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^{-- Photo by Brian Chilson}

The Log Cabin Democrat account of the recount of votes in the tight House race in Conway should at least mildly alarm everyone who cares about election accountability. Just exactly how do votes for state representative wind up being counted in a constable's race? Multiply little "drop downs" of votes enough times in enough machines across a county and, without anybody really knowing unless they thought to challenge the overall outcome -- and had the money to do it -- who would ever know? I know this is a little paranoid. I know it is irrational. But I HATE the touch screen voting machines.

Note that, in Faulkner County, they at least had a paper trail that upheld the electronic recount. But only about 1,500 votes were cast in this race. Imagine if you thought something was up in a presidential race?

I'm with Terry Fiddler, who lost the recount after leading in the first tally:

Fiddler said he does not dispute the result of the process, but is disappointed that given the significant expense of electronic voting machines, "this is what we get."

^{-- Photo by Brian Chilson}

A shower dampened the afternoon crowd at Riverfest a bit, but not the spirits of kids playing in the new fountain that is part of the new kids' play area in Riverfront Park.

Too low on fuel to shop around, I pulled into the closest gas station this morning and was greeted by $4.25/gallon premium. Some minutes later, I had my first $70 fillup.

Across the way, a guy in an aging long wheelbase pickup with a NASCAR decal pulled up. He got out, looked at the pump prices and slowly shook his head. We commiserated. After I announced my price breakthrough, he said, "I could only afford nine gallons."

By his T-shirt, his return trip would take him home to Chicot County. There'll be scant relief there -- if he can make it in his guzzler on nine gallons.

What, really, are working people going to do? We apparently haven't seen the top yet.

Re: Hillary Clinton's reference yesterday to the fact that RFK was campaigning in June when he was killed:

Friday was not the first time Mrs. Clinton referred to the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in such a context. In March, she told Time magazine: “Primary contests used to last a lot longer. We all remember the great tragedy of Bobby Kennedy being assassinated in June in L.A. My husband didn’t wrap up the nomination in 1992 until June. Having a primary contest go through June is nothing particularly unusual.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has endorsed Mrs. Clinton, defended her remarks in a telephone interview on Friday evening.

“I’ve heard her make that argument before,” Mr. Kennedy said, speaking on his cellphone as he drove to the family compound in Hyannis Port, Mass. “It sounds like she was invoking a familiar historical circumstance in support of her argument for continuing her campaign.”

With it becoming increasingly likely that Hillary Clinton will be able to claim a popular vote edge once the primary season is over -- insert shriek here, Obamamiacs, but the Philadelphia Inquirer article in D-G this morning explains -- you begin to understand the mad frenzy to push her out of the race before that happens. Even if you accept the numbers, which Obamaists don't, they are a symbol that might -- though probably won't -- move some super delegates.

Prize-winning historian Sean Wilentz, who's been a Hillary supporter, doesn't really expect Clinton to win, I don't think. But he has analyzed the Obama victory in light of that popular vote and, more important, Clinton's huge wins in the Ohio Valley and other working-class climates. Food for thought about the party and its nominee's future.

Under those pressures, the Barack Obama campaign and its sympathizers have begun to articulate much more clearly what they mean by their vague slogan of "change" - nothing less than usurping the historic Democratic Party, dating back to the age of Andrew Jackson, by rejecting its historic electoral core: white workers and rural dwellers in the Middle Atlantic and border states.

Without a majority of those voters, the Democrats have, since the party's inception in the 1820s, been incapable of winning the presidency. The Obama advocates declare, though, that we have entered an entirely new political era. It is not only possible but also desirable, they say, for Democrats to win by turning away from those whom "progressive" pundits and bloggers disdain variously as "Nascar man," "uneducated," "low information" whites, "rubes, fools, and hate-mongers" who live in the nation's "shitholes."

Having attempted, with the aid of a complicit news media, to brand Hillary Clinton as a racist -- by flinging charges that, as the historian Michael Lind has shown, belong "in black helicopter/grassy knoll territory," Obama's supporters now fiercely claim that Clinton's white working class following is also essentially racist. Favoring the buzzword language of the academic left, tinged by persistent, discredited New Left and black nationalist theories about working-class "white skin privilege," a vote against Obama has become, according to his fervent followers, "a vote for whiteness."

Talk about transformative post-racial politics.

In fact, all of the evidence demonstrates that white racism has not been a principal or even secondary motivation in any of this year's Democratic primaries. Every poll shows that economics, health care, and national security are the leading issues for white working class voters - and for Latino working class voters as well. These constituencies have cast positive ballots for Hillary Clinton not because she is white, but because they regard her as better on these issues. Obama's campaign and its passionate supporters refuse to acknowledge that these voters consider him weaker -- and that Clinton's positions, different from his, as well as her experience actually attract support. Instead they impute racism to working class Democrats who, the polls also show, happen to be liberal on every leading issue. The effort to taint anyone who does not support Obama as motivated by racism has now become a major factor in alienating core Democrats from Obama's campaign.

^{-- Photo by Brian Chilson}

Brummett considers the question on account of several election outcomes and concludes that they should be judged individually. Some Democrats saw in the Courtney Henry judicial victory and converted Democrat Tim Summers' House win as hopeful signs for Democrats. I'm reminded that these are precisely the factors that a leading Republican saw as hopeful because they signaled a fracturing of Religious Right hegemony in NWA. He saw this not as good news for Democrats, but good news for old-fashioned business Republicans.

Doug Thompson likewise analyzes outcomes as unrelated circumstances.

Joyce Elliott, newly elected to the state Senate, says she may try again on legislation she pushed as a House member to legalize college help to Arkansas high school graduates who are not authorized immigrants.

Help for these students in the form of in-state tuition was an open secret. It suddenly became a big story because Gov. Mike Beebe got spooked, for whatever reason. He acted precipitously and rashly (uncharacteristic for him) in turning this into a, well, federal case.

Important point: Lost in the hubbub of this morning's coverage is the immutable fact, reflected in Department of Homeland Security documents and legal opinions in other states, that colleges are NOT required by federal law to establish citizenship or immigration status of students. Arkanas colleges have BEEN DOING NOTHING WRONG.

Not that this matters any longer. The stories are already pouring in of long-time Arkansas residents, high school graduates, who are going to be denied college because they'll now be forced to pay out-of-state tuition, many thousands more expensive, to attend. See, the new crackdown won't prohibit "illegals" from attending Arkansas colleges, it will merely identify them so as to be sure they do not get a tuition break. So bona fide Arkansas residents of long standing, graduates of our high schools, should they try to attend Arkanas colleges will be forced to pay the same as someone from New York. The New Yorkers might also receive scholarship help thanks to Arkansas taxpayers, though Arkansas graduates born of Arkansas-working parents will not. Fair? You tell me.

-- Brian Chilson photo

You're on. And, since this is surely to come up, the videos:

I've said elsewhere that the reference to the RFK assassination seems clearly to the time, and nothing more, as an illustration that campaigns have extended farther into an election year than this one has yet. Others feel differently. Strongly. Even some generally calm commentators like Mark Shields on PBS tonight think a reference to a historical event, when it is assassination, is beyond the pale given concerns about Obama's security.

David Sanders' Unconventional Wisdom on AETN at 6:30 p.m. tonight -- and again noon Sunday -- will feature a discussion on the chances of a Democratic tsunami in the fall congressional elections.

Participants: David Freddoso of National Review and Timothy Carney of the Evans-Novak Political Report..