Category: The Dish

What Mitt took home from Missouri:

Romney loses everything south of Jefferson City, MO. Except for one county — Cape Girardeau County. Rush’s hometown.

Those are the people who interested Karl Rove last night. And many voted for Obama:

Not such a great investment by Romney: but he won over Rush!

It’s stark among the Democrats. Frum makes a good point:

The economically anxious are voting for Clinton; the economically secure prefer Obama. When Obamaniacs urge Americans to vote their hopes, not their fears, they are overlooking the rather important fact that the Democratic base is made up of a lot of people with a lot of fears.

That’s the calculation of the networks at this point, it seems. A narrow victory:

The Obama camp projects topping Clinton by nine delegates, 845 to 836.

NBC News, which is projecting delegates based on the Democratic Party’s complex formula, figures Obama will wind up with 840 to 849 delegates, versus 829 to 838 for Clinton. 

But it allows the Obama camp to point out – correctly – that they won a majority of the contests yesterday, won in a wider variety of red and blue states, and won in the number of delegates counted. Obama is also winning in fundraising. That’s a pretty impressive tailwind for this weekend and next Tuesday.

Zogby. He had California for Obama by 49 to 36. Ouch.

The president is revealed as a liar by his own CIA director.

"There is no doubt … we hope and pray every night to run against Hillary Clinton," – Ari Fleischer, on CNN last night.

I’d say it’s Huckabee’s astonishing resilience, with so few dollars and so little organization. The Bush-Rove party is a disproportionately religious organization and the pastor cannot be denied. The GOP’s natural ticket is obviously McCain-Huckabee. It makes a lot of sense for the logic of today’s religiously-based, war-motivated Republicanism. It’s also a huge reminder that the so-called leaders of the conservative movement – Limbaugh, Hewitt, Dobson, Levin, et al – are very scantily clad emperors. Their bluff has been called. And it couldn’t happen to a nicer crowd.

On the Democratic side, the bottom line is that this is now a dead heat. Given Clinton’s massive lead only a couple of weeks ago, that’s a huge Obama gain. Clinton has the edge among super-delegates (as of now). Obama has the edge in money – a real edge, and it’s building. It’s still all to play for. 

It’s a big win – rooted in seniors, those most economically distressed, Asians and Hispanics. Although his message is arguably more liberal, her base is the more traditionally Democratic. We’ll have to look at the delegate counts in the morning to see what the bottom line result is – but this was a big psychological win for her, I’d say. Still, over all, Obama may well win a majority of the states up for grabs on Super Tuesday. That counts. The delegate race will remain very tight – and 2/12 becomes a real moment. The Obama campaign must be pleased tonight, but Clinton remains the front-runner. Just.