Clinton, McCain Take California

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CNN has called California for John McCain, with 44% of the vote, and Hillary Clinton, with 56%, though the polls are still open in my home county, and only 15% of precincts have reported. For what it’s worth, the Times isn’t calling this one yet. Regardless, the delegate race, which is what matters, is tight tight because the Democrats award delegates based on the proportion of the vote, not the winner-take-all Republican method.

McCain is now the official Republican overdog, winning all 173 delegates in California, without airing a single TV ad. Just a random side note. Ron Paul’s got 5 delegates (he took 25% of the Republican vote in Montana). Spendy ones, given the $20 million his campaign spent. For you math types that’s $4 million per delegate.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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