Occasional contributor and facts-and-figures fiend Foster Landis writes after the weekend caucuses with this eye opener: according to Meet the Press, which was aired before results from the Maine tallies came in, the Obama and Clinton campaigns are separated nationwide by a mere 200,000 votes, which is just crazy, given that roughly thirty states worth or 16 million Democrats have voted! Popular vote in primaries and caucuses to date:

Obama: 8,228,785 (48.4%)
Clinton: 8,028,607 (47.3%)
(Add in that Obama won the Maine caucus 2,079 votes to Clinton’s 1,396.)

All of this has apparently prompted neo-con slapdash New York Times columnist and now Democratic campaign speculator Bill Kristol to venture that Obama is right now in the process of sewing up the race, closing out the rest of the February voting without problem and taking that momentum and a refined message into Ohio and Texas, where voters get to weigh in on March 4. According to Kristol and other speculators, Clinton sees the Ohio and Texas contests as the last of her so-called campaign firewalls— that is, the date and the places where the Clinton machine is supposed to put an end to the “yes we can” persistent Obama virus once and for all!

If we’re going to enter into silly speculating, though, Kristol in the New York Times is a very bad and un-fun place to start. Last week, Chinese New Year turned. We have put behind us the Year of the Boar and entered the Year of the Rat. Marking the turn and referencing the big Democratic primary race here in the U.S., the Taiwan News Online website, in a headline-subheadline fortune-cookie-style semi-haiku gives us a mystical read on the race that is at once predictive and enjoyable and one which I will not spoil by reprinting here. You’re going to have to follow the link!

Thanks Foster!

Tags: kristol, maine, momentum, popular vote