I’m not going to say much about the Republican results. To be honest, I don’t really care too much who they nominate, it’s not like they will be any different than the same old garbage which has inhabited the White House over the course of my life. It is suprising that McCain has come back from the dead and now it looks like, unless he really screws up, he will get the nomination of their Party. So good for him, bad for the social conservatives. Too bad, so sad, they lose after just a few short bright happy years, and they get sent back to the hole in the ground from whence they were dragged. Huckabee is in a position to become a VP candidate, Romney may as well hang it up.

As for the Dems, this is where the race is interesting: Obama and Clinton basically split the votes, with Clinton grabbing California, New York, Jersey, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Arizona, while Obama got Illinois, Georgia, Delaware, Alabama, Missouri, Minnesota, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, NoDak, Connecticut, Idaho, and a mighty win in Alaska. New Mexico is still out, as usual (for some reason the people in that state like to turn in their results a week after the fact, but it is literally WAY too close to call: at the time of this post, there are precisely 71 votes separating Obama from his next nearest challenger, Clinton, though Edwards got 2000 votes…)

So what does it all mean? Well, let me give you my semi-expert analysis: First, depending on who you look at, you tend to get different numbers. It would appear that, of the three cable news networks’ websites, CNN and Fox track fairly close, while MSNBC has some wacky numbers and it’s not entirely clear where these numbers come from. For example, they report Minnesota as being like 83% complete, while the others report Minnesota as being 98% complete. MSNBC reports that Obama actually got 6 less delegates in Missouri than Clinton did, while the other two site have Obama tied with Clinton. Also, in California, MSNBC reports that Clinton has 66 delegates to Obama’s zero, while the other two sites have them splitting that number, with Clinton getting roughly 1.5 to Obama’s one. But all three of their sets of numbers only accounts for a portion of the total number of delegates up for grabs yesterday. Where the other 210 delegates in CA go is anyone’s guess, as of right now. And CSPAN’s numbers are a different set all together (though they tend to track a little closer to MSNBC’s than any of the others’.)

This does not, of course, bode well for political junkies who need a fix of current information right now. Too bad. Delegate counting is an ethereal task, and Chris Matthews spent a few minutes fawning all over Chuck Todd last night because he gave a count which (of course) showed a relative dead heat, though Obama got a few more delegates. Who knows where he got his numbers, but it must be a trade secret, because MSNBC isn’t sharing them with anyone else. I have to believe that he must have made them up.

For those of us who don’t really care to crunch the data and do the calculus which must be involved to get anywhere close to where Chuck “NBC Chief Political Director” Todd got last night, here’s the 10 cent break down: Obama took a lot of states, Clinton no so many. But Clinton routed Obama in New York, which, because of the way delegates are assigned to the Convention (I learned this a long time ago, I think it has something to do with how many Democrats voted, as a percentage of the National Democratic vote, in a given state.) is a far more significant victory for her than Obama’s Illinois victory. I mean, she may have gotten fewer actual votes in NY than Obama did in Illinois, but there are close to 19 million people in New York Metro (almost all Democrat) and 12.8 million in the whole state of Illinois, which are split fairly evenly across the State (except for Chicago) between the two Parties. Consequently, percentages and margins of victory don’t really matter at the end of the day: What matters is how many Democrats voted in the last election. Illinois doesn’t even come close to offsetting Illinois, which explains why Illinois is not even close to NY in delegate allocation. At the end of the day, Hillary gets like 40 more delegates than Obama in New York, and that offsets his victories not only in Illinois, but in several of the smaller states that he creamed her in.

Yes, indeed, in our country, one state is THAT important.

Consequently, the pundits are wrong. It was not a tie last night. It may seem like a tie for the ignorant out there who aren’t really sure how the system works, but know that “In MY state, Obama won by a 3-1 margin.” (None of these folks, I am sure, read this weblog, and so do not benefit from this analysis anyway.) Last night was a victory for Clinton. What Obama needs to do now is to campaign REAL hard in Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania and try to take those states from Clinton. He needs especially to do well in the CITIES of those states, because those are where the votes come from. Additionally, he needs to win big Nebraska, Washington and Louisiana. He has demonstrated he can win in the Southeast and the Midwest, so LA and NE should be easy for him (especially because people tend to hate Hillary in the Midwest and South East), though Washington and its ties to the 90’s (Microsoft, who really supports Clinton, Boeing, Grunge, etc) will probably keep him from scoring a huge victory in Seattle. Then he needs to go on and win the Chesapeake Primaries or do well in them anyway.

If he does well this Saturday (I predict he will win in LA and NE, and it will be a toss-up in WA) and then makes up some ground in WI (which is leaning toward Clinton now) so that it is not a total route, and does well in MD (which he probably will) DC, (which he definitely will) and Northern VA, he will have made up the losses from Super Tuesday. The stars look good for him to do well in the upcoming callendar, but he HAS to do well to make up for NY and CA (when they get done adding those numbers… We’ll see.) All Clinton has to do, by contrast, is not get beat too bad and she comes out ahead going into Texas.

Illinois can offset a loss in TX or NJ, but the losses in CA and NY really hurt Obama, and victories in North Dakota and Alaska didn’t do much to help him. Sure he won 50% more of the states than Clinton did, but in terms of delegates, most of these states were split, and his delegates (mostly from rural and suburban areas) don’t count as much as hers (from large concentrations of population like cities and working class areas, which further underscores the fact that delegates are awarded based on Dem turnout in the last election: Cities tend to vote more Democratic AND put more Democrats on the ground than rural or suburban areas, meaning they get more delegates, and these are the areas voting for Clinton.)

As for my prediction about Edwards, well, he didn’t make any endorsements. It is probably not too late for him to have some influence, but for the most part, his train has almost entirely left that station. It will be interesting to see if he ever shows up anywhere again on the political scene.

One last thing before I end this one, there is still the Bill Clinton factor. He hasn’t been too widely seen or heard from in the past week, which is a good choice on the Clinton Campaign’s part. But I will say that there is a perception of Clinton that he is a loose cannon, that he is wild and “out of control” as I have heard many people mention. She had better reign him in etc… To those 50 or so of you who read this post, first of all, let me tell you that you are brilliant for doing so, but second of all, people need to remember that Clinton is a master politician. A person doesn’t run successfully for President of the United States of America TWICE without learning a few things along the way. And a person is not married to someone with that kind of experience without learning a few things on her own. Every last thing Clinton said or did on the campaign trail was coldly and deliberately calculated and it got its desired effect EVERY SINGLE TIME. There is no such thing as bad free press. Every time a commentator said the name of “Bill Clinton”, they were saying Clinton. And what is the name you see on your primary ballot? You guessed it: Clinton. Every time someone mentioned how screwed up he was, how much he was hurting his wife’s campaign etc, that was a free commercial for Hillary Clinton. The news would dedicate two minutes to the story, every half hour, for a week straight. Clinton Clinton Clinton for 64 solid minutes a day (in your standard 16 hour news day)! That is more than a hour of free advertising EVERY SINGLE DAY, in EVERY MARKET IN THE COUNTRY! Do the math yourself and think of how much that would cost that campaign to buy that if they had to pay for it. You got to hand it to that couple: they really know how to get the most out of their buck.

Serenely,
The Wizard of S
W Doc Stodden