John McCain ended his losing streak, Barack Obama kept his winning streak going, Ron Paul and Mitt Romney battled for third. by rtbohan
(libertarian)
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
John McCain remains the front runner for the Republican nomination for President on the basis of delegates won, and yesterday he ended his losing streak with wins in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia. But he does not yet have a majority of the delegates to the convention, and there are battles yet to be fought..
Barack Obama continued his string of victories over Hillaty Clinton by winning the two states and the District convincingly, but the larger states of Texas and Ohio are coming up, and it is there that the Clinton campaign intends to stop the bleeding.
The Republican Party establishment and the press have already annointed Senator McCain as the leader.of the party. With the coalition on which the party's success was built coming apart, the apparent appeal of McCain to the independent voters and some Democrats made him attractive. But the party base has shown no desire to embrace him as the new leader, and he has lost all the major primaries since the proclamation of the certainty of his nomination. Today Senator McCain has ended the losing streak, butshown no evidence of his ability to be competitive in thee election. Governor Huckabee remains in the race and has shown signs of remaining there until the convention. Mitt Romney and Ron Paul have both limited their campaigns, but are continuing to attract some voters and some delegates.
Senator McCain won in Virginia, the District of Columbia and Maryland today, with good margins against Governor Huckabee to keep himself in line for the nomination. But he did not collect enough votes to show him to be the choice of the rank and file of the party. In Virginia, he beat Huckabee 241,542 (50.9) to 188,461 (40%.). Ron Paul received 4.8% and Romney 3.4% . In the District of Columbia, he beat Huckabee by 68% to 16%, and in Maryland he won be a margin of 16 points , 55%to 39%. Paul and Romney combined for 8% of the vote in the District, 12% of the vote in Maryland, with Paul finishing third in the District and fourth in Maryland. In neither of these places did the vote in the Republican primary even approach the vote in the Democratic primary.
So John McCain has a one day winning streak of his own and has picked up a few pledged delegates, which will bring him closer to a majority. But these are states which he will not win in the fall. The contest now moves ito states he needs to win to be elected, but these are states with larger groups of consrervative voters, who will tr;y to prevent him from being the nominee. There will probably be no brokered convention, but the Huckabee, Romney and Paul delegates will be active in trying to move the party and its candidate back toward a more conventional version of Republicanism.
Even though Senator Obama had taken a small lead in the number of Pledged delegates, the liberal sector of the press is not willing to name him as the leading candidate, and seems to be actively working against him. Don Baltz of the Washington Post began yesterday with a story saying no matter what happened in the Potomac Primary, or the other upcoming contests, Obama would never be regarded as the leading candidate untiil Senator Clinton " steps aside". The New York Times ran a story emphasizing that Obama, despite his popularity with white Democratic voters is still the BLACK CANDIDATE for President. Other writers miutered darkly about "The Bradley Effect".
The Clinton campaign said that there is "still a lot of dirt about Obama which has not come out" and expressed fear that the Republicans would use it in the fall. This means that the Clinton campaign is going to use whatever they think they have now, indirectly (as in "I cannot prove he takes bribes, but....". This is the method they used in spreading the "Obama is a Muslim" and "Obama was a drug dealer" stories earlier.
But yesterday, none of that mattered as Obama swept to one sided victories in Virginia, Maryland and D.C. Obama beat Clinton by over 200,000 votes in Virginia, got 75% of the voters in D.C. and won Maryland 459,072 to 273,828, Senator Clinton also lost another key member of her campaign staff when Deputy Campaign Manager Mike Henry resigned.
Senator Clinton did not wait until the end of the Potomac campaign to watch the outcome. She was already in Ohio, telling her supporters that their state is a better cross section of the American population and she intends to win Ohio and Teas in the coming roung of contests.
And so the contest for the Democratic nomination will continue until the convention, and it is certainly going to get messier if Clinton's position worsens. The contest is going to the convention floor.
The Democratic Party is in as dangerous a position as the Republicans. Both face splintering their voting base with the election coming up. I would say that the time would be ripe for an independent candidacy, but I see little chance of that happening. If Clinton wins the nomination there is a real risk that black voters will stay home in November. If Obama eventually forces Clinton to "step aside" I doubt that she will do it gracefull and the Clintonistas may well run a deliberate campaign to defeat Obama.
The Clintons and their supporters, everyone knows from past experience, are not only arrogant, but vindictive.
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Here are my box scores from CNN and the Green Papers.
A GOP candidate needs 1,191 delegate to clinch the nomination. CNN says that McCain now has 827, so he needs 364 to go.
By preventing McCain from getting these, there can be a floor fight at the convention.  If the Ron Paul Revolutionaries want their candidate to have a chance, it has to be a concerted "Stop McCain" effort. They might even have to work with the (gulp) Huckabee folks to bring this about. He needs the money and the network.Â
The remaining states have 822 delegates. Huckabee has 217 delegates so far. Even if he got all remaining 822, he's short 154.
Romney has 286. He could make a deal with his supporters to give their votes to Huckabee. Some of them will anyway. They just don't like McCain. Neither do I. They may vote for "no one" as a protest. In Washington State, Romney still got 16% of the vote. That's loyalty.
