Everyone wins, except Romney

Super Tuesday is over, and unless your name is Mitt Romney, you have something to hang your hat on.

If your name is John McCain, you can sleep comfortably knowing that your strongest competition has effectively been knocked out of the race, and you are now the presumptive nominee.

If your name is Hillary Clinton, you know you've won the big 4 states everybody expected you to win: California, New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts.

If your name is Barack Obama, you know you've won more states than Hillary, competed well enough in the big states to earn a near-even share of delegates in those states, and may even pull ahead in the race for pledged delegates to the Democratic convention.

And if your name is Mike Huckabee, you've won enough states in the southern Bible Belt to prove you've got a significant following, can continue your low-budget campaign, and parlay your southern success into a Vice Presidential nomination.

But if your name is Mitt Romney, when you wake up this Ash Wednesday, you'll be waking up to the sound of your wife and kids begging you not to spend any more of the family fortune on a campaign that's looking largely quixotic. There will be a cacophony of calls from the media and from the GOP establishment to pull out of the race and let McCain cruise to the nomination. You needed a surprise comeback win in California to plausibly continue your campaign, and you didn't get it.

Analysts will be dissecting the Super Tuesday results for days to come, but at least for the Democratic candidates, the focus shifts to now-crucial primaries in Katrina-ravaged Louisiana on Saturday, Maine on Sunday, and next Tuesday's contests in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia.

Pundits will score Super Tuesday a draw on the Democratic side, and on delegate count alone it's looking as if it couldn't be closer. NBC's Chuck Todd reports (via Politico) the final Super Tuesday delegate count among Democrats will be 841 for Obama and 837 for Clinton, give or take 10 delegates depending on results in individual Congressional districts in California.

It's clear that Obama surged from irrelevancy to very clear relevancy in most of the Super Tuesday states, but fell just short of building the groundswell of momentum that would have made for a decisive victory. The big question over the next week will be whether the momentum stays with Obama, or whether Clinton's ability to hold him off in the big states becomes the story.

For the Republicans, barring a miracle, the question becomes not if, but when will Romney drop out. The presidency goes more often than not to the party that coalesces first around its nominee, and the pressure on Romney will be huge to let McCain take centre stage.

On the other hand, if the GOP race is, in fact, decided, that could have a financial impact on the party's ability to keep McCain's face in the news. Americans are allowed to make $4,600 in total donations to any political candidate, but half of that cannot be spent until the general election campaign begins — following the Republican National Convention the first weekend in September. McCain can continue to raise money for the primaries, but contributions won't be as easy to get when the primaries are meaningless.

For our part, Westmonster is positively gleeful the Democratic race will roll on, however. This historic race is turning into an endurance contest for Obama and Clinton, and we look forward to finding out what twists and turns appear along the course.

Written by Andrew Levy on 6 Feb 2008 9:19 AM. Permalink