South Carolina Part 2 and Florida

Barack Obama easily won South Carolina by a margin of 55%-27% over Hillary Clinton. John Edwards placed third with 18% of the vote. The Democratic beauty contest (because no delegates were at stake) went to Clinton over Obama by a margin of 50%-33% and again Edwards was third with 14%.

In the Republican Florida primary Rudy Giuliani, much to his chagrin, proved the political experts right as his Florida strategy failed big time. John McCain led with 36%, followed by Mitt Romney with 31% and then Rudy with a paltry 15%. Mike Huckabee came in with 13%.

The immediate fallout is that John Edwards has announced his withdrawal from the race. Therefore, barring some unforeseen catastrophe of monumental proportions, the nominee for President of the United States from the Democratic Party in 2008 will either be a woman or a black man.

On the Republican side, the expectation is that Giuliani will withdraw and endorse John McCain, but that hasn’t happened as of this moment. As for Mike Huckabee, some of whose staff was reported as going without pay, no indication as yet as to his plans. Unlike Giuliani, for whom Florida was considered a make or break primary, Huckabee didn’t really expect to do that well there. However I do think his 2nd place finish in South Carolina was something of a disappointment to him.

So now it’s on to Super Tuesday where 21 states will choose Republican delegates and 22 states will choose Democratic delegates. Included will be such huge states as California, New York and Illinois.

I don’t think the make-up of the Super Tuesday states is very conducive to Huckabee doing well. I suspect that he’s going to get his clock cleaned in most of the states especially if Giuliani endorses McCain so I doubt his candidacy will survive the next round, but I’ve been wrong before so we’ll see.

With Edwards gone it becomes a two way race on the Democratic side. Hillary still has the inside track because she appears to hold a significant lead in the so-called Super Delegates (party leaders and elected officials) and I doubt that Obama has made a sufficient impact outside of the states that have already held primaries and that gives Clinton the advantage.

I get to vote Tuesday, for joy, for joy. I think I’m registered as an Independent but I’m not sure. In any event you can declare at the polling place in New Jersey so I think I’ll declare Democratic (it would be a cold day in hell before I ever voted Republican anyway) and I think I’ll pull the handle for Obama.