I won’t update the delegate graphs until pretty late tonight I don’t think, but just checking totals at the moment, McCain has topped 50% of delegates for the first time in CNN’s count based on the (very limited) results so far.
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And then really it will be it. Last night I saw some analysis (I forget where so can’t link to it, sorry) where someone had basically done the math based on a range of likely outcomes on the Democratic side and determined that absent a complete switch to one candidate or the other having an absolutely commanding advantage in every contest from here on out (or one of them drops out), we will end up with a situation where in the end at the convention the winner *will* be determined by how the superdelegates line up. Neither candidate will have enough delegates from primaries and caucuses to win. So it will be all about how the superdelegates end up breaking. So far Hillary has a big advantage amoungst superdelegates. But superdelegates are people and will be subject to lobbying and changing their minds up until the actual moment of the first vote at the convention. And that could be fun. Just realized I completely forgot the Republicans. Romney might get enough delegates to keep this going a bit longer (especially if he wins California), but I think McCain will win big enough that the race will essentially be over. The question will just be if Romney wants to fight on a few more weeks in the hopes that there will be a massive last minute swing in his direction. And that’s all for that. I got a cheesesteak and some chips, so another quick thing while I eat, and then back to trying to figure out some fun work things that I need to have done for tomorrow. Anyway, I thought I would give some final thoughts on Super Tuesday before the polls actually close. (Except for Americans in Indonesia for whom the results are already in – 75% Obama, 25% Clinton.) Of course, I gave most of my thought’s in this weekend’s podcast, but I thought it would be good to do it in writing. And then I realized I already had… in an email to someone earlier today. So rather than writing it again, here is what I wrote about 12 hours ago:
And for those of you who work with me who may read this, my last meeting turned out to be a duplicate of one tomorrow, so I’m just going to go to that one instead, so I won’t miss anything significant and I’ll make up any lost productivity on Wednesday and Thursday. :-) OK, I’m also done eating now, so back to what I need to get done before I can leave… :-) Just a quick comment while I’m doing the lunch thing. Well, when I would be doing the lunch thing. I went down to the cafeteria and the line was long, so I went back upstairs to my office and am waiting a couple of minutes before trying again. If the line is still long, I’ll just get some chips or something. Anyway, everybody has been going crazy about the new Obama Yes We Can video. I’m sorry, I think it sucks. Not that it will hurt him in any way mind you, just that it sucks as a song. It isn’t catchy. I don’t want to hum or sing along to it. It is fairly tuneless. And slow. Bleh. Whatever. Just does nothing for me. I’ve still actually never made it all the way to the end, I get tired of it what before that. The original Obama Girl song was much better. Catchier, sticks in your head if you want it to or not, etc. And just funny. And of course completely not supported by the campaign, etc. :-) No, not politics, for at least a moment. But the new version of SuperDuper! came out today. This is the program that I always used to back up my Mac before Leopard came out. The old version was not compatible with Leopard. This one is, and adds some new features. I have actually been without regular backups for almost a month now. I cloned my drive once but with that bad directory both Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner were choking on doing a regular backup, and SuperDuper! wasn’t Leopard compatible. Even though I fixed that one directory, I had been waiting for 10.5.2 to come out to hopefully fix more TimeMachine issues before trying TimeMachine again. Especially since I only have one external drive, so to start up Time Machine again I’d have to delete the existing backup, leaving me for a bit with no backup. I do have a much older (pre-Leopard) backup stored on Amy’s computer. With some juggling I could delete that OLD backup, then move the more recent (But still old) backup to Amy’s machine, then restart regular backups. Sounds like a potential plan, it will just be a bit of a pain. I could also get a second external drive… I’ve been wanting to do that for awhile anyway. That would make the juggling a lot easier, and I could potentially once a week swap out which external drive is at home and keep the other one elsewhere, giving me off site backup, which would also be good. I wish 10.5.2 would hurry up and come out. I think between doing SuperDuper! style backups and doing Time Machine style backups, I’m leaning toward Time Machine, but I kinda want to wait for 10.5.2 to try it again. One more quick note, and then I have to run to work. I shot a quick email off to Ivan, but didn’t bother posting yesterday (as I was still editing and putting together the podcast) when I heard about Maria Shriver’s surprise Obama endorsement. I think it might just be the thing that puts Obama over the edge in California. In recent polls he has been neck and neck. That will get him a bunch of additional in-state free press. Delegates in CA will pretty much split close to evenly no matter how things go there, but whoever actually pulls out the “win” will get a lot of attention from it. (As mentioned in this week’s podcast.) Which, by the way, for those of you who read the blog but don’t listen to the podcast, you’ve missed some of our best weeks ever these last few weeks. Well, at least we’ve been having lots of fun. :-) You should all tune in damn it. :-) Yesterday I joked a bit about a Mittmiracle in terms of how good McCain looks tomorrow in the primaries. But perhaps I was a bit hasty. There has been a bit of Mittmentum, especially in recent days. It may well end up being, like I said earlier, too little too late… but looking at the charts… Mitt has recently started polling ahead or close to ahead in more states. Right now it looks like he has Utah, Massachusetts and Colorado locked up. But he is also within spitting distance now in Georgia, Tennessee, Delaware, Missouri and most importantly California. And of course there are still some smaller states with no polls at all, so who knows what will happen there. If he manages to pull out California, plus a few more of the “spitting distance” states, he may manage to keep things alive for a little bit longer. But McCain still has the big advantage.
As expected, Romney gets the delegates from Maine. If you look at the charts, this means that as of today the delegate race is very very close. Romney and McCain are neck and neck. But then you look at the Super Tuesday Polls and you realize that Romney is way behind in most of those states. Romney does seem to have some positive momentum in a few states. But it looks to be too little too late. If there were lots of proportional states like on the Democratic side, one might say that he was close in a lot of states and it might be very competitive still after Tuesday. But most of these states are winner takes all. Given that, this may well be effectively over on the Republican side after Tuesday. Absent a Mittmiracle. :-) Sam and Ivan talk about:
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