State of the Race, post-Super Tuesday

If there's one thing I've learned in this election season, it's that predictions mean nothing. At the start of this, everyone assumed that Hillary would walk away with the Dem nomination and the Republicans would cannibalize each other through the convention. As it stands now, things are pretty close to the exact opposite. John McCain has all but captured the nomination for the Republicans -- though not a mathematical certainty, it seems unlikely that any other challenger will be able to mount any sort of comeback -- and Hillary and Obama are locked in a dead heat.

I'd be lying if I said that I was excited about a John McCain nomination, but I'm slowly forcing myself to come to grips with it. When many of my more conservative friends were claiming that they would rather vote third party or simply not vote for a President Giuliani, I told them that they were insane, they shouldn't let the perfect become the enemy of the good, etc. It would be somewhat hypocritical for me to do the same with McCain. There are plenty of things on which I agree with McCain. He's a deficit hawk, and that makes me giddy. The thought of a balanced federal budget makes my nerdy conservative heart flutter. But he's never been that big on taxes, so to think that he'd raise taxes in order to achieve said balanced budget terrifies me. He's also a security hawk, which is another one of my issues. However, his apostasies on immigration, climate change, free speech, etc. are, as yet, deal-breakers for me. If he were to pick a veep that allayed some of those fears, I might be less reluctant to vote for him, but that remains to be seen. If he picks Mike Huckabee as his veep, it makes it that much more likely that I'll be staying home on election day. However, a McCain-Thompson or McCain-Steele ticket is something I could potentially get excited about.

At any rate, Senator McCain plans to address the Conservative Political Action Conference tomorrow. I plan to listen with an open, albeit apprehensive, mind.

On the Democrat side, the race has gone on longer than most people ever thought it would. Certainly longer than I thought. As little as a week ago, I thought the Obama hysteria was due for a harsh dose of reality on Super Tuesday. Not only was Super Tuesday not decisive, it appears that Obama may have eked out a victory. That's huge. It puts a gaping hole in Hillary's air of inevitability and gives Democrats hope that they don't have to vote for Hillary. It's my experience that most Democrats/liberals don't want to vote for Hillary, but are doing/did so because she thought that she was the only one that could win. As Obama shows that he's capable of winning elections, I think more people will gravitate toward him -- particularly in the upcoming primaries and caucuses. The schedule from here on out is much lighter, which means that Obama can campaign more thoroughly in all the upcoming states. That thought should keep Hillary up at night. It also doesn't help that Obama absolutely obliterated Hillary on the fund raising front in the last quarter. Hillary is likely tapped out, while Obama still has resources from which to draw. I'm quite wary of underestimating the Clinton machine, but it seems that the Obama camp has the momentum, the money, and a favorable schedule. Having said that, however, I treat Hillary like a zombie in a cheesy B movie horror flick -- don't turn your back on her, because once you do, her eyes snap open and she eats your brain from behind. Or something like that. Suffice it to say that I won't believe that Obama gets the nomination until he makes his acceptance speech at the convention -- and even then I'll be suspicious.

More on this later.