The Friday Presidential Race ‘BushWhack’ing

Week’s wrap-up of the week that was in the 2008 presidential race that started about 5 years ago… at least that’s what it feels like…

• Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama held another debate last night in Texas. Most pundits said that Clinton needed to knock it out of the park to have any hope for the March 4th primaries… she didn’t.
• Sen. McCain had a bad week after the NY Times ran a story (which he claims is a smear campaign) claiming he had a romantic (eww) relationship with a female lobbyist…
• Obama’s good luck continued as he won, with 65% of the vote, the Democrat’s Abroad primary in which Democrats living in other countries vote… he also lengthened his lead by winning Hawaii and Wisconsin and now seems to be chipping away at Clinton’s supporters… (the time for Ms. Clinton to step down seems to be looming large, and the knockout she needed at last night’s debate never materialized… so expect her campaign to get even more desperate… if that’s even possible…)
• McCain won Wisconsin and Hawaii on the gop side but some conservatives are still leery of him.
• Gov. Huckabee vowed to NOT drop out the race even though some members of his own party are urging him to do so
• Ron Paul is still nuttier than a squirrel’s cheeks in October…
• Sen. Obama met with former candidate John Edwards last Sunday… and Sen. Clinton said this morning that she’s had more conversations with the former senator as well as both fight to pick up his endorsement. As I wrote earlier this week, it’s time for Edwards to make his pick and get off the stage…
• McCain got a key endorsement this past week as Dubya’s father President George H.W. Bush gave him his endorsement (which was met with an unenthusiastic ‘meh’). More the story is the fact that Bush 41 also said that the conservative on conservative attacks on McCain’s records were “absurd.” (Uh-huh. Bush 41’s stock rose with his and President Clinton’s work for the Tsunami victims, but one truly has to wonder if his defense of McCain is being met with anything but disinterest. And Mr. Bush should remember that his son attacked McCain for not being conservative enough back during the 2000 primary season...)
• The FEC said that Sen. McCain can't drop out of the primary election's public financing system until he answers questions about a loan he obtained months ago to kick-start his campaign that was, at the time, struggling mightil (what this also means is that McCain can’t lord it over Clinton and Obama, which puts him at a huge strategic disadvantage…)
• Clinton and Obama are still “neck and neck” in some key battleground states…
• Sen. Clinton now has a swift-boating 527 in her corner, something I wrote about yesterday…
• Obama not only won the endorsement of the Teamsters, but also SEIU and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union… (all three unions were coveted by Clinton and should help Obama in the months to come…)
• And have we mentioned? That the battle over super-delegates shows no signs of waning? In a week that saw one of the super-delegates that was being schmoozed by Chelsea Clinton announcing he is now backing Obama (ouch, that’s gotta hoit. Now, some Democratic voters are still nervous about their choice not getting the nod because of super-delegates. And as we’ve mentioned here before, if that happens, the DNC can and should expect a HUGE backlash… and the changing of the super-delegate rules…)