The End and the Beginning

If the Republican race was almost over a week and a half ago when Mr. Romney suspended his campaign, it is certainly over now. News reports indicate that Mr. Romney will officially endorse Mr. McCain and pledge his delegates to him. This will rocket Mr. McCain’s totals from around 825 to over 1100, leaving him less than 90 delegates away from victory.

On Saturday, Louisiana will meet in state convention and will probably pledge anywhere from 15 to 24 delegates to Mr. McCain based on a caucus held back in January. Meanwhile, Guam will allocate 6 delegates based on a caucus.

On Tuesday, Washington State and Wisconsin go to the polls to allocate 19 and 40 delegates respectively. Both of these states allocate delegates based on the winner of each congressional district and the state overall. Thus, by the end of the night on Tuesday, it is possible that Mr. McCain could have racked up an additional 89 delegates. Coupled with Mr. Romney’s gift, Mr. McCain might break through to 1,191 right there.

Now, Mr. Huckabee might take away some of these delegates leaving Mr. McCain just short. Then he would have to wait until the weekend of February 23-24 when the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, and Puerto Rico allocate their 26 pledged delegates. Either way, Mr. McCain should become the official nominee before the month of February is over, rendering Mr. Huckabee’s planned last stand in Texas and Mississippi moot.

Meanwhile, Ms. Clinton seems to have finally woken up and smelled the coffee. Unfortunately, she is still reacting slowly as she is only planning on spending the last three days before the primary in Wisconsin rather than the whole week, as I would have advised her to do. She may still lose Wisconsin, but if she forces the news networks to wait an hour or more before calling the state, she will have thwarted the notion that Mr. Obama is an unstoppable force.

Ms. Clinton has also dispatched her daughter to Hawaii along with the messages of Sen. Inouye (who has endorsed Ms. Clinton) to blunt the loss in that state. Mr. Obama grew up in Hawaii so there is little chance that she can win the state, but if she loses by less than 10-points it will keep the delegate count close.

Given this, I think that reports of Ms. Clinton’s political death have been greatly exaggerated. She still may not catch Mr. Obama in the pledged delegate count (1050-952 in hard numbers), but Mr. Obama needs momentum as well as a delegate lead to capture the majority of the Superdelegates. The road is still long and windy.