Maybe you heard there was a primary vote here in Texas the other night? I voted early, but went down to the precinct house (in my case, a Lutheran church) to vote in the caucus for my Presidential candidate of choice, Barack Obama. 400 of my neighbors also turned out, and we had a nearly two-hour wait to get into the room to sign our names. We could have stayed around to do more - vote for delegates, offer platform positions - but it was late, and I had to get home to help put the kids to bed. I'd say well over half - maybe up to 75% - of the people who turned out were Obama supporters. You may have heard that Hillary Clinton took Texas by about 100K votes, but it certainly appears that Obama will end up with more delegates from the state, thanks to our arcane delegate apportionment rules. There's two possible reasons for this I can see, and they aren't mutually exclusive. 1) Although there's more Clinton supporters, they don't feel strongly enough to go back to the precinct house and vote again. 2) Many of Clinton's supporters lived along the border and out in West Texas, meaning that a lot of them work heavy industrial or agricultural jobs, the type of jobs where your leisure time is at a far greater premium than it is for the middle-class Obama supporters I saw in my district.

For me, although I agree with many of Clinton's policy positions, I think Clinton's going to have a harder time beating McCain than Obama would. It's stupid and high-schoolish, but I think a lot of voters are swayed by stupid and high-schoolish ideas. Clinton's not very likeable, even though she's smart. She's more than a little brittle, and she's shown a tendency to belittle Obama and her other D opponents as if they were the worst people she's ever encountered, and then later she will act like it is nothing to talk this way. To her, perhaps, it is nothing. She's been saying lately that Obama is all talk, saying that his speeches are "just words." Words, she seems to say, are nothing but tools to carry a person forward, a part of the game, if you will. Perhaps that is true in her mind, but clearly, I disagree. A President is a captain of a ship. Knowing how to steer and knowing the direction are important, but it's even more important to know how to lead a crew. You do that with words, Ms. Clinton.