Hillary Clinton still appears to be the odds-on favorite for Secretary of State, and Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

First, voter fraud occurs when faked or otherwise ineligible votes are actually cast, or when eligible votes aren’t counted. It’s simply wrong to call the registration of ineligible or fictitious voters “voter fraud.” Call it “registration fraud” if you will, but there’s a wide gulf between the two in terms of the impact on the election. Fictitious voters still need to show up at the polls, get past the registration table and somehow cast a ballot to commit voter fraud. Is registration fraud acceptable? Of course not. But, until and unless the fraud results in an actual ballot being cast (unlikely in most states), it has virtually no impact on the election.

Then there’s the threadbare assertion by McCain that “America needs to be fully informed” on the issue of William Ayers. If McCain or America are uncertain of Obama’s relationship to William Ayers, they haven’t been paying attention. The Obama campaign has explained the relationship in a consistent fashion for at least several months.

But, that’s not really the point, is it? McCain’s playing a game with this “relationship.” The game goes like this.

“I understand you ran a stoplight at the corner of Main and Cedar last week. Tell me about that,” I say.

“I didn’t run a red light,” you respond.

“Why won’t you disclose what happened at Main and Cedar last week?” I press.

“I am. I didn’t run a red light.”

“It’s not so much about whether you ran a stupid red light,” I continue. “It’s about your inability to level with us. It’s about your honesty. It’s about your judgment in what you choose to tell people.”

In other words, there’s no correct answer. It’s an old, old political game of forcing your opponent to prove a negative.

Unfortunately, Obama will probably need to spend yet more time answering the question in the next three weeks - maybe tonight, as a matter of fact. Hopefully, he’ll answer concisely then ask why McCain continues to avoid providing a real plan for the American people.

In some ways, that talk reflected the difficult relationship we’ve had with him since he became a national political figure.

About 9 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 11, former Sen. Edwards reached me on my office phone.

Earlier that day, while campaigning in South Carolina, Edwards denied a report in The National Enquirer that he had an affair with an unnamed woman who once worked in his campaign.

In the newsroom, we debated whether to run Edwards’ comments about the Enquirer story in the next day’s print edition.

But it would be great to have two top people on the ticket.But Gore has already been vice president! Two people have served as vice president under two different presidents: George Clinton served as vice president under Jefferson and Madison, and John C. Calhoun served under John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson

It could have been added that Clark had several appointments that required Senate approval. McCain never did. Clark was approved by a voice vote of the Republican-controlled Senate to be Supreme Allied Commander Europe. John McCain was part of that Republican-controlled Senate.

But, the selection of Wesley Clark as Barack Obama’s VP running mate will have another consequence that the McCain camp could not survive.

Inevitably, inexorably, indubitably the military records of these two men will be opened, examined, sliced and diced and compared by the press. Enormous pressure will build on McCain to sign a release form that allows access to all his military records, a step he has never taken.

Despite a recent CBS poll saying a majority of voters would like to see Clinton in the vice presidential slot, she’s smart enough to know it wouldn’t be the right move for her - and therefore won’t push it. The two are philosophically complete opposites and would find it hard to work together. There’s also no faster way to shut someone down than to make them a vice president, where they are prevented from overshadowing or bad-mouthing their boss. Clinton would want the independence to criticize Obama and even outshine him, should the opportunity arise.

Politically, it would also not make the most effective ticket. The public senses the tension between them and will consider them insincere whenever they praise one another.

Indeed, a recent New York Times/CBS News poll of convention delegates found that 28 percent preferred Mrs. Clinton for vice president — by far the largest bloc supporting a candidate. (More than a third offered no opinion; 6 in 10 of Clinton-pledged delegates wanted her, but only 3 percent of Obama delegates named her.)

To: Senator Barack Obama
From: Charles Warner

My wife, Julia Bradford, and I have both ardently supported you since the beginning of your campaign when we attended your March, 2007, fundraiser in New York. We are maxed out in our contributions to your primary campaign to become the Democratic Party’s nominee and have given over $1,000 to your presidential campaign because we are convinced that you will be the nominee. I co-hosted a party that raised over $10,000 for your candidacy. We took a bus from New York to Philadelphia the Sunday before the Pennsylvania primary to canvas door to door for you in South Philadelphia.

We believe in you and are convinced you will be a president who America and the world will be proud of. We are convinced you will be a president who will tell the truth to the American people and begin to make some necessary changes that will help to repair America’s reputation internationally and help to save our precious environment.

We did not give Hillary Clinton a penny. Her mendacious, destructive, poorly managed, and pandering campaign has demonstrated how unfit she is to be president. We did not give your campaign money to see it go to her. If your campaign agrees to pay off any of her campaign’s debt in order to bribe her to get out of the race, you will have betrayed our trust in you and you will plummet to her unprincipled level in the gutter.

You have promised to change the ways of Washington politics. Stick to your promise. Don’t bribe her. Don’t give her a dollar - not a penny of our money. If you do, you will not only break your promise of change, you will also not get any more money from us or millions of other people, and, most importantly, you will lose the mantle of idealism and hope that attracted us to you in the first place.

Finally, idealism is nice, but realistically, you don’t need to bail her out. You’re going to win the nomination without bribing her. Save the money and invest it in beating McCain. We’ll help if you keep our faith and the money we’ve already given you.

OK, so Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) is staying in the presidential race despite losing among elected delegates, facing a slimming lead among superdelegates, losing the popular vote and behind by 2-to-1 in the number of states carried. She slogs on, hoping against hope for a sudden turnaround in the race.

Apart from the psychological reasons for her stubbornness, is there a more subtle political calculation going on?

Is she continuing her race so as to have a platform from which to continue to bash Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) in the hopes of so damaging him that he can’t win the general election? Is she doing this to keep her options alive for the 2012 presidential race?

Hillary is obviously entitled to keep running until Obama has secured the votes necessary for the nomination, and it is certainly understandable that she would want to run until the last popular vote is counted. But must she run a negative, slash-and-burn campaign? Must she use her time on the platform and on television to belittle, mock, deride and try to destroy the man who will eventually be the candidate of her own party?

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) felt similarly justified in staying in the race for the Republican nomination until Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) reached the majority threshold required for nomination. He contested the Texas primary vigorously, even though his earlier losses in South Carolina and Florida made it most unlikely that he could win the nomination. But he chose to run a positive campaign. He didn’t knock McCain. He just articulated the case for his own candidacy.

But Hillary won’t avail herself of that option because it does not serve her long-term fallback position: a shot at the nomination in 2012. If Obama is elected this year, he will seek reelection in 2012 and Hillary would have to face taking on an incumbent in a primary in her own party if she wanted to run, a daunting task. But if McCain wins, the nomination in 2012 will be open. And it might be worth having. McCain will be 76 years old and the Republican Party will have been in power for 12 years. Not since FDR and Truman has a party lasted that long in power. When the Republicans tried to do so, in 1980 and 1992, they fell flat on their face.

Hillary is using white, blue-collar fears of Barack Obama to try to stop him from getting nominated or elected.

Full story here.