Super Tuesday, in brief

Now that it's over, pundits can start the complicated process of
pretending they know exactly what happened and why, but here at least
are some of the results.

On the Democratic side, the candidates split most of the contests, with
Barack Obama winning in Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut,
Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, North
Dakota and Utah, while Hillary Clinton won in Arizona, Arkansas,
California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, and
Tennessee. What's really important though are delegates, and Clinton
came out ahead, making up some ground and now holding 618 pledged
delegates to Obama's 614, in addition to her 193-106 lead in
superdelegates. The fallout of that is, the race is still very much
alive: Clinton failed to land the knock-out blow she was hoping for on
Super Tuesday, and while Obama didn't score a massive upset like beating
Hillary in California, the widespread belief has been that with momentum
on his side the longer the race goes on the more support will swing his way.

This weekend the Democrats have primaries in Louisiana and the Virgin
Islands, as well as caucuses in Maine, Nebraska, and Washington State,
and next Tuesday is a DC area set of primaries in Virginia, Maryland,
and the District itself, with the Hawaiian caucuses Wisconsin primary a
week later (then they leave us all alone for a bit while they go lick
their wounds and raise money).

On the Republican side, everybody won some primaries. Mike Huckabee won
a few southern states (Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, and West
Virginia) while Romney won some contests (Alaska, Colorado,
Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Utah, and Maine over
the weekend) and came in second in a couple big states like California
and Illinois. The problem for Romney is some of his wins didn't give
him much of an advantage, for instance his win in Massachusetts gave him
22 delegates to McCain's 17, while some of his second place finishes
were essentially worthless: while Obama's big win in Illinois picked
him up 62 delegates to Hillary's 31, McCain's win in Illinois (by a
smaller margin) got him 54 delegates to Romney's 2. McCain's wins in
Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Missouri, New
Jersey, New York, and Oklahoma (where the wind goes rushing down the
plain) proved devastating. What I can't figure out is after
Conservative Christians told us that Hurricane Katrina was a punishment
for wickedness, why it is every state that voted for Mike Huckabee was
struck with tornadoes? (Apparently he's not getting Jesus' vote after all.)

Here's how the Republicans stand, with 1,191 delegates needed for the
nomination:

John McCain 616
Mitt Romney 269
Mike Huckabee 170
Ron Paul 16

The Republicans have a similar schedule with a few differences. This
weekend they'll have caucuses in Kansas and Washington State as well as
the Louisiana Primary, and the same DC, Maryland, and Virginia primaries
next Tuesday, but since the Hawaii Republican Caucus was in January,
they'll have a White Trash Hawaii Caucus instead on the island of Guam
before the Washington State and Wisconsin Primaries. Actually they've
got a bunch of little island caucuses coming up soon in Guam, the Virgin
Islands, Puerto Rico, and American Samoa.

So anyways, this weekend is Louisiana, Washington State, and at least
one plains state for each side (Nebraska or Kansas), and the Democrats
will go to Maine. The Democratic race should continue to be interesting
in a close race where the underdog has momentum and money, and I would
have to think somebody's going to run out of money on the Republican
side soon if they don't get catch up a bit, but who knows.