More Elections, More Landslides

Four more states were in play today, three for each party (you do the math). Following in the tradition of Super Tuesday we remarked upon the other night, all the Democratic races are landslides--this time, though, they're all landslides for Obama. In the Nebraska and Washington caucuses, a format that's usually worked well for Obama, he's defeating Hillary by a more than two-to-one margin. In the Louisiana primary, he's up by twenty-one points with 99 percent of precincts reporting. These were all expected to be strong contests from Obama, so there's not much of a surprise here (although those margins are awfully big). But the big question is how this translates to Obama's momentum. He's also expected to do well in Tuesday's Potomac primary of Maryland, Virginia, and DC, but will he do better after today's performance? And if so, will it continue building into March's races in Ohio and Texas? Right now, Hillary's expected to do better on those battlegrounds, but will all this make Obama more competitive? Obama's got to be careful that he doesn't lose at the expectations game. For the last little while, the buzz has all been surrounding him, but it's still completely a two-person race. Realistically, there's no reason to think that he should be putting her away, but the attention's he's been getting perhaps suggests that he will any second. If the race remains competitive for too long, some of his supporters just might start getting impatient.

On the Republican side of the ledger, there were a couple of surprises today. With Romney out of the race, John McCain has seemed to be the presumptive nominee, but voters put a big warning sign on that, awarding one caucus and one primary to Mike Huckabee. Now that there's no one Huckabee has to share conservatives with, are they lining up behind the former Arkansas governor? He took out McCain by 60 to 24 percent in Kansas and squeaked by in Louisiana. With most of the votes counted in the Washington caucus, he's running only two points behind McCain (with Ron Paul running only three points further behind Huckabee). There's an awfully lot of ground Huckabee would have to make up to become actually competitive, but if Huckabee did seem to be taking a lot of delegates away from McCain, would that cause buyer's remorse among the Republican powers that be? Perhaps even less has been decided than we realize.