Argh, wizards behind the curtain, away! by Logical Premise
(statist)
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Three things stand out in this Super Tuesday race.
1) CNN and most of the MSM are HORRIBLE at calling who's in front. Yesterday, it was "Obama is winning!" Then last night, it was "Ah, Hillary pulls in front!" And now this morning, it's "Oops, Obama actually has more delegates, sorry". I've pretty much started to ignore their Dewey-Wins mentality, since if they change up who seems to be winning two or three times that leads to more "headlines", Google hits, and chance for their empty-headed "commentators" to display their inability to understand the election mechanics.
2) It's pretty clear that certain messages are being pushed on the Republican side. There is a very strong effort to talk about percentages and not the hard numbers. The reality is that McCain gained a simply crushing amount of power yesterday by obliterating every other candiate in New York, picking up it's 101 delegates -- all of which are pledged, by the way. There really isn't a lot of chance for the other Republican candidates to recover.
3) On the Democratic side, this is rapidly turning into a tightly wound slugfest, but one thing stands out. In California, a LOT of women voted Clinton over Obama. Obama works best with young voters, blacks, and middle aged white males. Clinton wins best with older voters, Hispanics, and females. This means that the race can and will seesaw crazily back and forth and no one can predict how it will come out.
A brokered convention is highly unlikely for Democrats. If Edwards's few delegates end up with Obama (likely), then the edge in delegates will be with Obama. Amusingly, a large percentage of Clinton's delegates are not pledged, and may end up going Obama's way anyway.
The Republican convention is a total disaster right now, with the Herr Furher the Fascist Thug in first place, followed distantly by Mr. Huckabee, Mr. Romney, and Dr. Paul. Unfortunately, the chances are high that if anything gets brokered it will be Romney selling out to McCain.
It's also worth noting that Huckabee and Paul have good secondary values in many states (LOTS of second and third place finishes), but unfortunately most of those states are winner take all. Consider Montana. Paul and McCain did very well,but not well enough to grab delegates -- all 25 go to Romney.
There is a lot of backroom dealing likely to occur, and there may have already been backroom deals going on. A Huckabee/Romney ticket would provide a challenge to "Bomb Iran" McCain, but not much else seems to preclude him being the Republican nominee.
So, in a matchup between Obama and that ancient warmonger, who would win? Obama. I had a dyed-in-the-wool Texan Republican tell me he'd rather vote for Hillary than McCain, when it came down to it. So would I. (Granted, that isn't saying much....)
It will be fascinating to look at the process that transpires during the next big spate of primaries. I expect Romney to buckle and Huckabee to hold out until his money gives out. We'll have to wait and see.
Look on the bright side...at least Ghouliani is crushed. 9/11, 9/11.
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