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.
