The only question today is the point spread. Unless the voters in West Virginia have a late hour change of heart, Clinton will win big tonight. The painting is so clear Obama gave a concession speech yesterday at a West Virginia rally.

“I understand that many more here in West Virginia will probably support Sen. Clinton,” Obama said.

Will this predicted win change the delegate math in Clinton’s favor? No. But a race is never over until someone reaches the finish line. That hasn’t happened yet.

Now that the press has moved on from Hillary as a contender (whether or not she drops out, she’s now practically invisible), all eyes are on the Democratic VP candidates.

Top bets?

At the moment, it’s Ed Rendell, the Hillary supporter and governor of Pennsylvania Ohio gov. Ted Strickland, and Gov. Bill Richardson, the former candidate. Long shot - NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who brings heavy executive experience and a strong fan base in Red America, despite his push on gun control. All are gay friendly.

Who will it NOT be? Good money says it won’t go to Hillary Clinton, who could have far more influence as Senate Majority leader (eventually) - especially because Michelle Obama is supposed to hate her passionately.

If elected, Charlie Ober would become the first openly gay elected official in the borough of Queens; but to do that, he has to take on the Queens machine…

New York has the largest LGBT community of any city in the United States and Democratic elected officials in the city actively seek the endorsement of LGBT Democratic clubs. There are now five openly LGBT members of the New York state legislature from Manhattan and even one from Staten Island. With the City Council now led by an openly lesbian Speaker, Christine Quinn — an all-but-declared candidate for mayor in 2009 — the visibility of the LGBT community has never been higher.

So it might come as a surprise to New Yorkers as well as others that an openly gay candidate would face homophobic attacks in his campaign for the City Council. But that is exactly what has happened to Charles Ober, who is running in the June 3 special election in the 30th Council district to replace Dennis Gallagher, the disgraced incumbent Republican who was forced out of office after accepting a plea bargain after being prosecuted for raping a 52-year-old grandmother.

The 30th district is one of only three out of 51 Council districts currently represented by a Republican — the other two being on Staten Island. But the powerful Queens County Democratic Party organization wants to change that and is supporting Elizabeth Crowley’s candidacy in the special all-party election on June 3. But the June 3 election is not a Democratic primary but rather a special election in which candidates from any party can compete, giving an independent Democrat like Charlie Ober a better chance to compete than he would have in a closed Democratic primary. Read more…

While the Clinton and Obama drama gets lots of ink and airtime, Republican Ron Paul and his supporters are still working as if the GOP does not have a presumptive nominee. In March Paul confessed that a “victory in the conventional political sense is not available in the presidential race” but he never dropped out officially. Paul’s supporters have been engaged in local Republican committee work across the country to increase his share of delegates. Sure Paul is never going to get the nomination, but the ultimate goal is make sure the Republican platform has a few planks pleasing to Paul and his ilk. And what issues does Paul want the GOP to take up? “Drastically reduc[ing] the federal government by abolishing the Federal Reserve, ending the Iraq war immediately and withdrawing U.S. troops from abroad.“

While this has a sense of the quixotic, remember these two things. While he is an also ran, Paul has amassed a nice little war chest (approximately $34 million) to pay the bills for such an effort. Lastly while John McCain has the Republican ring, he has not been burning it up in the last few primaries. In North Carolina McCain got 74 percent of the vote, Mike Huckabee 12 and Paul 7 (the rest of the vote went to Alan Keyes and that great candidate “No Preference”). Sure the GOP is lining up behind the Arizona senator but a sizable minority is not happy and it looks like Paul is going use that to his advantage.

John & Elizabeth Edwards

Senator Barack Obama will be the Democratic presidential nominee, John Edwards told Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation” on CBS this morning. “The problem is, I think, you can no longer make a compelling case for the math,” the former senator from North Carolina and two-time contender for the Democratic presidential candidate said on the Sunday morning talk show.

While not endorsing Barack Obama or calling for Hillary Clinton to withdraw from the race, Edwards did warn Clinton about running a destructive campaign in the last leg of the primary season, which includes six primaries, from West Virginia to Puerto Rico.

“I think the one thing that she has to be careful about - and she doesn’t need my advice, she knows this full well - is that, if she makes the case for herself, which she’s completely entitled to do, she has to be really careful that she’s not damaging our prospects, the Democratic Party, and our cause, for the fall,” Edwards said.

The North Carolinian made the comments in response to Schieffer’s question to Edwards asking him what he thought of Clinton’s controversial comments in a recent interview with USA Today, in which she said, “There was just an AP article posted that found how Senator Obama’s support among working — hard-working Americans, white Americans is weakening again, and how the, you know, whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

Eliot Spitzer, Vito Fossella, Bill Clinton. The Staten Island Advance asks: what do these three men have in common…?

Hypocrisy, thy name is Vito. Fossella, that is. U.S. Rep. Vito Fossella (R-NY) is a right-wing Republican who represents Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn in the House.

Fossella opposes the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ and the Family and Medical Leave Act as well as same-sex marriage and earned a zero percent rating on the HRC legislative scorecard.

A self-appointed champion of ‘family values ,’ the Congressman has never extended those family values to include his an openly lesbian sister, who has marched in Staten Island’s pride parade with her partner. But brother Vito has never publicly acknowledged his sister or her partner. “He even shuns his gay sister, Victoria Fossella, refusing to go to family events if she and her partner attend, a source close to the family said,” the Daily News has reported. Fossella voted for the federal marriage amendment that would condemn one of his own family members to permanent second-class citizenship.

But the self-righteous Fossella now finds himself in a career-ending scandal of his own making. After being arrested on drunk driving charges in Virginia last week, Fossella was forced to acknowledge on Thursday that he had fathered a child with a mistress in the context of a long-standing extra-marital affair — which makes for a total of two crimes, since adultery is technically still a crime in the Old Dominion. Read more…