Opinion: The Show Me State puts on the night’s best show
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Political junkies LOVE Missouri.
Pretty much smack in the middle of the country -- with a mix of urban, suburban and rural communities -- it’s looked to during general election campaigns as a reliable barometer of the nation’s political temperature. And on Super Tuesday, it also rose to the occasion -- as results rolled in from across the country, it proved THE state to watch.
On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee led for most of the night in a tight three-way race with John McCain and Mitt Romney. At one point, the vote breakdown was 33% each for Huckabee and McCain, with Romney at 29%. In some ways, that moment provided the perfect picture of what has been, up until now, the fractured GOP race.
Finally, a late surge put McCain over the top and he was declared Missouri’s victor, barely edging out Huckabee. Combined with McCain’s apparent win in California’s popular vote, the Missouri triumph provides a huge psychological boost to his prospects. And, unfortunately for Huckabee, close didn’t count in Missouri -- it was winner-take-all, meaning McCain scarfs up its 58 delegates.
On the delegate front, the results in Democratic race are compelling -- the party’s proportional rules mean that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton ...
will have fought to a virtual draw. Still, the outcome of the popular vote apparently will provide a moral victory for Obama on a night when he had to be disappointed that he was not able to wrest California from Clinton’s column.
Throughout most of the night, Clinton’s was comfortably ahead in Missouri. Indeed, the Associated Press, to its chagrin, gave her a check-mark as the winner. But a strong closing wave for Obama -- we suspect from precincts in the St. Louis area, usually the last to report in the state -- suddenly made it a competitive.
Obama eked ahead with 97% of the vote counted. And now, with 99% of the results in, Obama holds a lead of about 8,000 votes over Clinton (enough for a couple of cable networks to give him the state).
If Obama hangs on, expect his campaign to trumpet the win. And if he goes on to become the clear front-runner for his party’s nomination, expect Sen. Claire McCaskill’s name to surface in vice presidential speculation.
True, she has even less experience in the Senate than Obama -- he won his seat in 2004, she in 2006. But that may be a positive attribute for a ticket that would be dedicated to ‘change.’ More to the point, she signed up with his campaign a few weeks ago, worked hard for him and, it appears, helped drag her state into his column.
-- Don Frederick