Blogging the election

I had the assignment last night of blogging the Super Tuesday election for the Register's Horserace'08 blog, which you can see here if you're interested in my thoughts at the time, as well as a few morning-after ruminations. Briefly, Huckabee surprised me, and he may have sunk Romney. I don't know what the Huckster is auditioning for, but I hope he gets it and it pays well and he is never tempted to run for president again. It's not quite a done deal, but McCain is looking pretty inevitable.

It's intriguing on the Democratic side. I think I agree with Howie Kurtz at the WaPo that the TV "analysts" were too fascinated with Barack to give Hillary her due, at least until she won California (she'll only get 20 or 30 more delegates than Barack but it was still an impressive win, and made fools of Zogby and some other polling organizations. On the Republican side, because the GOP awarded 3 delegates foir each congressional district won whereas the Dems split them proportionally, McCain is slated -- subject to revision as some absentee ballot were still being counted today -- to get all but 6 of the 159 delegates chosen through CDs.).

I haven't finished tabulating Ron Paul's numbers, but although I saw some high teens and I think even a 21% in one of the caucus states, and he now has 10 delegates, I thought they were disappointing. Perhaps it's inevitable as the media focus (understandably and justifiably at this stage) on the frontrunners, but I would love to see him start scoring at least in the 'teens regularly. Even though the pundits and pollsters say the war is a secondary issue with voters now, I'd like to see him focus more intently there; it's his unique selling proposition, as the marketers used to put it, and it's frustrating to see Republicans who say they're antiwar voting for McCain the uber hawk. It will be difficult, but if he scores respectably in primaries to come there's just an outside chance that a GOP I think is destined to lose big in November will take his positions into account as it struggles to rebuild.