At 2 a.m. this morning, measure 98, another effort by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association to diminish California, was losing – with nearly two million NO votes and about 1.2 million YES votes. If it had won, it would have ended rent control in 100 California cities.

99, the counter measure, was winning by almost the same margin — two million YES votes vs. 1.2 million NO votes.

In the 23rd Senate District, which includes Santa Monica, Fran Parley had 67 percent of the vote, and Lloyd Levine had 33 percent. Both are Democrats.

In the County Supervisor race, Assemblyman Mark Ridley Thomas was leading L.A. City Councilman Bernard Parks by about 6,000 votes, so a fall run-off is probably inevitable.

And Senator Barack Obama won the Montana primary, as well as the votes of nearly a dozen Democratic super-delegates yesterday, to give him more than enough votes to make him the presumptive Democratic candidate for President. So it was that 150 years after the Civil War and 47 years after the Voting Rights Act, an African American became the Presidential candidate of a major party. It’s a first. It’s historic. It’s extraordinarily moving. And it’s proof that, despite George Bush’s best efforts, the founding fathers’ promises may still be achieved.

Obama was gracious and modest in victory, but Hillary Clinton, who won the South Dakota primary yesterday, is apparently not ready ro concede and is still campaigning,

Not incidentally, L.A Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who had been a Clinton supporter, was among the super-delegates who said yesterday that they would vote for Obama.