New Delegate Math based on Today's RBC Meeting!

Following the Democratic Party Rules and Bylaws Committee Meeting today, I have updated the delegate math based on their decisions. The new number of delegates needed to win the nomination is 2117. Obama has 2052 in the bank, and he is guaranteed a bare minimum of 32 pledged delegates based on the allocation rules of the last 3 primaries, plus 8 more superdelegates that have said they will endorse him in June. So that leaves only 25 additional delegates for Obama to win. That can come from other superdelegates, from doing better than the bare minimum in PR, MT and SD, and from the 13.5 Edwards delegates.




I predict Obama will bring it all home on Tuesday night in Montana. Then it's on to the general.

Unity Day with Thom Hartmann

Here's a 5-minute highlight reel from the Unity Day event on Thursday. Neither Laura Spanjian nor I get to talk on this one. It's mostly Thom Hartmann speaking, and he has a lot good to say.

At the end, it does say to "watch this space" for a complete audio podcast and more exclusive video coming soon. I'll bring that to you when it shows up at the Green 960 site.

I need your suggestion...

When I am at the Democratic National Convention as a delegate on the floor of the Pepsi Center, I plan to blog here about my experiences. I will certainly post from the hotel where the California and New York delegations are staying (the Sheraton). But I also want to be able to post from inside the Pepsi Center, including photos that I take there. Carrying around a laptop on the convention floor does not seem advisable nor practical, as there will at times be a crush of people around me. Also I expect to be doing a lot of meeting other delegates on the floor, and conducting convention business. Maybe the good folks at Calitics, the DNC-accredited blog that will be blogging from the California location on the floor, will let me freeload on their bandwidth.

I am able to post to this blog via a special email address that Google gave me. My problem is that I do not have a mobile device that sends email and can include photos in the email. Do you think that such a device would be a good solution? What devices would you recommend from your experience that could fill this bill? Is it easy to compose, send and receive email, as well as attach photos to the email? Is there some other solution that I have not thought of?

I was on a Panel with Thom Hartmann at Green 960

Hey, tonight I was in Redwood City at an event called Unity Day, sponsored by radio station, Green 960. Thom Hartmann (yes, that one!) and Angie Coiro led a panel discussion, and I was the Obama national convention delegate on the panel! There was one Clinton delegate that came, Laura Spanjian, who had agreed to be on the panel beforehand. I had called and discussed the event with John Scott, the program director, on Wednesday. But I had no idea how many delegates were going to be there. Only after I arrived and introduced myself in person to John Scott was I asked to be on the panel. They wanted the panel to be balanced, so they went with one Obama delegate and one Clinton delegate.

So basically, Thom Hartmann asked Laura and myself some interesting questions for almost an hour. It was not about rehashing the past, but rather looking forward to where we go as Clinton and Obama supporters together. There were about 300 people there I'd say. It was not broadcast on air, but it was videotaped for the station to put on their website, Green960.com. It's not there on the site now, but check it in the next day or so. I'll post the link when it becomes available. Aside from my saying at one point that Hillary would make a much better president than Bush (DUH!!) and later searching for the word "vulnerable" and not finding it, I thought it went very well. What a thrill that I had not expected!

Obama needs only 2 more delegates to win! Tomorrow?

Actually he needs 1.5 but because all the Democrats Abroad delegates (who only have half-votes) have spoken, it will take two whole people. Today we learn via DemConWatch that Obama snagged 4 superdelegate endorsements to Clinton's 1. One of them, DNC member Betty Richie of Texas, is a Pelosi Club member, so the count of undeclared Pelosi Club members drops to 5 (Nancy and Christine Pelosi, Jimmy Carter, Chris van Hollen, and Denise Johnson).

So here is how the math adds up right now:





The math closely aligns with the methodology used in the great diaries at DailyKos by PocketNines, most recently here. If you have a concern about how the guaranteed future delegate count is arrived at, PocketNines offers a full explanation.

I use DemConWatch as my main source (as does DailyKos), and DemConWatch uses The Green Papers as its source. For Hillary's superdelegate number, I use the number reported by the Obama results website. The campaign has its finger on the pulse and often shows a few more supers committed to Hillary than DCW does.

The gray and sky-blue shaded cells are for manual input. The values in the gray cells can change but do so infrequently. The values in the blue-shaded cells are the ones that change most often and which I check daily.

Regarding the differences from the Obama website:

I am already counting Donna Edwards as a superdelegate for Obama. She is a lock to win the special election in Maryland on June 17, at which time she becomes a super. She has already endorsed Obama.

I am counting the two pledged Clinton delegates from Maryland and DC who switched to Obama. I agree they are jerks, however, a vote is a vote.

Texas: Here is my diary on the Texas caucus delegate situation from last week. This will be resolved at the state convention on June 7.

Louisiana: Here is a comment I made on another previous diary of mine. Obama's site is wrong. Louisiana has named actual live breathing people for all its delegate slots, so that should settle it.

Comments and suggestions accepted. Can you believe we do this for fun?

List of California Delegation Members

Here is the list of all 553 delegates, alternates, and committee members comprising the California delegation at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Sources are here, here and here.

I am providing this because it does not yet appear here. Inquiring minds might want to know.

First up, the undeclared superdelegates:
Rep. Susan Davis, San Diego
Rep. Sam Farr, Salinas
Rep. Bob Filner, Chula Vista
Rep. Mike Honda, Campbell
Rep. Jerry McNerney, Pleasanton
DNC Hon. Carole Migden, San Francisco
DNC Bob Mulholland, Chico
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, San Francisco
DNC Christine Pelosi, Washington DC (office)
DNC John Perez, Los Angeles
DNC Robert Rankin, Carson
DNC Art Torres, San Francisco
DNC Steve Ybarra, Sacramento

Nancy and Christine Pelosi have stated they will endorse the leader in pledged delegates, i.e., Obama.

"District-level" delegates and alternates are the ones who ran campaigns and were competitively elected to their seats (including me, for Obama!). The delegate types, "Unpledged PLEO" and "Unpledged Add-On," included in the table below are superdelegates who have now pledged themselves for either Obama or Clinton.

California DNC Delegation List 2008 - Upload a doc

Read this doc on Scribd: California DNC Delegation List 2008

Obama-Clinton Delegate Calculator

2008 DNC Delegates - Upload a doc

Read this doc on Scribd: 2008 DNC Delegates

Rating Obama’s Jedi Master

Eons ago, back in February, Bloomberg News obtained a detailed spreadsheet that was inadvertently released by the Obama campaign. The spreadsheet was the topic of this diary at the time. The Bloomberg reporters posted it at this location. The prognosticator was Jeffrey Berman, the “Obama campaign’s unsung hero" and Jedi master.

In it, the campaign analyzed about twelve scenarios for all the state-by-state races after the February 5 Super Tuesday, including projected splits in the popular vote and the delegate totals. Only one scenario is in this spreadsheet, but you should take a look at it. It is fascinating to see what the Obama campaign predicted at the time and where they saw the race going.

Now that Obama has clinched the lead in pledged delegates and nearly clinched the nomination, let’s check out exactly how good Jeffrey Berman's wizardry actually was.

It is remarkable how accurate the predictions were, and it’s interesting to see where the results deviated significantly. I put together the following chart to illustrate the difference between the forecast on February 6 and the actual results of the primaries and caucuses.

2008 DNC Delegates vs Jeffrey Berman forecast - Upload a doc

Read this doc on Scribd: 2008 DNC Delegates vs Jeffrey Berman forecast

The chart shows the differences in both popular vote percentage and number of delegates earned. The delegate numbers show the results for caucus states through the local and state conventions that have been held so far. For example, on May 16, Nevada provided an extra delegate for Obama at Clinton’s expense. The actual results are based on The Green Papers tallies.

The Green Papers and this chart do not include the one extra delegate that the Obama campaign claims for each Louisiana and Texas (although the extra Obama caucus delegate(s) in Texas may yet appear on June 7). (The popular vote shown for Texas in the chart is for the primary.)

The Obama results also exclude the Edwards delegates that have now endorsed Obama, as well as the two Clinton pledged delegates from DC and MD that switched to Obama.

State W-L
On February 6, the forecast for the remaining 27 contests was for 19 wins and 8 losses. So far, Obama has 17 wins and 7 losses, matching the predicted number of wins and losses to date. MT, SD and PR will go 2 and 1, for a final record of (drum roll, please) 19 wins and 8 losses. The Obama campaign did not project to win Maine, but he won it anyway. On the other hand, Indiana went from his winner column over to a narrow loss to Clinton.

Popular Vote Variance
Obama had double-digit over-performances in the popular vote percentage in VA, DC, HI, ME, and VI, all winning contests for him. In fact, the day of the Potomac Primary was exceptional for exceeding the forecast not only in VA and DC, but also in MD (by 7%). Most notable was the winning vote margin in Virginia. It had been forecast to be tight at 1.2%, but it ballooned to a 14% margin. In Hawaii, total turnout for the caucuses was a magnitude higher than it had ever been, and the result was a 24% blowout for favorite son Obama.

Obama under-performed in the popular vote in eight states, although by less than 1.7% each in four of them (OH, RI, MS and PA). He lost OH, RI and PA, and even though he garnered a slightly smaller percentage of votes in Mississippi than had been predicted five weeks earlier, his winning margin over Clinton there was nearly 25%.

In Guam, Indiana, West Virginia and Kentucky he received, respectively, 4%, 3%, 17% and 12% less of the popular vote than had been forecast by the campaign. Nevertheless, he won Guam (by 7 votes). In Indiana a switch of 7210 Limbaugh-influenced Clinton votes would have given him the state. As for WV and KY, what else is there to say? As DHinMI has often noted, "Appalachia has an Obama problem."

Delegate Count Variance
Leaving aside a half-delegate under-perform in the Democrats Abroad primary (where Obama crushed Clinton anyway), Obama under-performed the campaign forecast in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, West Virginia and Kentucky, all of which turned out to be very tough for him to win. Of the 22 fewer delegates garnered in those states, 19 were lost in Indiana, West Virginia and Kentucky. Excluding Indiana, the campaign on February 6 had not even expected to win the other four states, each of which later exhibited varying degrees of the Appalachia syndrome.

Obama more than made up for it in Maryland, Virginia, Texas, and North Carolina, where he gained 28 more delegates than had been forecast. And for a one-day over-performance, it’s hard to top the day of the Potomac Primary, when VA, DC and MD produced 19 more delegates than the campaign had expected (exactly offsetting the IN, WV and KY losses).

Of the 24 contests held since February 6, the Obama delegate numbers for nine of them were within one delegate of what had been forecast (including five that were spot on). Another seven were within three delegates.

Overall so far, Obama has over-performed by 28.5 delegates compared to the February 6 prediction.

If it were I that had received that forecast on February 6, and then witnessed the kind of results that we see here, I’d say Jeffrey Berman deserved a big, fat raise — and then some time off on August 29.

P.S.: Here's a snapshot of part of the famous spreadsheet:



As many of us remember, Ben Smith at Politico offered this comment on the campaign spreadsheet at the time it was “released” in February:

The scenario considered in the Bloomberg story foresees the widely anticipated Obama roll through the Potomac Primary, and Clinton victories in Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Crucially, it doesn't forecast any blowouts with huge delegate margins; Washington State's caucus, by this projection, offers Obama his widest margin, 20 delegates.

The scenario "projects Obama will end up in June with 1,806 of the delegates who select the party's nominee to 1,789 for New York Sen. Hillary Clinton." That's a count that gives her a 50-delegate lead among superdelegates, and him a 67-delegate lead among pledged delegates.

Isn’t it nice to be able to breathe easier now, compared to then, with Obama’s relatively large lead?

California Delegation Meeting in Sacramento

If you want to know how the California Delegation Meeting in Sacramento on May 18 went, check out this HuffPo piece by William Bradley. Just so you know, I was there. Steve Westly led us in a rousing cheer of "Yes, We Can," after all the 107 or so Obama delegates had gone around the room and introduced themselves and stated where they were from, as the Obama facilitator asked. They did that all right, but also discussed which district they represented, what cities the district covers, how they were involved in the Obama campaign, what other political efforts they were involved in, what posts they held in various official and non-official organizations, etc. Twice we were asked to keep it short. (I had spoken near the beginning, so I was under no such time pressure.) Any time you ask a group of activist Democrats to stand up and talk, you know it's not going to be short!

Iowa, Nevada … Texas?

Did you see that Obama picked up another national delegate in Nevada on Saturday? The campaign’s tactical organization at the county- and state-level caucuses and conventions continues to deliver results. Can they do it again in Texas on June 7?

Since the day after the Texas two-step primary/caucus, the Obama campaign has claimed to have won 38 delegates in the Texas caucuses, in addition to the 61 in the Texas primary (a total of 99 to Clinton’s 94). On the other hand, The Green Papers (and hence DemConWatch) has been showing Obama with 37 caucus delegates ever since the Texas County Conventions on March 30. This appears to be because his percentage of state convention delegates that were chosen at the county conventions is just short of the threshold to earn that 38th delegate.

Curious, I emailed Stephanie Leavitt, the Deputy Finance Director of the Texas Democratic Party, to find out the number of delegates to the Texas State Democratic Convention on June 5-7. The answer is 7298 delegates. (FWIW, that number does not include the State Democratic Executive Committee and County Chairs.)

Back on March 30, Burnt Orange Report, at this diary, was all over the County Conventions, in which those state delegates were chosen. There are some instructive comments attached to the BOR diary. There I learned this information:

On June 7 the state convention delegates will elect 25 PLEO (Party Leaders and Elected Officials) delegates and 42 at-large delegates using separate election criteria. But if you consider the PLEO and at-large delegates together, the threshold percentages required for election of national delegates becomes clear. With final numbers for Obama between 50 and 60% and with 7298 state convention delegates, the key numbers are:

53.572% (3910 state delegates) => 36 national delegates
54.001% (3941 state delegates) => 37
55.953% (4084 state delegates) => 38
58.001% (4233 state delegates) => 39
58.334% (4258 state delegates) => 40

Based on the Burnt Orange Report spreadsheet, Obama has 4040 state convention delegates to Clinton’s 3318. Obama’s share is 55.4% of the 7298 total.

But note that sum of Clinton and Obama state delegates is 7358, not 7298. Perhaps there was some attrition in the final delegate count. In fact, BOR’s spreadsheet shows that some counties elected too many delegates. In any event, assuming that Obama alone had to shed all 60 of the “excess” state delegates, Obama’s minimum would be 3980 delegates (54.5%), still firmly ensconced with at least 37 national delegates.

Also note that in its spreadsheet, BOR reports for Senate District 29 in El Paso County:

To be 'challenged' at the TDP convention, resulting in around 22 more delegates for Obama.

The quote marks around the word 'challenged' seems to indicate that this will be a mere formality. Adding 22 to the 4040 Obama delegates gives 4062. This is just short of the 4084 delegates needed to pick up 38 delegates.

Can Obama snag that 38th delegate that his campaign has been claiming all along? Obama would need somewhere in the range of 22 to 82 Clinton state delegates to switch to him on June 7 to grab it.

Is the Obama campaign counting on their superb organizational skills, as evidenced recently in Nevada and Iowa, to pick up an extra national delegate or two in Texas? We’ll see on June 7.

Obama Mystery Delegates - We Need Detective Work!

Has anyone noticed that the pledged delegate totals on the Obama website differ from the those on the DKos front page (which are obtained from DemConWatch, which gets the numbers from The Green Papers). The Obama campaign claims three more delegates than DCW and GP show, one each in Lousiana, Texas, and Washington.

The reason Obama does not get "official" credit for these delegates is because of missing data. It's likely that a few people are holding it close to the vest. Also, DCW even suggests that "something fishy" may be going on in Lousiana.

The challenge for us is to use our collective detective work to pry this data loose. By doing this, we could nail down 1, 2 or even 3 more pledged delegates in the "official" count for Obama.

DemConWatch says there is good reason to believe that the Obama count could be right in all three cases.

According to a May 1 post on DemConWatch, there is good reason to believe that the Obama count could be right in all three of these cases.

Here is where the discrepancies lie:

State:	Obama Campaign	DCW/GP	Possible Obama Pick-up
Louisiana	34-22	33-23	+1
Texas	38-29	37-30	+1
Washington	53-25	52-26	+1

From DemConWatch:

LA: GP suggest 33:23 due to official source, Obama has it 34:22; the official source can't explain why they have one more delegate for Clinton in CD2, also they don't give the final numbers CD-by-CD; IMHO - something fishy, probably the campaign has filed an appeal and that is why [the Obama campaign is sticking] with the correct (IMHO) 34:22 result.

TX: caucus results are still not final so both sources have different projection - campaign has 99:94, GP has 98:95 (more probable if the race is not over before June 7th)

WA: again different projections GP has 52:26, Obama campaign has 53:25; our experts here found that at-large and PLEOs in the state are not allocated based on popular vote, they are chosen by the CD pledged delegates; that makes 53:25 impossible projection and most probable projections are 52:26 and 54:24 (less probable); I am making attempts to find all LD conventions results and predict the outcome of the CD conventions, but results are very hard to obtain...

This calls for some sleuthing by people on the ground in Louisiana, Texas, and Washington.

In Louisiana, we need to find out the final vote tally in CD2. This will determine whether one of the CD2 pledged delegates that is now counted for Clinton should really be for Obama. Right now the count DCW count shows CD-2 at Obama 3, Clinton 2. It might really be 4-1. Also, we need to know if the Obama campaign has in fact filed an appeal.

Texas has a 3-tier system of conventions to determine the split of caucus delegates. The State (Tier 3) Convention on June 7 will identify the persons who will be the 67 caucus-chosen delegates. In Texas, we need the final caucus results coming out of the County and Senate District (Tier 2) Conventions that were held on March 29. This will help determine if the split will be 38-29 (as the Obama campaign says) or 37-30. Green Papers bases their estimated 37-30 split based on incomplete numbers from Burnt Orange Report:

Here is how we estimate the STATEWIDE delegate count (based on partial and unofficial results of the 30 March 2008 County Conventions from Burnt Orange Report as of 7 April 2008 with 93.90% of the delegate's presidential preferences indicated):

In the end we will know the final split in Texas on June 7:

Friday 6 June - Saturday 7 June 2008: The State Convention will choose the remaining 67 pledged delegates. ... 67 delegates are to be allocated to presidential contenders based on the presidential preference of the delegates at the State Convention as a whole.
42 at-large National Convention delegates
25 Pledged PLEOs

Washington also has a three-tier caucus system to select national delegates. There are 17 at-large and 10 PLEO (Party Leaders and Elected Officials) delegates to be chosen at the State Convention on Saturday, June 15. These are all part of the 78 national delegates that were at stake on February in the Washington caucuses.

In order to predict how these 27 will be split, we would need all the Legislative District (LD) caucus results from April 19. Apparently these LD caucus-chosen delegates make up something called the Election Committee, and it is this committee who will choose the final 27 national pledged delegates on June 15:

Sunday 15 June 2008: State Convention. The delegates to the Election Committee choose the remaining delegates to the National Convention. 27 pledged delegates are to be allocated to presidential contenders based on the presidential preferences of the Election Committee as a whole. ...
17 at-large National Convention delegates
10 Pledged PLEOs

Can anyone in the great state of Washington help out here? Even if you could find out the results of just one of the LD caucuses from April 19, that would help.

Your Instructions
Detectives, please post your clues in the comments below (bookmark this diary so you can find it later). Also, you should post any good information directly to this site for the nice people at DemConWatch.

OK, detectives, get going, and remember, let's be careful out there!

P.S.: You might also notice that the "official" count includes an extra delegate from Maryland for Obama that Obama's website does not show. This is because yesterday a pledged Clinton delegate flipped to Obama!

Cross posted at Daily Kos.

New Magic Number after May 6

The results below are based on the Obama website, with the Dems Abroad split corrected from 5-2 to 4.5-2.5.

Delegates:	Pledged	Super	Total	Needed
Obama	1,592.5	259	1,851.5	172.5
Clinton	1,424.5	276	1,700.5	323.5
Remaining	217	260	477
(2,024.5 delegates needed for victory)

Tonight Obama clinched a majority of pledged delegates

With tonight's results in Indiana and North Carolina, Barack Obama has now clinched a majority of pledged delegates. He won 66 in NC and 34 in IN.

After today there are 37 mini-races left in the remaining primary states and PR. Obama will be viable in all of them.

The percentage threshold for viability is very low, and Obama has been viable in every single district in the country where delegates have been awarded. That means the bare minimum number of pledged delegates he will get in the last six primaries is 37.

That, together with tonight's results, put him over the 1627 delegates needed to win a majority of the pledged delegates.

• The Obama website says that he has 1593 pledged delegates after tonight. Add 37 and that is 1630.
  
  
• If you use the Obama pledged total from the Green Papers, which is 1589.5 and then add 37, the result is 1626.5. Demconwatch uses GP as its source, so they show exactly what GP shows, by hook or by crook.
  
  
• However, Amot, one of the Demconwatch bloggers, made a convincing case that the real Obama total was 1.5 more than what GP showed at the time of Amot's posting. GP had shown America Samoa and Louisiana as having 0.5 and 1 fewer Obama delegates, respectively, than he believed was correct. GP now has the correct AS split of 2-1. So just correct for LA (i.e., add 1) so that 1590.5 is the Obama total, in which case 37 more is 1627.5.
  
  
• GP also shows 1 fewer Obama delegate each for Texas and Washington, as well as 0.5 delegate less for Democrats Abroad, as compared to Obama's site. Amot says that the results of the caucuses in those two states are not final yet, and apparently GP and Obama have different sources. He also says that the 4.5 - 2.5 split for DA is correct, not the 5-2 split that Obama's site has. So subtract 2.5 from 1593 to get 1590.5, which agrees with the previous bullet item.
  

The Magic Number after Guam and LA-6

We have a new superdelegate today after Don Cazayoux won the special election in Louisiana-6, in a district that Democrats ordinarily would not win.

The results below are based on the Obama website.

Delegates:	Pledged	Super	Total	Needed
Obama	1,494	258	1,752	273
Clinton	1,336	275	1,611	414
Remaining	404	263	667
(2,025 delegates needed for victory)

The Magic Number

The Magic Number
Based on http://origin.barackobama.com/resultscenter as of May 2.

The Magic Number(2,024 delegates needed)
Barack Obama	1,747	278
Hillary Clinton	1,608	417

My 3 Top Issues: Poverty, Health Care, War

(After I was elected as an Obama pledged delegate, the Obama campaign asked me to fill out an information form. One question asked me to explain my top three issues. Below is my response.)

Basic principles drive my positions on the issues. Jesus the Christ directs us to Love God, Love our Neighbor, Help the Poor, and Help the Outcast. As a result, the three issues that are most important to me are poverty, healthcare and the Iraq war.

• Why should any child suffer from poverty, hunger and lack of health care, when we, the wealthiest nation in the world, have the resources and the means to eradicate suffering among our most vulnerable citizens, our nation’s children, who have no voices?

• For 47 million Americans to be without health insurance, and for a very high proportion of them to be children, is just plain wrong. Even in the absence of this shocking truth, for our government to deny the basic dignity of health care for all of its citizens is an immoral transgression.

• Why should we continue to squander our treasure and the lives of our military heroes in Iraq at outrageous expense to our society? If we instead used these precious resources wisely, think of the social injustices that could be effectively addressed, the societal good that that could be procured, and the wrongs that could be made right, most of it here within our own borders.

My views on poverty, the war, healthcare and government’s role are exemplified by the following quotations:

• “The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.” – Thomas Jefferson
  
  
• “Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom.” – Edmund Burke
  
  
• “The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.” – Jane Addams
  
  
• “Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.” – Paulo Freire
  
  
• “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” – Edmund Burke
  
  
• “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” – MLK Jr.
  
  
• “Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.” – Edmund Burke
  
  
• “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” – MLK Jr.
  

Poverty:

• “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” – FDR
  
  
• “For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. …Then these righteous ones will reply, `Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you?’ Or thirsty and give you something to drink? … And the King will tell them, `I assure you, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!’ ” – The Gospel of Matthew
  
  
• “Of course people cannot contribute to the nation if they are never taught to read or write; if their bodies are stunted from hunger; if their sickness goes untended; if their life is spent in hopeless poverty, just drawing a welfare check.
  
  “So we want to open the gates to opportunity. But we're also going to give all our people, black and white, the help that they need to walk through those gates. My first job after college was as a teacher in Cotulla, Texas, in a small Mexican-American school. Few of them could speak English and I couldn't speak much Spanish. My students were poor and they often came to class without breakfast and hungry. And they knew even in their youth the pain of prejudice. They never seemed to know why people disliked them, but they knew it was so because I saw it in their eyes.
  
  “I often walked home late in the afternoon after the classes were finished wishing there was more that I could do. But all I knew was to teach them the little that I knew, hoping that I might help them against the hardships that lay ahead. And somehow you never forget what poverty and hatred can do when you see its scars on the hopeful face of a young child.” – Lyndon B. Johnson

War:

• “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.” – MLK Jr.

• “Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.” – MLK Jr.

Healthcare:

• “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.” – MLK Jr.