Wisconsin, Hawaii, and McCain

Barack Obama swept both Wisconsin and Hawaii, his home state, last night by rather large margins. In Wisconsin, he beat Hillary Clinton by about 20 points, and in Hawaii, he blew her out of the water by about 40. Now as I said above, Hawaii, being Obama's home state, was expected to give him a crushing victory, but Wisconsin is a bit of a different story. It was sort of a harbinger of things to come for Hillary, as a lot of Latino and blue collar voters swung Obama's way. If this trend continues through Ohio and Texas on March 4, Obama will have the delegates to finally secure this nomination, even though as little as 6 months ago, he wasn't seen as having a viable shot at anything.

This is fairly amazing, but without Ohio and Texas, it doesn't mean too much. Obama has won ten straight primaries/caucuses by convincing margins, but if he doesn't pull off at least one of the two March 4 states, all will be for naught.

John McCain, on the other hand, took one more step forward on the path to the Republican nomination, as he also won Wisconsin, and Washington State last night, leaving him within spitting distance of the magic number he needs to finally push Mike Huckabee out of the spotlight and let it shine unto him and him alone. McCain is going to have problems against whoever he faces, and it will be a serious uphill battle to convince voters they aren't getting 4-8 more years of Bush's failed policies, even though those policies are essentially what John McCain has put forward so far. It'll be interesting to see whether he softens these as we move towards November, but he needs the base of the Republican Party to congregate behind him so badly that he may even go more right-wing to do so before it is all said and done.

A few things of note:

- Huckabee, I think, by staying in the race for so long after he clearly has lost, has completely played his way out of a VP slot on McCain's ticket. It likely wasn't going to be him anyways, but after this growing embarassment and distraction he is becoming for the Republican Party, I don't think he's going to be too popular of a man when McCain comes a'callin.

- McCain is really starting to jab at Obama as well, calling himself the experience candidate, as he has done all along, but calling Obama, not by name, out on his lack of experience. He hasn't done the same thing with Hillary though, leading me to believe her fortunes are a lot worse off than we are all led to believe. McCain is attacking the person he feels he will have to go against in November, and that person is not Hillary Clinton.