One last note about Ohio (ok, and Texas too)

There’s even a chance that Hillary could win the state but actually lose in the delegate count similar to what happened in the Nevada caucuses. Of the Buckeye State’s 141 delegates at stake, 92 of them are apportioned by congressional districts in a way that favors Obama. You can get a pretty nice round up of the daunting mathematics she faces in trying to gain ground here.

Also, the “Texas Two-Step” which is what the Obama campaign has been calling the Texas primary-caucus system definitely seems to be in favor of Obama since he is undefeated in caucuses this year.

There have been several stories that have gone under the radar recently of the Hillary campaign’s poor management of delegate counting and complete ignorance of the individual states’ primary systems. It would be cruelly or perhaps laughably (depending on where you sit) ironic if the candidate who has been running on experience and competence ended up losing because her campaign couldn’t master something that you could find out from any high school civics class.

The streak ends tomorrow

Ok, so I had a great February. No, I don’t mean me personally. After all, the weather sucked, I probably gained like 5 more pounds and I am pretty sure that my two front car tires, which were already as bald as I am, now have nails in them and need to be replaced. C’mon surplus!

Seriously, of all the months they could have added an extra day to, February woudn’t have been my choice. Not by a long shot.

But, as far as the democratic primary prediction game goes, I was en fuego all month. Really, I couldn’t be stopped. Hell, I couldn’t even be contained and the only thing better than being so right was watching Hillary Clinton suffer defeat after defeat while trying to pretend that it wasn’t happening. Hmmmm, who does that reming me of? Hint: His name rhymes with Porge Mush.

And since I am so proud of my February record, lets recap the smackdown I laid out at the begining of last month:

February 9
Louisiana primary (Obama, Huckabee) CHECK
Washington caucuses (Obama, McCain) CHECK
Nebraska caucuses – democrats only (Obama) CHECK
Kansas caucuses – republicans only (Huckabee) CHECK

February 10
Maine caucuses – democrats only (Obama) CHECK

February 12
Maryland primary (Obama, McCain) CHECK
Virginia primary (Obama, McCain) CHECK
Washington, D.C. primary (Obama, McCain) CHECK

February 19
Wisconsin primary (Obama, McCain) CHECK
Hawaii caucuses – democrats only (Obama) CHECK

Unfortunately, it all comes to an end tomorrow and I have to admit that it looks like I am going to tank this one big time. Let’s look at how wrong I am going to be:

March 4
Ohio primary (Obama, McCain)
Rhode Island primary (Clinton, McCain)
Texas primary (Clinton, Huckabee)
Vermont primary (Clinton)

Not only does just about every poll but Zogby (woooooorrrrrrrthlesssss!!!!) disagree with me on just about every state for the democrats except Rhode Island, they also say that, after tomorrow, the only people who will be seeing Mike Huckabee are the ones laying their hands on their tv set so he can cure their gout.

While I am really tempted to make updated predictions for March 4th (Obama wins big in Texas!!! – ok, couldn’t resist) frankly, it wouldn’t be sporting. However, I will make one big prediction that will be right no matter what comes from the voters tomorrow …

it ain’t over yet.

Over the past two weeks, Hillary has been able to turn a Rudy Guilian-like ad campaign and an Obama misstep on NAFTA and turn it into real results. Add to that a cool $35 million raised by her campaign in February and it all adds up to Pennsylvania meaning something. I predict tomorrow HRC will finally congratulate Obama on a win after having won one of her own – finally. I also think that she will announce a full out effort to make Pennsylvania the final battleground because of its proximity to Ohio and the almost embarassing (and possibly election-fraud inducing) love that Pennsylvania’s governor has for her.

If Hillary can turn a win in Ohio into a win in Pennsylvania, she will then try to erase her delegate deficit by getting Florida and Michigan seated. Finally, she’ll ask the super delegates to do the rest. It’s a scenario that I don’t even find improbable much less impossible anymore. An argument that she essentially ‘won’ all of the battle ground states (Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio) and the utter disdain that Hillary voters have for Obama supporters might convince party leaders that they have a better chance with her at the top of the ticket in November.

These are the democrats after all. They never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Especially when it’s an opportunity to win the presidency and lock-up the party loyaly of the next generation of voters.

Super Duper Tuesday Predictions – The Reckoning!

Update 2:41PM CST
Ok so I was a day early on Romney and perhaps 2 days late on Huckabee? We will see but still you have to admit 1 out of two and the week isn’t even over yet.  By the way, I would argue that the real reason Romney quit is that he didn’t want to throw anymore of his money down the rat hole.

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Well folks, Super Duper Tuesday came and went and what did it tell us besides the fact that ‘the fool’ in “a fool and his money are soon parted” is Mitt Romney? Since I went out on a limb and made a few predictions prior to the races, I figure I ought to stand up and see if any of them panned out as I expected.

Turn out will be extremely high for the democrats and average to low for the republicans.
Turn out was high everywhere. Apparently the republicans don’t really care if they hate all their choices, they’re still gonna vote.

The republican race for the nomination is d-o-n-e
Oh and it is. Huckabee is not a viable national candidate and his successes do nothing but steal votes from Romney who nobody is in love with anyway. The money is running out for both of them and the math only gets harder from here.

Starting Wednesday, every Republican becomes the biggest Hillary supporter you’ve ever seen
Secretly they are but you are not going ot hear about it until the GOP gets settled. Let’s see about this one on March 5th.

Huckabee is out on Wednesday, Romney is gone by Friday
Huckabee winning so many southern states surprised me. I thought that, if he couldn’t win South Carolina, he couldn’t win anywhere. Still he’s not a viable national candidate and sooner or later he will run out of states where people think that the Left Behind series is serious literature (the ones that can read that is).

Romney still may be gone by the end of the week (I am sure his kids are not pleased about him flushing their inheritance away) but he is hoping folks like Rick Santorum and Rush Limbaugh are going to save him. It’s not going to happen Mitt. Save your money for the senate run.

The map will go for Hillary and the the delegates will for Obama
Actually the map and the delegates went for Obama but, with the media so focused on California and with so many results coming in so late, this got missed. Hillary should thank the democratic party for setting up a vote counting scheme so complex that it makes tax law look like the puzzle that helps Ronald get through McDonaldland . Still Obama’s big loss in Massachusetts was a bad sign for him in that he put in a lot of effort, got the endorsement from the Kennedys and still got trounced. It also happened early enough to give the media a good storyline while waitng for Missouri to fall.

Hillary spin: I’m losing in the states that we are not going to win in the general election anyway
Again, since the results were so complex to explain, there really wasn’t a need to spin anything. Just declare victory and keep on going. But, when a candidate is asking for more debates it usually indicates that they feel like they are losing.

Obama spin: I’m losing the states that are guaranteed to us. Oh and did I mention that I am ahead on delegates
Disappointing lack of spin from the Obama camp. This seems to be a prevalent thing this week. Mark Penn is all over the news for Hillary with his ridiculous comments but we aren’t hearing a lot from the Obama campaign.

Obama spin II: Sure I lost California but half the voters voted before they knew who I was
see above. Oh, and he lost Ca worse than he should have and it is a bad sign.

Obama puts Hillary and McCain in bed together on Wednesday morning
Again, put this one off until the first democratic debate after the March 4th primaries.

Edwards endorses Obama (even if he doesn’t)
Bingo was his name o! Obama did better than ever with the kind of white voters that Edwards was winning before he got out.

Here come the lawyers
The Hillary camp continues to put out feelers. Look for this to heat up by the end of February

Finally, Hillary and Obama will both claim victory on Tuesday night (but Obama will have really won)
As I said before, Obama just being in this thing is a win. It has largely gone ignored that this whole front-loaded primary process was designed to give Hillary the nomination by Feb 5th and keep any kind of outside candidate (i.e. Bill Bradley in 2000) from messing her up. It was designed by the head of the DNC, Terry McAuliffe who is now, you guessed it, campaign manager for Hillary Clinton. So the fix was in form the beginning. Now we have made it past the gauntlet and the two are essentially in a tie with Obama having more money and better primaries coming up for the rest of the month.

For those 94 million of you that watched last weekend’s super bowl, perhaps you recognize the “keep it close and win it at the end” strategy that has been helping the underdog beat the favorite for years. Still, the Obama camp had better remember that sometimes the league wants the favorite to win and isn’t above throwing in a couple of questionable calls to make it happen.