Americans Away From Home

"Did you have a good day today?" I asked Modesto Lanzone, the owner of a trendy Italian restaurant stacked with modern art in San Francisco. Taken to daily swims after his heart attack, looking pale, he answered: "Every day has both good and bad in it."

I felt I'd just heard real wisdom, but was not so impressed myself. Years later now, I've come to recognize how right he was, as things enfold in my own daily life.

Still, if you're Barack Obama, it was a good news day.

Senator Amy Klobuchar, of Minnesota, endorsed Obama, following Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey's endorsement, before the PA. primary April 22. Then there are the seven members of the N. Carolina statehouse, who plan to endorse Obama as a group before the N. Carolina primary May 6. A steady string of influential Democrats is going for Obama, adding to pressures on Hillary to step down (Wall St. Journal story here).

The trend in adding superdelegates for Obama has been greater than 3-1 since the March 4 primaries; it was 2-1 following Super Tuesday February 5 (CNN story here).

Obama leads Clinton by double digits in national polls (CNN story here).

And when Obama was speaking to college students in Pennsylvania, 22,000 of them showed up! The college newspaper called it "Obamaville" (Daily Collegian story here).

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For Hillary Clinton, it was a bad news day.

If you campaign on health care, it's bad to be caught not paying your own employees' health care bills. Hillary found out reporters found out. While the campaign says it pays over the regular course of the month, FEC filings showed the unpaid bills were at least two months old. The Clinton campaign didn't pay almost $300,000 worth of unpaid insurance premiums for its staff (Politico story here).

Rapper 50 Cent stopped backing Hillary, switching support to Obama. While Hillary might not care 50 cents worth, it's one more in Obama's column, one less in Hillary's column. High profile backers like 50 Cent can potentially influence millions of fans. (CNN story here).

The Hillary Deathwatch dropped to 9.7%, predicting Hillary's chances of being the Democratic nominee for President (Hillary Deathwatch story here).

Showing, it's all how you look at it!

Carole