Live Blogging Super Tuesday, Part 5: The Wednesday edition

The Wednesday edition of Super Tuesday. Part one is here. Part two is here. Part three is here. Part Four is here. My comments are in red, Scott's are in blue.

12:08 -- Besides the nailbiters in Missouri, it's interesting how the Republican winner-take-all process is skewing things. Right now, on MSNBC, they have called 5 states for Huckabee, 5 states for Romney and 7 states for McCain. Yet, because McCain's states are delegate rich, he is being discussed as the big winner, with Huckabee the comeback guy being touted as the second candidate. Yet, Romney has won as many states as Huckabee and both have won nearly as many as McCain with California still up for grabs.

12:11 -- Well, that's the thing. Many of Huck's states are also winner-take-all.

12:12 -- Paul Begala is a buffoon.

12:12 -- MSNBC calls California for Clinton, following an extended and tortuous Humpty Dumpty analogy from Brokaw that had hands across AMerica reaching for the clicker and Tylenol.

12:14 -- MSNBC calls California for McCain. There's the big one.

12:14 -- CNN calls Arizona for Clinton. Nothing yet on California, but it's pretty obvious she's going to win.

12:15 -- McCain winning California is big, except that it's one of the proportional states, so Romney can still come out of there with a number of delegates.

12:16 -- McCain has been declared as the "apparent winner" in Missouri. With 98% of the vote, he is up by 8500, meaning it is statistically impossible for Huckabee to get more votes even if all the rest are for him. A recount, however, seems a statistical probability.

12:17 -- I was just doing the math in my head on the CNN results page as you were posting. I figured there were about 12,000 votes still out so it would be mathematically possible for Huck to pull it out, but practically impossible. I'd be surprised if Huckabee wanted a recount, if the rumors about him being a stalking horse for McCain are true. I wonder, though, if Romney might call for a recount in hopes that Huckabee would win.

12:19 -- Romney apparently won Montana with a whopping total of 625 votes. Ron Paul actually came in second, with 400 votes. Interestingly, if you were to add in the votes from here in Clinton, Joe Biden would have come in second place.

12:21 -- Oh, God. Larry King is on.

12:23 -- And in an effort to get away from him, I turned to Karl Rove on Fox News. Auuuuugh!

12:25 -- Obama is up by 4900 in Missouri with 98% in.

12:28 -- I just moved over to HDNet (Mark Cuban's network) and Dan Rather is hosting their coverage. It is essentially a cable access show, but in HD. In the last two minutes, he's told us that Clinton's win in California is a "throw your hats in the air, 'Whoopee!' moment" and that he's "not the water, just the wave." Man is he losing it.

12:31 -- Losing it? He lost it a long time ago. My guess is it was in 1968. DRINK!

12:32 -- MSNBC just cut in with "breaking new from Romney campaign headquarters", which turned out to be the fact that tomorrow will be a day of "frank discussions". That's about the biggest anticlimax since the Heroes season one finale.

12:33 -- CNN called Missouri for McCain.

12:38 -- Listening to Obama and Clinton supporters both try so claim momentum is giving me a metaphorical headache. Especially on the Clinton side, since she has been a 10-20% favorite for weeks and ended up just eking out most of her wins, not to mention the fact that Obama has won more states. I don't see how anyone call spin that as momentum with a straight face.

12:40 -- Back to Dan Rather, apparently the Associated Press had called Missouri for Clinton earlier in the evening and now has withdrawn it's call.

12:41 -- Meanwhile, MSNBC has declared Obama the "apparent winner" in Missouri. Which in its way is as inexplicable as the AP declaring Clinton in the first place, since MSNBC is still using the same figures of a 4900 vote lead as they've been showing for the past 20 minutes. They've also just declared Alaska for Obama.

12:43 -- I think it's fair to wonder if the Ted Kennedy endorsement had any effect at all. He was supposed to help in Massachusetts and with Latino voters across the country and Obama is getting pounded among both constituencies.

12:45 -- MSNBC spoke about that a little, and they claimed that Obama's numbers among Latino voters that speak English were good in part due to Kennedy's endorsement, but that Spanish only Latinos were heavily backing Clinton. Which is probably a safe thing to say since nobody on Earth would have any way of figuring out whether its true or not.

12:48 -- Sounds good to me. At least you're getting politics. CNN is doing a story on the tornadoes down South.

12:48 -- Okay, here comes MSNBC's new delegate counts. The MSNBC guy is estimating 841 delegates for Obama and 837 for Clinton. He says his margin is + or - 10 delegates.

12:52 -- Sorry for moving in on the MSNBC territory, but Howard Fineman gets his own music? That's pretty cool.

12:54 -- Obama is up 13-8 in states with only New Mexico left. He's going to also earn at least a tie in delegates. I just don't see how this can be spun as a Clinton victory. For Clinton, this is a split at best and a loss at worst. This talk about Super Delegates makes my teeth itch. If the election comes down to Super Delegates, I'm afraid we're going to have another Florida in 2000 type lesson on how little our individual votes actually count in this process, which is a message that would come at a particularly poor time. If Obama wins the popular vote and is leading in delegates but loses the nomination due to the Democratic establishment throwing their Super Delegate weight behind Clinton... I foresee issues.

12:56 -- Chris Matthews just mentioned 1968, so I turned to CNN and caught some guy with a bad toupee on with Larry King.

1:00 -- In the case you spell out, there would be big issues. But I think it's plausible that the Super Delegates may move with the tide. There are still a ton of them that aren't yet declared and if the tide is flowing toward Obama, they may go along.

1:03 -- It appears that there will be more votes cast in Clinton for Joe Biden than there will be votes cast in the entire Alaskan Democratic caucuses. Biden has got to be wishing he had targeted his support better.

1:05 -- According to boston.com, Ron Paul won Boylston with 53%. Can't be right.

1:07 -- Do you have any frank discussions lined up for tomorrow? We can break some news here.

1:07 -- For Ron Paul, that has to be at least a bit of a moral victory. Sure, he's disappointed by his national showing, but "Ron Paul, Honorary President of Boylston" is a pretty good consolation prize.

1:09 -- I am going to have a frank discussion with our parents about whether I can borrow their car for a trip to Maine. Exclusive No Drumlins scoop. This may also prompt a frank discussion with the guys at the garage about why they can't fix a set of headlights in three attempts. And I might have a frank discussion with Joe Biden about his political future on the Clinton Town Council.

1:14 -- Chris Matthews just said that "Bill Weld always has a good time. We all know what that means." Heh heh.

1:14 -- Chris Matthews and the guy in Boston for the Romney campaign just started reminiscing about what a party animal Bill Weld is. They were almost giggling as they shared a salacious in joke. Man, I wish I knew what they were not telling us.

1:16 -- For what it's worth, Channel 7's web site lists Clinton as the winner of Missouri. Not that we expect much from Channel 7.

1:18 -- If it doesn't involve footage of someone running over a dog or a bus going off a cliff in Paraguay, Channel 7 doesn't want to know and they don't need to know. Now, if you don't mind, I'm afk a few minutes while I order my "Don't Blame Me, I Voted for Biden" bumper sticker.

1:19 -- "Afk?" Have you developed a lisp?

1:20 -- That's internet speak, bro. C'mon, this is a blog. You're supposed to use acronyms like afk, afaik, l33t, imo and brb. In fact, you're supposed to say "ur" instead of "you're". Someone needs to browse myspace a little more.

1:23 -- On that note, I'm going to bed. While you browse myspace, I'll be getting up to go to work. If any of you dear readers want to continue reading the commentary, head to Scott's blog.

1:24. -- No problem. Me and Shaq will be acting as cyber sheriffs while you sleep.

Tags: Election 2008 Republican Primary Mitt Romney John McCain Democratic Barack Obama Hillary Clinton