It's the Clean Sweep Gab Fest.

This is the Slate Political Gab Fest.

For Friday, February 15, 2008, I'm Dale Willen.

John is on his sickbed again, but Emily and David are joined by Chris Beam.

On this week's agenda, Obama's

clean sweep, a Democratic delegate debate, and McCain's torture vote. And now, to introduce

the discussion, here's Emily. Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest. I am here in the

D.C. office with David Plotz and Chris Beam.

Who are you?

Oh, I'm Emily the Basel. Thank you. Chris Beam is sitting in for John Dickerson, who is home extremely ill.

John seems to be having a run of illnesses at home.

But we're very glad to have Chris, our trailhead blogger, with us, because we're going to start by talking all about politics.

So, Chris, tell us where we are in the Democratic race post the Potomac primaries.

Yikes. Well, I'm also a little bit sick. Probably not as bad as John.

Excusees, excuses.

But I did, I am well enough to see what happened this week. It looks like after February 5th,

Obama's made pretty much a clean sweep of all the states that happened since. On Saturday,

he took four states plus, I'm sorry, over the weekend he took four states plus U.S. Virgin Islands,

much coveted. Then on Tuesday, he took the Potomac Primary. And so right now,

at least if you're myopic about it, it looks like he has a devastating lead. If you look at the delegate count, no one can really agree on what exactly it is, but he appears to be leading

Clinton by at least 100 pledged delegates.

Whether that means he's winning or not is debatable because what's coming up is Ohio and Texas

...