Surveying the Results on a Saturday Night...

Saturday, February 09, 2008

So tonight doesn't have the drama of Super Tuesday. Heck, Thursday was pretty dramatic as well. But with four states voting tonight, we have an interesting development on the Democratic side.

First, let's get the Republicans out of the way. Mike Huckabee continues to win the states he should, and there's at least one nice victory for him - the Kansas caucuses by a wide margin (60 percent to McCain's 24 percent), and we're still waiting for results in Washington and Louisiana.

Will this change much? Probably not, as Huckabee would need to pretty much sweep every state from here on out to deny McCain the nomination. But, as someone told me at CPAC, Huckabee couldn't drop out immediately after Romney, as it would suggest his whole purpose in the campaign had been to stop Romney. But the 500-vote delegate margin is clear, and Huckabee can't make it all up in the South. Tuesday's primary in Virginia should be a key test for Huckabee; if he doesn't take that state, I suspect the calls of, "it's been a nice run, but it's time to hang 'em up" will grow louder.

But on the Democratic side, Obama has swept the Nebraska caucuses, Louisiana, Washington state, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Team Hillary put out their spin a little after 6 p.m.:

Tonight there are contests in three states that the Obama campaign has long predicted they would win by large margins. According to a spreadsheet that was obtained by Bloomberg News, the Obama campaign predicted big victories in Washington State, Nebraska and Louisiana.

The Obama campaign has dramatically outspent our campaign in these three states, saturating the airwaves with 30 and 60 second ads. The Obama campaign has spent $300,000 more in Louisiana on television ads, $190,000 more in Nebraska and $175,000 more in Washington.

Although the next several states that hold nominating contests this month are more favorable to the Obama campaign, we will continue to compete in them and hope to secure as many delegates as we can before the race turns to Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania.

In other words, "we didn't try that hard, and these states don't matter that much."

The damage to Hillary's chances will be partially mitigated by the proportional allocation of delegates. But if Obama sweeps the Potomac Primary states on Tuesday, I wonder if we see a momentum shift in his direction, and whether he starts to pull away a bit...

02/09 10:24 PM Share