Around the Web: Early Analysis, Waiting for CA
From The Corner:
Tonight is not yet over, but I fear that one element in the voting may be a positive rejection of Romney. That seems to be a factor quite as much as an embrace of McCain. Hence the revival of Huckabee in the South. My southern belle wife always warned that many evangelicals would vote for anyone but a Mormon. I was skeptical — and we don’t yet have the exit poll breakdowns on that kind of question — but it looks as if something like that may be at work.
Marc Ambinder on the Republicans:
As politics is a zero sum game, the better Mike Huckabee does, the worse Mitt Romney does… and so it doesn’t matter all too much…that McCain seems to be underperforming, as he is. (It’s going to be mighty hard for McCain to unite the party…but that’s not the story tonight.)
Huckabee’s victories are likely to put enormous pressure on the well-funded Romney to drop out…If his money cannot buy him victories outside a few caucus states, Massachusetts and Utah, he does not have any pretext for continuing.
Matt Yglesias on Romney:
I believe I’ve noted before that I like Mitt Romney. … And right now I think he’s delivering a pretty damn good speech. Education policy expert Sara Mead says “this isn’t a winning message for him” — too negative — but it taps into my anti-Beltway rage (anti-Beltway rage only gets worse when you move all the way into the District of Columbia and realize that the country is run by jerks who ride the Orange Line).
As Obama trended upward in recent days, there was some talk of a Super Tuesday victory that would knock her campaign back onto its heels. That isn’t going to happen tonight, at least barring an upset in California. But he’s sticking near to her, and the next couple of states (Virginia, Maryland, etc) favor him, so the basic takeaway looks to be that the primary will roll on, and this remains a game of delegates.
David Weigel at Reason thinks it is bad news for Clinton.
On the Democratic side, Obama’s late poll surge has truly held up: He’s shredded Clinton’s firewall in the northeast and is winning states (Delaware, probably Connecticut) where Clinton once led by better than 20 points. The states he loses he’ll lose narrowly enough to score about half of the delegates. And the caucus states where he’s expected to do well haven’t been called yet. This isn’t Clinton’s nightmare scenario, but it’s close.