerts, I received excited/dejected/disappointed texts from politically-minded friends, and I found myself scouring the internet for news during hours I usually try to spend out of doors and away from the laptop. In other words, it was a big weekend in political news.

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Buenos días! The Puerto Rico primary went down Sunday, and, in case you haven't heard, Hillary Clinton was victorious there, beating Obama by 2-to-1 and winning every single major demographic group, including the ones he always wins and she always loses. So what does this mean? Some who aren't in Camp Hillary might say nothing — Puerto Rico doesn't have a vote in the general election — but those in Camp Hillary surely see it as a sign to keep pressing until the bitter end. While Clinton campaigned and celebrated in Puerto Rico, Obama was busy in South Dakota and Montana. The primaries there are on Tuesday.

Geraldine Ferraro can go to hell. She doesn't get it — or maybe she does and everything she says is orchestrated to feed into the "racial resentment" that she's trying to explain. Either way, she can go to hell with her "woe is me, white people can't open their mouths without being accused of racism, playing up to affirmative action fears, back-handed, damn-near right wing, Barack Obama has run the most sexist campaign in history" bullshit.

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SORRY, HRC The DNC's lawyers today advised the DNC rules committee that they can seat half but not all of Michigan and Florida's delegates, based on the party's rules. The committee meets Saturday to decide what to do about the mess (that everyone knew about and agreed to) they got themselves in. [NYT]

Wherein you, the readers, talk amongst yourselves.

Is a large group of white people voting against Barack Obama only because he's black the same as a large group of black people voting for him because he's black? To be equal opportunity about things, is voting against Hillary Clinton because she's a woman the same as voting for her because she's a woman? Discuss.

Ahhhh. So this is why the presidential candidates aren’t exactly pleased with news networks sending “embeds” – campaign reporters armed with video cameras and a broadband link back to HQ – to cover their every move: Because they post videos of Hillary Clinton drinking and dancing to Enrique Iglesias’ “Just Want to Be With You.”

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What is it about this election that has everyone talking about assassination? I don't know about you, but I haven't the faintest idea of what it could be. But for whatever reason, people keep on bringing it up! Good ol' Mike Huckabee made a joke about gun-toting NRA members shooting down Barack Obama. He later apologized.

Friday, Hillary Clinton referenced the June 1968 assassination of Bobby Kennedy as a reason why she should stay in the race. "My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June," she told the editorial board of South Dakota's Sioux Falls Argus-Leader. "We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it." Some people thought she was suggesting that she needs to stay in the race just in case somebody gets assassinated before it's over.

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Missy Elliott was kind enough to provide BlackBook recently with a list of things she hates, including taking her shoes off at the airport (don't we all, girl) and "minute men" (just like the song). Right. It's an interesting regular feature, if only because stars are a lot quicker to talk about the things they love and than the things they hate. What might some of our top news-makers say if they were asked?

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Perhaps a better question to ask is, will she? I think we all know the answer to that.

It's probably safe to say that the majority of Hillary Clinton voters are not voting for her just because they don't want to vote for a black guy. Now that that disclaimer is out of the way, it's probably also safe to say that there were obviously a few more of those "I'll never vote for a black or a Muslim" voters in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Indiana and Kentucky. I mean, just check out the exit polls! In Kentucky, 21 percent of Democratic voters said that race was a factor in deciding their vote. Nine out of ten of those people ended up voting for Hillary Clinton. On CNN last night, analysts said that it might behoove Hillary Clinton to say something like, "If you're only voting for me because you don't want to vote for a black man, then I don't want your vote." John Edwards did it not too long ago.

They seemed at least slightly optimistic that she would, at some point in the near future, do exactly this. But where does that optimism come from? She's been clinging to the racist vote and using it (in coded language) as a selling point to superdelegates. It's the one demographic that Barack Obama doesn't have a chance of hell in wooing by November, and she's wearing their support of her like a badge of honor. Some honor. If she didn't play up this race issue post-Pennsylvania and Indiana, then I doubt people would be calling upon her to make any grand proclamations. How must it feel to, in the course of one election, completely destroy a well-respected civil rights record and a relationship with a vast portion of an entire race of Americans? After this is all over, someone should ask.

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Good news for Hillary Clinton:

• She crushed Barack Obama in Kentucky, West Virginny-style, with 65 percent of the vote to Obama's 35 percent of the vote. She won in every area in the state except for Louisville and Lexington.

• Only 1/3 of Hillary's voters said they would be willing to vote for Obama in the primary. The nay-sayers said he "doesn't share their values and is untrustworthy." Gotcha. No Democratic president has won without the state of Kentucky since JFK beat Nixon. This might not be as much good news for Hillary Clinton as it is bad news for the Democratic party.

Bad news for Hillary Clinton:

• She lost Oregon 42 to 58.

• Obama pulled even with her in Oregon with white women and voters without college educations.

• Obama might have a hard road in making states like Kentucky and West Virginia blue, but he could possibly change the political landscape in traditional red states like Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, and even Mississippi and South Carolina (or so I've read) — something she doesn't have a chance of doing.

• Obama now needs about 70 delegates to seal the nomination. She needs about 250.

Wherein you, the readers, talk amongst yourselves.

The fabled Dream Ticket: A dream or a nightmare?

The senseless blubbering, the misplaced anger, the confusion, the over- and under-reliance on polling data, the twin evils of tiptoeing around racial topics and treating them with no care or nuance or sense of history, all of the things present in this clip between Pat Buchanan and Chris Matthews represent everything that's been horribly wrong about the cable news coverage of Hillary Clinton v. Barack Obama. The irony is clear — two well-off, educated, elite, white men, from their vantage points in air-conditioned, big-city studios, are arguing passionately about the motivations of poor, uneducated whites in West Virginia and blacks in Philadelphia.

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Is Tyra Banks the answer to the DNC's prayers?

Chris Matthews, never a big fan of the HRC, shudders at the thought that she would actually deign to mention "white blue collar" voters and play the ugly race card, then proceeds to accuse Clinton of being the "Al Sharpton of white people." Cable news hosts are losing their minds this election season. I'm not sure who would be more offended by this characterization, HRC or Rev. Al. Probably Rev. Al.

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