The Raw Story:
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich., May 14 - Former Democratic U.S. presidential candidate John Edwards endorsed Barack Obama’s White House bid on Wednesday, a campaign spokeswoman said, giving a big boost to the Illinois senator in his effort to rally the party around his candidacy.

Edwards, the 2004 vice presidential nominee, dropped out of the Democratic race in January and was heavily courted by both Obama and rival Hillary Clinton in the past few months. He made the endorsement at a Grand Rapids rally Wednesday evening.

“I am fired up!” were Obama’s first words to the raucous crowd, who cheered wildly when the Illinois senator introduced his “special guest,” Edwards. The former North Carolina senator took time before endorsing Obama to kindly acknowledge Sen. Clinton’s efforts.

The endorsement comes the day after Clinton defeated Obama by more than 2-to-1 in West Virginia. The loss highlighted Obama’s work to win over the “Hillary Democrats” — white, working-class voters who also supported Edwards in large numbers before he exited the race.

The blog Michigan Messenger has a rough transcript of the endorsement. Video follows…

OpenLeft, Chris Bowers:

Obama has won North Carolina’s pledged delegates 63-52, according to Green Papers. Their estimates are usually accurate to within one delegate either way, so I trust them. Obama also appears to have won the North Carolina popular vote by 226,500 or so, which is almost identical to Clinton’s margin in Pennsylvania and Indiana combined.

The delegate count in Indiana is murkier, largely because the votes are coming in slower. In the extremes we have Democratic Convention Watch, which currently projects Clinton 35-33 Obama with four undecided, and CBS, which projects Clinton 38-29 Obama with five undecided. While these are not incompatible projections I am strongly prone to lean toward the DIY independent site, since such sites have shown, time and time again, to be way ahead of established news sites in delegate counts. In terms of the popular vote, Clinton is currently ahead by 20,000 and dropping with 92% reporting. I don’t regret declaring her the popular vote winner at all, since I’ll still be proven correct and since only one delegate is decided by the popular vote. I’ve been wrong about individual delegates before, and really that is all that is at stake in the popular vote.

Still, a very, very big night for Obama. The media has been giving him stupid rules to follow (pierce your nipples with flag pins or we will run Rev. Wright 24 / 7!), and he beat those rules tonight. I don’t like those rules, but Obama played them, and won. The narrative will reward him as a result.

Machine malfunctions, long lines, registration probs reported across Keystone State..

BRAD BLOG ALERT
April 22, 2008

Pennsylvania Primary: Polling Place, E-Voting Problem Wire…

Problem reports from polling places in PA, including voting machine malfunctions, long lines, registration problems and more having been coming in all across the state (particularly in and around Philly), all morning.

We’ve been doing our best to keep up, with a running wire of notable reports, which we continue to update throughout the day.

See our report yesterday detailing concerns about e-voting equipment (though not from officials, who weren’t concerned at all) and whether there would be enough machines to go around (presuming they work at all) across Pennsylvania…

For up to the minute news: ELECTION PROBLEM WIRE

If you missed it yesterday, we tried to warn you…
The Pennsylvania Primary: Democracy of the Gods
Tuesday’s Election Will be ‘Unrecountable, Unverifiable, and Unauditable’…
FULL STORY

TPM:

The new poll of Pennsylvania by Franklin and Marshall College, one of the state’s most prominent pollsters, confirms that the Democratic race is a close one. There’s been significant movement since their last poll from just under a month ago:

Clinton 46% (-5)
Obama 41% (+6)

Pollster Terry Madonna thinks the “small town” flap has yet to fully play out with the voters: “With the new commercial and the San Francisco statements, can she push the lead back to double digits?”

For more coverage of Dennis Kucinich, go to the Openers blog.