Leaving Las Vegas

Let's react to the results of the Nevada caucuses and South Carolina Republican primary, shall we?

• On the Democratic side of the Nevada caucuses, another solid victory for Hillary, especially when you break down the votes demographically. The delegate situation provides an interesting narrative in and of itself (namely, that Obama ended up receiving one more delegate than Hillary in Nevada), but that leads us to an entirely different, more complex discussion (coming up). Going forward, Obama finds himself in sort of a predicament: if he wins in South Carolina (which he is expected to do, and was affirmed by his 5-1 share of the black vote in Nevada), then he will regain a bit of momentum heading into February 5th, in which it's very likely both he and Hillary will come out of that primary event with a fairly equal share of delegates (thus, continuing on into the later primaries without a clear Democratic nominee); however, if Clinton manages to pull a true upset and defeat Obama in South Carolina, the Obama campaign will be wounded, limping into a February 5th primary that he will likely come out of too far behind a momentum-gathered Clinton. Therefore, it seems that the two potential big picture scenarios for the Obama campaign, based on a win or lose in South Carolina, is that he remains an equal with Clinton after Feb. 5th or he falls behind after Feb. 5th...in other words, how does Obama actually pull ahead of Clinton? I guess there is always the major campaign blunder moment (something a Clinton is not likely to commit), or the possibility that Obama actually does much better than expected on February 5th, something that seems to run counter intuitive to what one would expect in a 20+ national primary battle royale with a Clinton on the ticket. All that being said, I expect it will be the former situation where Obama indeed wins in South Carolina, both Clinton and Obama have relatively equal delegate counts after Feb. 5th, and the primary, once again, steams ahead without a clear front-runner. Finally, in what is a stunning outcome, John Edwards only managed to gather 4% support in the Nevada caucuses. This is cripplingly bad news for the Edwards campaign, who is going to have an extremely tough time here on out, especially in terms of fund raising and in convincing the voters that he's still a factor in this race (and, in the 'Edwards as Democratic convention power player' scenario, he's going to need a lot more than fifty-some delegates to have that kind of clout).
• On the Republican side of the Nevada caucuses, Romney was more than expected to win here considering he was the only main candidate to campaign in the state (although, Ron Paul in a second place finish with 14% of the vote is really just amazing). More importantly, turning to the Republican primary in South Carolina, this was a pretty necessary victory for John McCain and this will definitely recharge his campaign going forward (we'll see if the Republican establishment is yet ready to rule), but even more interesting is what is going on beneath the surface with this outcome. For starters, it's certainly fair for Mike Huckabee to declare a semi-victory in South Carolina with only three percentage points separating him from a first place finish (and I'd like to think his comments about the Confederate flag and a religion-infused Constitution actually hurt him here, but it's pretty clear that such pandering is executed to actually boost one's self in a state like South Carolina...yuck). Thus, you have Mitt Romney with more "gold and silver medals" than any other candidate (hey Mitt, the Olympics in Salt Lake City were more than five years ago...get over it), John McCain with two victories and the fresh momentum, Mike Huckabee with one win and some close finishes, and Rudy Giuliani with a yet-to-be-tested Florida victory strategy...in other words, you have four candidates with four sets of math and, thus, four potential claims for ultimately ending up the Republican presidential nominee! Moving forward, this is only going to get more exciting, so buckle up. In other less significant news, Rep. Duncan Hunter has decided to drop out of the race after receiving less than a thousand votes in the South Carolina primary (personally, I think the story should be how the hell did he receive even that many!?), while Fred Thompson still refuses to see the political writing on the wall, probably because he misplaced his bifocals.

Now that is some thorough post-election analysis, if I do say so myself (which I indeed did just say so myself, so there you go). And now......drum roll, please......off to South Carolina for the Democrats and Florida for the Republicans!