Gridiron Politics

So today is probably Huckabee’s last stand. There’s primaries in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia today, and from the polls it looks like Obama will make it an 8-0 streak on Hillary while McCain will put down the Huckabee insurgency in all three states. Now, Huckabee could keep running the race, but I don’t think he will. Why? Well, this is his last chance for big gains this month. Virginia has just the sort of conservative voters that flock to his message and to his pastoral roots. He was down 25 points against McCain a week ago, but he’s been surging. One poll I saw yesterday put him 12 points behind McCain. But realistically, he’s still a long shot to win the state. As for Maryland and DC, neither has quite the rural base of Virginia and he’ll almost definitely lose both states.

Why, then, would Huckabee want to quit now? After all, he pulled off two surprising wins against McCain on Saturday, taking down Lousiana and Kansas and almost pulling off Washington as well. Well, because the electoral math is with McCain, and the longer Huckabee stays in the race the more he embarasses McCain by undermining him and the less likely it is that McCain will offer him the vice-presidency. (Sure, Huckabee says he doesn’t want the vice presidency, but that’s what everyone says until the minute the end up taking it.) Huckabee can’t win the presidency unless he can somehow force a deadlock until the convention. And if he wins 0 out of 3 races today, or even if he wins 1 out of 3, the pressure will be on him to drop out. There are only two more primaries this month, Hawaii and Wisconsin, and the base there is much more likely to support Maverick McCain than Holy Huckabee. At that point Huck will be 0 for 6 or 1 for 6 at best in the last six contests, and momentum will be against him. He should get out after today, when he still has momentum in his favor and McCain still has enough worries about challenges from the right that he’ll embrace Huck as his running mate.

On the Democratic side, Obama will sweep the three primaries today. When you add in the Virgin Islands, Maine, Washington, Louisiana and Kansas, the momentum Barack has gained against Hillary since Saturday will be almost unstoppable. Oh, and when he wins in Hawaii and Wisconsin, it will only pile on the pressure. Hillary’s firewall now is Texas or Ohio, but the “concede the small states, save the battle for Florida” strategy didn’t work for Rudy and it probably won’t work for Hillary in Ohio or Texas. Sure, Hillary’s way ahead in the polls in both states, but Obama’s numbers go up whenever he campaigns in a state (unlike Hillary, as people already know about her and her presence is unlikely to sway more peopl eto her side.) If he can win one of the two states it will be over for the Clintons, I think.

One thing that has improved for Hillary since Super Tuesday: Her money problems appear to have disappeared. The day after Super Tuesday, her campaign announced that she was short on cash, that her top staffers would be working for free and that she was making a $5 million loan to her campaign. Her donors opened the floodgates, and two days later she’d raised a cool $7 million. Now, that money probably went a long way, since her staffers were working for free and she already had made a $5 million loan, right? Not so, according to an ABC News story from last friday. It turns out her staffers never had to go without pay, and it looks like there was never any intention for them to do so. It was all just a ruse. And according to other news organizations, Hillary paid back her loan with all the green she’d gained that week. So it was one big stunt. Nice.

I leave you today with this quote from Congressional Quarterly reporter David Corn, as an explanation of why there’s such a rift right now between Hillary and Obama supporters when the two candidates basically believe all the same things and have voted the same way. Basically, it’s the marketing.

Clinton presents herself as the tried-and-tested hard-worker who can get stuff done. Obama offers himself as a transformative figure who can–due to his power to inspire–bring about change. It’s math versus music. And after seven years of George W. Bush–during which the music was awful and the math was bad–Democrats crave both proven competence and uplifting inspiration. — David Corn