Obama, McCain get hat tricks on Potomac

Well the Potomac primaries are over, and it looks like Barack Obama and John McCain are going to get the hat tricks out of it all.

A number of things stick out from these wins for the two candidates. McCain now is almost assured of getting the GOP nomination and has started to seriously craft his speeches towards the Democrat nominee who he seems to be thinking will be Obama at this point. On the Democrat side Obama has started to make inroads into what has been pretty strong Clinton demographics, and for the first time in the race when even including declared super delegates, Obama has taken a lead in delegates.

Regardless of what happens from this point out, John McCain is going to be the GOP nominee, it is just a matter of time before Mike Huckabee actually takes a math class and realizes it and steps aside.

On the Democrat side, the sweep of primaries and caucuses since Super Tuesday by Barack Obama, has pushed Hillary Clinton into a mini Rudy Giuliani strategy, essentially conceding contests until March 4th and putting her eggs in Ohio and Texas to be the stopping point of the growing Obama train. One thing coming out of the Maryland and Virginia voting that has to worry the Clinton camp, is that Obama has started to make inroads into Clinton traditional demographic areas such as lower earning democrats, women, older voters, and even Hispanic voters. If the polls in Wisconsin are any indication, Clinton’s Alamo stand in Texas and Ohio could fail as well. Just 5 days ago Clinton had a 50% to 41% lead over Obama in Wisconsin, and as of yesterday looked to be trailing Obama by 11%, a swing of 20 percentage points in less than a week.

Should John Edwards come out and endorse Obama before March 4th (which I believe he will by the way), the pressure on the Clinton machine grows significantly. Many of the inroads in the Clinton demographics that Obama made in Maryland and Virginia were areas that Edwards was strongly contesting with Clinton.

The still lurking nightmare for the DNC is the distinct possibility that neither candidate will get to Denver in August with the 2,025 votes to clinch the nomination. Even if one of the candidates win every race to be decided between now and the convention by 60% to 40% margins they would not have the required delegates for a first ballot win.

Should this end up being the result, a real war at the convention over the Michigan and Florida delegates will erupt. Super delegates also look to play a huge part in the convention, much more than they had originally intended. The analysts are going to have fun trying to figure out what happens from here on out.