Gary
McCain did poorly in Kansas and Louisiana, which are prime Mike Huckabee territory. So you can understand McCain's losses there. But he also did poorly in Washington state.

McCain will win the Republican nomination, but he looks like a goner in the general election this November, given the reservations and hostility of the Republican base to him, and the Democrats having the stardust factor.

Most people are just waiting for Bush to go away - including many of his supporters. The repugnance of the last few years in torture/ec is going to be equated with Bush entirely. I don't think many believe that a new democratic president will support that abrogation of human rights.

Bush's last state of the union was a complete non-event, the whole nation tuned out. It was weird. The US President is completely irrelevant politically.

Nan
I see that Obama continues to sweep all before him. Three more landslides down the Potomac River, from Maryland through the District of Columbia and into Virginia. That gives Obama seven straight victories in the past week and the unquestioned lead in elected convention delegates. He is eating into Clinton's support base---white women and working class households at the bottom of the economic ladder. This base had previously supported John Edwards before his withdrawal from the Democratic race last month.

The recent victories give Obama a substantial advantage in the battle for delegates. Obama has time and money and he's got momentum.

Gary,
Clinton must score those must-win landslide victories in Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania. It's her last stand as Obama is now the front runner---1,224 to 1,198. Hillary will be in serious trouble if she doesn't win in both Texas and Ohio, as they're her best shots and she must win well.

Clinton is out of money and she had to choose to save her resources for Texas and Ohio.That meant a low presence in Virginia and Maryland and more or less skipping the whole of February. The fear inside the Clinton camp must be that Obama will win Hawaii and Wisconsin next week and head into the March 4 contests for Ohio and Texas with a 10-race winning streak.

Obama has a very powerful image. I saw a recent speech he gave----in Virginia - the seat of the old Confederacy--- and he looked and sounded like Martin Luther King + the Kennedys. Very seductive. He has charisma.

Clinton's strategy is still to pull in the super-delegates---- the party officials, elected officials and others who can vote however they choose at the nominating convention.If the race for pledged delegates based on outcomes in caucuses and primaries across the country remains tight, superdelegates could decide the nomination.

However, with all the big loses the loyalty to the Clintons amongst the super-delegates must be shaky. Hillary Clinton's previous aura of inevitability is definitely gone and her back is against the wall.

A question: Why is Mike Huckabee doing still hanging around a race he can't win? He only draws a certain slice of voters away from McCain -- evangelical Christians.There issn' much of the GOP electorate left for Huckabee to win over.

Nan
The Clintons stand for the kind of insider and machine politics that people want to change.

Nan,
re your comment:

Obama has a very powerful image. I saw a recent speech he gave----in Virginia - the seat of the old Confederacy--- and he looked and sounded like Martin Luther King + the Kennedys. Very seductive. He has charisma.

A lot of media commentary around Obama’s charisma is says that he’s a starry-eyed idealist with warm fuzzy rhetoric full of emotional appeal about uniting, but short on actual specifics and real-world practical plans.

He's a feel-good candidate with no intellectual substance or moral centre. he's got the looks but not the political smarts.

He doesn't look that way to me. He has the charisma and the smarts.

Gary,
the news reports are saying that Hillary Clinton has cut short a campaign swing through Wisconsin in a further sign of trouble for her attempt to break Barack Obama's winning streak in the race for the Democratic nomination.Wisconsin and Hawaii go to the polls tomorrow.

The early exit is being interpreted as Clinton giving up hope of a win in the state, despite only a narrow lead for Obama in the polls. It also reaffirms the do-or-die nature of the primary contests in Texas and Ohio on March for Clinton. She is definitely on the ropes.