John McCain Stands At The Top. (Finally) I'll See You All In Pennsylvania

McCain Wraps Up The Nomination

Senator John McCain locked up the Republican nomination for president Tuesday night with wins in all four contests: Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas, and Vermont. All by very large margins, which put him over the top of the 1191 delegate thresh hold. Now McCain can rest and relax for a little bit while he watches the Democrats destroy themselves.

McCain's smallest victory over former Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee was 51%-38% in Texas. He was dominant in every state and because of all of this we were not surprised to see Huckabee bow out gracefully last night.

"The apostle Paul wrote that, I fought the good fight; I've finished the race; and I've kept the faith. And I believe tonight that one of the things that we will be able to say is not only that we fought the good fight and finished the race; we'd like to have finished it first, but we stayed in until the race was over."

Huckabee gave a strong conservative speech; similar to the one Mitt Romney gave at CPAC last month when he bowed out of the race. Huckabee is setting himself up for a run later, 2012, or a TV gig. He was by far the most interesting candidate, the funniest and the easiest to listen to.


"Pennsylvania Is The New Iowa"

Those words coming from Clinton spokesman Doug Hattaway. Senator Hillary Clinton had a great evening last night; she won Ohio (and it wasn't that close) Rhode Island where she was expected to roll and Texas by 4 points. These victories for Clinton make the campaign a whole new ballgame. Clinton praised the people of Ohio and America in her victory speech.

"Ohio has written a new chapter in the history of this campaign, and we're just getting started. More and more people have joined this campaign, and millions of Americans haven't spoken yet. In states like Pennsylvania and so many others, people are watching this historic campaign, and they want their turn to help make history. They want their voices to count, and they should. They should be heard. So, please, join us in this campaign."

The Clinton Camp is now looking forward to the upcoming contests in Wyoming, Mississippi, and most importantly Pennsylvania (The Keystone State, home of WaWa, Cheesesteaks, and the Roethlisberger... yea its a fat state, er Commonwealth) They are saying that this is now a horse of a different color. As of right now it is still unclear how many delegates behind Clinton still is but we do know she is at least a little bit closer to catching Obama. One thing that still has yet to be decided is the caucus in Texas, which, as of this moment with 36% of precincts reporting Obama holds a slight edge over Clinton 52%-48%. At the end of the day Obama could still win the most delegates in Texas because of the two-step system.

Senator Obama gave another very nice speech in San Antonio, he thanked the people of Vermont who voted overwhelmingly for him (60%-38%) and he talked right at some of the tactics the Clinton Campaign and some conservatives had used in the recent weeks.

"If I am the nominee of this party, I will not allow us to be distracted by the same politics that seeks to divide us with false charges and meaningless labels. In this campaign, we will not stand for the politics that uses religion as a wedge and patriotism as a bludgeon. San Antonio, I owe what I am to this country, this country that I love. And I will never forget it."

The Obama camp is playing the math game with the media, and themselves. They are quick to point out that Clinton would need to win something like 62% of the rest of the delegates in the last 12 states in order to catch Obama in the delegate lead. I think it is safe to say that neither candidate will receive that much of the vote in any race. So what will it come down to?

SUPERDELEGATES. I thought these dudes were going to be out of the picture but Obama just could not close the door on Clinton. Now it appears this campaign will go on until at least April 22nd, when PA votes but I would not be surprised if crazy things happen and Michigan and Florida vote AGAIN and we are all waiting around on June 3rd to see who Puerto Rico picks.

If you are a Democrat there are some things that should concern you:

1. The longer this lasts; the better it is for the Republicans.
2. Longevity leads to likeliness that a divide in the party is created.
3. Superdelegates are the spurn of society, if it takes Superdelegates to decide the nomination at the Democratic Convention in Denver in late August, we could see the craziest scene in politics since the '72 DNC convention floor.... Which interestingly enough is when the idea of Superdelegates was created, but it wasn't used until the mid-80s.

Can Hillary Pull This Off?

Some have said this campaign was over, some have called for Senator Hillary Clinton to do the "honorable" thing and drop out, and some (myself) have said that she can do whatever she wants but once she gets beaten in Texas and Ohio she needs to go. Well well well we need to hold on just a minute. Last week I wrote about Senator Barack Obama catching up to Hillary in the polls in Texas and closing the gap considerably in Ohio. Once I saw Obama catching up I figured he would just blow right past her but it appears that Hillary is hangin tough, the last 3 polls in Ohio have it played out like this: Obama by 2, Clinton by 12, Clinton by 6. So after Obama closed the gap to 4 or 5 and even took the lead in one poll Clinton appears to be surviving in Ohio. In Texas it looks like we will have a toss-up. Here are the last 5 polls from Texas: Clinton by 4, Obama by 4, Obama by 3, Obama by 1, TIED, Obama by 3. So Obama has the slightest of leads but when a poll is within 3 or 4 points it is usually inside the margin of error basically making it a coin flip. If you had a gun to my head I would tell you that Clinton will hold on in Ohio and beat Obama 52-48 or something like that, as for Texas it gets a little bit more complicated for a multitude of reasons.

1) Early Voting: As of the day of the Wisconsin Primary, February 19th, the voters in Texas have been able to in vote early instead of voting on their specific day, they were allowed to do this until the 29th. Most experts think that the early voters will be leaning towards Obama because they also saw a lot of new voter registration indicating younger people were the ones going to the polls.

2) Texas-Two Step: Texas has a wacky system of allocating delegates, they have both a primary and a caucus on the same day, the primary runs from 7-7 during the day then everyone goes to caucus later in the evening, here’s a little piece from the New York Daily News explaining the intricacies

Texas begins its voting with a normal primary to determine who wins slightly more than half of the state's 228 delegates. Then it follows with a caucus to allot the remaining delegates.
Only people who voted in the primary are allowed to participate in the caucus.

Now we know that Barack has taken every caucus state, aside from Nevada, most of them he won very easily so you would assume that Obama might do well there but, Hillary has stayed close to Obama in Texas once he took a slight lead in the polls so that could still fall either way. If I had to make a prediction about Texas I would say that Obama wins, just slightly but he wins which would mean they two split the big states that vote tomorrow, what is interesting is that it looks like they will split the other two that vote on March 4th, Vermont and Rhode Island. Obama looks like he will take Vermont in a landslide, last poll there had Obama with a 24-point lead, the same is true in Rhode Island for Hillary, she has a 9-point lead in that state.

So here is the question the Clinton camp will be asking themselves tomorrow and into Wednesday: Can we stay in the race if we only win of the big ones? Can we stay in the race if we only win one big one by 4 points and basically gain 0 delegates on Obama, who is up by around 100-150 depending on whose math you use. After seeing those fundraising numbers from February where Hillary made $35 Million, she would have the money to carry-on to Pennsylvania on April 22nd.

The problem for the Clinton camp is that they will be under a lot of pressure to drop out if they do not win BOTH Texas and Ohio. That pressure will come from the public and possibly the DNC who will not want to drag their race on longer than it has to, especially because it is possible for Senator John McCain to officially wrap up his nomination tomorrow. Aside from the DNC it will be hard for Clinton to fight all the momentum Obama has, because even if she wins Ohio by 4 you have to remember that 2 or 3 weeks ago Clinton was up 21! And Obama only had 3 weeks to campaign there; in Pennsylvania he will have 6 or 7 weeks. And on top of that Hillary has had a net Super delegate loss of something like 5 or 6 since Super Tuesday compared to Obama who has had a net gain of almost 30. So the Super delegates are also riding Obama's momentum.

Hillary's one shot is to surprise everyone in Texas and do very well in the caucus and steal it from Obama, if she can do that I believe she will already have Ohio and then we will travel on.

4 More Days, McCain Already Running A General Election Campaign

4 More Days

We are just 4 days away from "Mini-Tuesday", "Super Tuesday-2", or whatever the cable news channels will come up with over the weekend. As it stands right now Senator Barack Obama seems to have caught up to Senator Hillary Clinton in both of the big states that go to the polls on Tuesday: Texas and Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont are also set to vote on Tuesday. As you may or may not remember I predicted last week that Obama's momentum would carry him to leads in the polls in Texas by mid-week and would pull him even to Hillary by the weekend in Ohio, well my friends, I was right on.

In the most recent poll in Ohio Obama is only 2 points away from Clinton and only 5 away in the previous few, Clinton was up by an astounding 21 points as late as February 12th. In Texas things look even more morbid for the Clinton Campaign. Over the last 6 polls taken in the Lone Star State over this last week Clinton only leads in one of those polls, by 4%, while Obama leads in 4 of those polls, 3 by 4%, but the most recent poll had Obama with a 6 % lead.

Yesterday however, Clinton got a bit of good news, her campaign announced that she had raised $35 Million dollars in the month of February. That is a monster number of money raised, earlier in the campaign Obama raised $36 Million in January setting the record for most money raised in a month. Upon hearing this news the Obama Campaign was quick to point out that they had raised "considerably more" than Clinton. Some people close to the campaign are putting out numbers like $50 or $60 Million for Obama in February, and I'm guessing both will try to capitalize on the extra day in this month.

All of this makes me thing about former Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards who famously said on the eve of the 1983 election "The only way I can lose this election is if I'm caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy" and no matter whether you find that funny or distasteful I have a feeling that is what it is like for Obama as of this moment, Clinton has been unable to rattle him at all. She had 14 days of no one voting, the longest period with out a vote since this whole thing got started, and forever in politics time I might add and she could not stop his momentum. She had 2 debates and could do nothing to keep him from continuing on his way. People are starting to try to figure out what it will take for Clinton to stay in this race; does she need to win both of the big states Texas and Ohio? Does she only have to win one of them? Can she get away with just taking Rhode Island? (Obama is expected to take Vermont by a considerable margin) These are not the questions you want to be fielding from the media. And the one good news Clinton receives, 35 MILLION DOLLARS!!! That is so much money, a great haul by all accounts and what happens? Obama pulls in 50, possibly 60? You have to feel bad for Hillary right now. John McCain doesn't even talk about her now; he exclusively spars with Obama now.

McCain and Obama Spar About Iraq

Over the course of this week, starting on Tuesday when Barack Obama was asked a hypothetical during the Ohio Debate whether he would go back (after withdrawing) into Iraq if Al-Qaeda was trying to set up a base, Obama answered yes, he would want to protect American interests. The next day Senator John McCain, the de-facto GOP presidential nominee, grilled Obama about the fact that Al-Qaeda is already in Iraq.

It's called Al-Qaeda in Iraq

McCain said this as he painted Obama as naive and a neophyte. Obama responded by saying that there was no Al-Qaeda in Iraq until we invaded Iraq, Obama tied McCain with President Bush and tried to show McCain as the old school and himself as the new school. CNN put together a little piece of their responses.

Revisiting Hillary Dropping Out; Debate Tonight!

After I posted my prediction about Senator Hillary Clinton dropping by March 5th on Friday several journalists in the media have started to call for the same thing, only sooner. Among others, Bob Novak of The Chicago Sun-Times and Newsweek's Jonathan Alter have come out with columns stating that Hillary would be better off conceding to Obama to keep her political pedigree intact as she looks forward to the 2012 or 2016 presidential races. Here is an excerpt from Alter's piece.

Withdrawing would be stupid if Hillary had a reasonable chance to win the nomination, but she doesn't. To win, she would have to do more than reverse the tide in Texas and Ohio, where polls show Obama already even or closing fast. She would have to hold off his surge, then establish her own powerful momentum within three or four days. Without a victory of 20 points or more in both states, the delegate math is forbidding. In Pennsylvania, which votes on April 22, the Clinton campaign did not even file full delegate slates. That's how sure they were of putting Obama away on Super Tuesday.

Hillary is looking at an uphill battle. Both ways. In the snow. With out her shoes. Carrying Bill on her back. Another problem Clinton seems to be facing now, at least in the eyes of public (and pundit) opinion is that the Republican party, though as of right now still divided on the McCain nomination, would rally the troops to defeat Clinton who they see as a "socialist" and cut right out of her husbands mold. Here is a part of the Novak column.

Clinton's burden is not only Obama's charisma but also McCain's resurrection. Some of the same Democrats who short months ago were heralding her as the ''perfect'' candidate now call her a sure loser against McCain, saying she would do the party a favor by just leaving.

Now with all of this said, we have been wrong before. Senator Barack Obama had leads up to 12 points the day before the New Hampshire Primary and everyone and their mother wrote off Hillary who surprised us all with a 2 point win. Hillary still has a chance and she needs to start tonight, which leads into the 2nd part of this post: The Debate.

Last Debate Before March 4th

Tonight in Cleveland Senator's Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama square off for their final debate before the primaries on March 4th in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Vermont (who knew about the last 2?). We have seen Hillary go after Obama in several ways over the last 5 or 6 days. 1st she tried to kill him with kindness at the debate, hoping that showing a softer side of herself would help ingratiate her with the voters like her crying moment did in New Hampshire. Then on Saturday we saw the furious Hillary who waved around 2 fliers the Obama Campaign released in Ohio about her support of NAFTA and her Health Care program. Her latest incarnation appeared on Monday where she oozed with sarcasm as she mocked Obama's uplifting style. (video below)



So the question becomes: how does she go after Obama tonight? It was clear that in Texas her attempt to zing Obama failed and her attempt to act soft made it appear she wanted to retreat. I expect Hillary to go hard after Obama his experience, that is the one issue where Clinton kills him even though she hasn't been able to make that stick so far in the campaign, she needs to paint him as inexperience and unable to be able to handle the work load of the president. I also expect a nice wonky 15 minute discussion on the differences of their health care packages, which I personally don’t want to hear ever again, every debate they talk about the same things, it would be nice for MSNBC to frame this debate in separate terms. One thing to look out for is the mentioning of Tony Rezko, a land dealer is going to court soon on corruption charges and a person who Obama had purchased land at one point. Rezko has donated to Obama's campaigns for senator as well as his run for president, he says that he has donated all the money he has received from Rezko to a number of charities. Rezko goes on trial March 3rd, a day before the primaries. Just something to look out for.