A Tiny Revolution:

[T]he Democrats operate according to the Iron Law of Institutions. The Iron Law of Institutions is: the people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution "fail" while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to "succeed" if that requires them to lose power within the institution.

This is true for all human institutions, from elementary schools up to the United States of America. If history shows anything, it's that this cannot be changed. What can be done, sometimes, is to force the people running institutions to align their own interests with those of the institution itself and its members.

Pretty much explains the actions of Congressional Democrats, 2000–2006. A weak-kneed Democratic Party is fine with them as long as they still get their perks.

Utdemocrats.org has the results of the national delegate elections for Utah's Obama and Clinton delegates as well as the election for national committeewoman (Patrice Arent) and committeeman (Joe Hatch).

I can't stop giggling about this comment from Sen. Mitch McConnell (DailyKos):

"It's pretty clear to me that the Democratic agenda is to turn us into France," the Kentucky Republican told The Washington Times in an unusually blunt interview at his office in the Capitol. "Americans may want change, but the question is, what kind of change?"

Well, let's see. France's healthcare system has been rated the best in the world (the U.S. ranked 37th). They have the 11th-highest life expectancy (the U.S. is 45th) and the 6th-lowest infant mortality rate (the U.S. is 43rd). French employees get 5 guaranteed weeks of vacation every year. (In the U.S., that number is zero.) And yet, despite having all that vacation and the burden of "socialized medicine" and only one-fifth the population of the U.S., France is the world's 6th-largest economy.

So, yeah, Democrats want to make the U.S. more like France. It wouldn't exactly be a bad thing.

Obama has a very specific problem with white voters — the ones in Appalachia don't like him. The following graph, from DHinMI at Daily Kos, shows the counties where Hillary Clinton won at least 65% of the vote. (The states in white haven't voted yet.)

Interesting pattern, isn't it? However, Obama easily won Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska, and many other predominantly white states. He's also projected to win white voters in Oregon by 55%–42%. DHinMI concludes:

Obama doesn't appear to have much of a problem with white voters. But it seems quite likely Appalachia has a bit of an Obama problem.

The exact number depends on how you count, but it's clear that Obama has essentially erased Clinton's lead in superdelegates (ABC News):

Sen. Barack Obama moved into the lead today in the last category that Sen. Hillary Clinton had claimed to have an edge — support among the Democratic Party's superdelegates.

The Illinois Democrat grabbed the superdelegate lead thanks to a switch by New Jersey Rep. Donald Payne and an endorsement from previously uncommitted Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon.

Those two votes gave Obama a 267–266 lead over Clinton. That is a huge shift since the days when Clinton boasted about a 60-plus vote lead among the party's pros back on Super Tuesday.

And Obama's lead will only get wider.

Ezra Klein reviews the new book The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria:

In short, Zakaria makes two arguments, one descriptive, one normative. The first argument, the descriptive one, is that moment of unipolarity is ending. This odd interregnum between the fall of the Soviet Union and the maturation of other world powers (ranging from developing behemoths like India and China to major alliances like the EU) is coming to an inevitable, and entirely predictable, end. America will neither rule nor run the world alone. India, China, Brazil, Russia, and Europe are simply too big to let us have the globe to ourselves. [...]

The question, then, is not whether a multipolar world will arise, but how we will react to it. We can, as many of the neoconservatives advocate, react with fear and suspicion, viewing the power of others as a threat to ourselves. [...] We can, in other words, create a zero-sum international competition with all the attendant risks and consequences.

Or we can see the arrival of other powers as a positive-sum development. We can realize that just as Japan benefits from the internet created in America, so too can we benefit from advances discovered in China, Brazil, and Germany. A cancer cure developed in Singapore can save lives in South Dakota, an energy technology discovered in Germany can cut emissions in Georgia. And on a global political level, we can see these emergent powers as protectors and guarantors of regional stability and progress who will do much to better their own regions and reduce the sort of chaos that could spin beyond borders and across continents.

Liberals see opportunities for cooperation, while conservatives see nothing but competition.

See Newsweek for an excerpt from the book.

Deseret News:

Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, still hasn't made up his mind about which Democratic presidential candidate to support — even though the party's state chairman sees the race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama winding down.

"I really want to keep my powder dry until this process is done," Matheson, the only one of Utah's so-called superdelegates to the Democratic National Convention in August not committed to a candidate, told the Deseret News Wednesday. [...]

"Neither of the campaigns have been knocking at my door," Matheson said. "I have made it real clear that I'd like to watch this process play out. I am learning, I think all of us are learning, more about the candidates every day as this campaign rolls through all 50 states."

But unless Matheson is committed to voting for the candidate with the most pledged delegates at the end of the process, what's the point of waiting? What more are we learning?

Good analysis from Karen Tumulty in TIME:

2. She didn't master the rules

Clinton picked people for her team primarily for their loyalty to her, instead of their mastery of the game. That became abundantly clear in a strategy session last year, according to two people who were there. As aides looked over the campaign calendar, chief strategist Mark Penn confidently predicted that an early win in California would put her over the top because she would pick up all the state's 370 delegates. It sounded smart, but as every high school civics student now knows, Penn was wrong: Democrats, unlike the Republicans, apportion their delegates according to vote totals, rather than allowing any state to award them winner-take-all. Sitting nearby, veteran Democratic insider Harold M. Ickes, who had helped write those rules, was horrified — and let Penn know it. "How can it possibly be," Ickes asked, "that the much-vaunted chief strategist doesn't understand proportional allocation?"